Psychosocial profile of medicine students from the Universidad de Manizales (Colombia) and its relationship with academic performance. 2011

Background: It is generally accepted that medical schools should produce medical compassionate, empathetic and altruistic. The purpose of this study is to measure the level of empathy and emotional intelligence in students Medicine Program at the Universidad de Manizales (Manizales, Colombia) and the relationship with academic performance. Materials and methods: Cross-sectional study with a sample of 233 students of the medicine program at the Universidad de Manizales. Jefferson questionnaire was used to measure Medical empathy, the TMMS questionnaire for emotional intelligence, and other tests to measure family functioning (APGAR), anxiety, depression, and other variables. Results: The TMMS questionnaire showed that 51.1% of students must improve the perception of emotions, 53.2% had adequate understanding of their feelings, and 63.5% adequate emotional regulation. Regarding the subscales of empathy have on average 83.18% of perspective taking, a 38.05% care with compassion, and 51.38% of ability to "step into the shoes of the patient." The simple average ratings presented associated with total empathy (p = 0.04), and compassionate care (p = 0.004) and at the p<0.1 with the TMMS subscale of the questionnaire to measure the perception of emotions (p = 0.083). A significant relationship between the perception of emotions with gender (p = 0.033) and anxiety (p = 0.034), gender with emotion regulation (0.026), anxiety with understanding of emotions (0.032). Empathy showed a significant association with gender (p = 0.01), semster (p = 0.003), anxiety (p = 0.033) and depression (p = 0.001). Conclusions: In this study the importance of doctor-patient relationship in medical student training, was demonstrated.