AUTHOR=Van Winkle Lon J. , Schwartz Brian D. , Michels Nicole 

TITLE=A Model to Promote Public Health by Adding Evidence-Based, Empathy-Enhancing Programs to All Undergraduate Health-care Curricula

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Public Health

VOLUME=Volume 5 - 2017

YEAR=2017

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/public-health/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2017.00339

DOI=10.3389/fpubh.2017.00339

ISSN=2296-2565

ABSTRACT=Fostering empathy in future healthcare providers through service-learning is emerging as central to public health promotion.  Patients fare better when their care-givers have higher relationship-centered characteristics such as the ones measured by the Jefferson Scale of Empathy.  Unfortunately, these characteristics often deteriorate during healthcare professional training.  Nevertheless, growing literature documents how we can promote empathy, and other patient-centered characteristics, throughout healthcare professional students’ undergraduate education.  As for proven treatment plans, we believe we should also use evidence-based guidelines to foster relationship-centered characteristics in our students when training them to practice as part of an interdisciplinary healthcare team.