Empathy In Chinese Pharmacy Undergraduates: Implication for Integrating Humanities Into Professional Pharmacy Education

At present, fostering and promoting empathy, an important humanistic quality, are believed ethical imperatives, and should be carried through the pharmacy education to facilitate the interpersonal and philosophical development of healthcare students. A cross-sectional study used the JSE-HPS (Jefferson Scale of Empathy-Health Profession Student version) to assess 263 Chinese pharmacy undergraduates from 1st to 4th year at Wuhan University of Science and Technology. Attached to the scale was a survey containing questions on demographics and favorite implementation model of humanistic education. Mean score of JSE-HPS was 112.58. Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was 0.81. Three factors emerging in the factor analysis of JSE-HPS are “perspective taking”, “compassionate care” and “ability to stand in patients’ shoes”. And empathy score of 4th-year students was highest. In addition, the three most popular implementation models were “Social activities”, “Extracurricular activity on pharmacy humanistic education”, and “Humanistic education should be infiltrated and integrated within the existing professional curriculum”, respectively. Our study findings indicate that humanistic education in the foundations courses for 1st to 3rd academic year pharmacy students need to be focus on. For successful practice, humanistic education that promotes empathy has to be integrated within the existing training programs for pharmacy undergraduate students in a vivid way.