(12) The Effect of Medical Students' Gender and Attitude towards Poetry-reading 

on the Evaluation of a Required, Clinically-Integrated 

Poetry- Based Educational Intervention

             Mordechai Muszkat, Orly Barak, Gadi Lalazar, Bracha Mazal, Ronen Schneider, Irit Mor-Yosef Levi,

          Matan J Cohen, Laura Canetti, Arie Ben Yehuda, Yaakov Naparstek, Hebrew University

 

 

Background: Art -based interventions are widely used in medical education. However, data on the potential effects of art-based interventions on medical students have been limited to small qualitative studies on students' evaluation of elective programs, and thus their findings may be difficult to generalize. The goal of this study is to examine, in an unselected students' population, students' evaluation of a clinically-integrated poetry-based educational intervention.

Methods: A required Clinically- Oriented Poetry-reading Experience (COPE) is integrated into the 4th year internal medicine clerkship. We constructed a questionnaire regarding the program's effects on students. Students completed the questionnaire at the end of the clerkship.

Results: 144 students participated in the program, of which 112 completed the questionnaires. Confirmatory Factor Analysis identified two effect factors: "student-patient" and "self and colleagues". The average score for "student-patient" factor was significantly higher as compared to the "self and colleagues" factor.

Students' attitude towards poetry-reading did not correlate with the "student-patient" effect, but correlated with the "self and colleagues" effect. The "self and colleagues" factor was higher among students who participated in the program during their second as compared with the first clerkship. Students' gender was not associated with any of the effects identified. Students favored obligatory participation in COPE as compared with elective course format.

Conclusions: According to students' evaluation, a format of integrated, obligatory poetry-based interventions may be suitable for enhancing "student-patient" aims in heterogeneous student populations. Further research can provide insight into the effect of cultural and ethnic differences on actual empathy of medical students in patient encounters.