Empathy levels among first year Malaysian medical students: an observational study

Abstract

Aji Gopakumar,1 Jayadevan Sreedharan,1 Gamini Premadasa,2 Jayakumary Muttappallymyalil3 1Statistical Support Facility, 2Medical Education Unit, 3Department of Community Medicine, Gulf Medical University, Ajman, United Arab EmiratesThis letter is in response to the article by Williams et al titled “Empathy levels among first year Malaysian medical students: An observational study” published in Advances in Medical Education and Practice, May 2014.1This observational study addresses the issue of educating medical students about empathy as an attribute – a matter which is often not given enough importance – and including the topic in the academic curriculum, in view of the declining empathy levels observed in clinical practice. We would like to raise some concerns regarding the methods used for data analysis in the paper. The authors have analyzed the data using descriptive statistics such as means and standard deviation (SD) that are not appropriate parameters since the instrument used a seven-point Likert scoring scale. It would have been better if they had used median with minimum and maximum rather than the mean and SD. View orignal paper by Williams et al.