Empathy education is being addressed as an important part of medical education. However, many researchers have suggested decline in empathy during the course of medical school. Therefore, we examine situation in empathy level among preclinical medical students in Faculty of Medicine, Yamagata University in Japan.A longitudinal study was carried out. Empathy level in the first year and again on their fourth year was measured by the Japanese version of the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy consisting of total 20 questions. Each question composes of a 5-point Likert scale. Statistical analysis was performed with Mann-Whitney U test and multivariate analysis.No significant decrease in mean empathy scores was shown between first-year（scores: 66.4, n=105）and fourth-year students（scores: 68.4, n=62）．Factor analysis identified four factors: “building good patient-doctor relationship”, “importance of empathetic care”, “understanding patients’ view” and “compassionate care”. A weak correlation（r=-0.271）was observed between “understanding patients’ view” and “importance of empathetic care.” Decline in empathy was not revealed. However, an inverse weak correlation between cognitive empathy and emotional empathy was revealed among preclinical medical students. This may imply the necessity for emotional empathy education before clinical practice.
中西 et al. (Mon,) studied this question.