CORRECTING EMPATHY IN MEDICAL STUDENTS AT THE MEDICAL ENGLISH CLASSES

Abstract

The article describes an author method of empathy corection in medical students by implementation of numerous language drills at the medical English classes. The author has defined the notion of empathy of medical specialists, as their ability for compassion, expressed particularly to the patients as well as to their collegues, patients’ relatives, etc. The author reveals that empathy is an indispensable characteristic of a physician within the emotional and communication professional competence component, representing his abilities of effective interaction with the patients. The article analyses basic psychological parameters of empathy and defines its cognition, emotional and operating components. Due to the performed literature data analysis, the author concludes that the optimum empathy level for the medical specialist is the average one, while both high and low levels interfere with successful professional activity. The article contains the results of the empathy study, conducted with the 1st year of study medical students, according to which most students expressed average (75.4%) level of empathy, while 12.5% expressed high and 3.6% expressed very high empathy levels, which should be corrected. The author shared her personal recommendations on implementing the author course (teaching medical writing, reading, listening and speaking), aimed at increasing empathy in the medical students. The basis of the authorcourse implemented on professional English classesconsists of the creative situations, case studies and discussions, “decisions between life and death”, ethical dilemmas, drills for learning emotions as they are and their ability to experience them. The author dwells on that integrating the drills into teaching medical English leads to increased earning interest of the students, though the drawbacks of such integration may be related to unprofessional shaping the empathy by foreign language teachers who aren’t psychologists basically. The author supposes that the further study of empathy correction conducted between the students of various faculties should be held.