↓ Skip to main content

Medical school selection criteria as predictors of medical student empathy: a cross-sectional study of medical students, Ireland

Overview of attention for article published in BMJ Open, August 2017
Altmetric Badge

About this Attention Score

  • In the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (92nd percentile)
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (90th percentile)

Mentioned by

twitter
52 X users
facebook
1 Facebook page

Citations

dimensions_citation
11 Dimensions

Readers on

mendeley
82 Mendeley
You are seeing a free-to-access but limited selection of the activity Altmetric has collected about this research output. Click here to find out more.
Title
Medical school selection criteria as predictors of medical student empathy: a cross-sectional study of medical students, Ireland
Published in
BMJ Open, August 2017
DOI 10.1136/bmjopen-2017-016076
Pubmed ID
Authors

Donnchadh M O’Sullivan, Joseph Moran, Paul Corcoran, Siun O’Flynn, Colm O’Tuathaigh, Aoife M O’Sullivan

Abstract

To determine whether performance in any of the Health Professions Admissions Test (HPAT) sections, most specifically the interpersonal understanding section, correlates with self-reported empathy levels in medical students. The study was conducted in University College Cork, Ireland. 290 students participated in the study. Matching HPAT scores were available for 263 students. All male and female undergraduate students were invited to participate. Postgraduate and international students were excluded. Primary measures: HPAT-Ireland and Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy (JSE) scores were compared including subsection analysis. Secondary measures: comparisons were made between groups such as gender and year of programme. A total of 290 students participated. Males scored significantly higher than females for total HPAT-Ireland (U=7329, z=-2.04, p<0.05), HPAT-Ireland section 1 (U=5382, z=-5.21, p<0.001) and section 3 scores (U=6833, z=-2.85, p<0.01). In contrast, females scored significantly higher than males on HPAT-Ireland section 2 (U=5844, z=-4.46, p<0.001). Females demonstrated significantly higher total JSE scores relative to males (mean score ± SEM: 113.33±1.05vs 109.21±0.95; U=8450, z=-2.83, p<0.01). No significant association was observed between JSE scores and any of the HPAT-Ireland measures (all p>0.05). There was no effect of programme year on JSE scores (all p>0.05). The introduction of the HPAT-Ireland test was partly designed to identify students with strong interpersonal skills. A significant finding of this study is that JSE values did not correlate with HPAT-Ireland scores. This study suggests no clear link between scores on a selection test, the HPAT-Ireland, which is designed to assess several skill domains including interpersonal skills, and scores on a psychometric measure of empathy, at any point during medical education.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 52 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 82 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Unknown 82 100%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Bachelor 15 18%
Student > Master 14 17%
Researcher 7 9%
Professor > Associate Professor 7 9%
Student > Ph. D. Student 7 9%
Other 11 13%
Unknown 21 26%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Medicine and Dentistry 28 34%
Nursing and Health Professions 8 10%
Psychology 6 7%
Social Sciences 4 5%
Sports and Recreations 2 2%
Other 7 9%
Unknown 27 33%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 34. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 05 December 2022.
All research outputs
#1,178,694
of 25,382,440 outputs
Outputs from BMJ Open
#2,110
of 25,593 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#23,613
of 327,503 outputs
Outputs of similar age from BMJ Open
#63
of 646 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,382,440 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 95th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 25,593 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 18.2. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 91% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 327,503 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 92% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 646 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 90% of its contemporaries.