O efeito do mapa da empatia em saúde na atitude implícita de alunos de medicina em relação ao paciente idoso

Abstract

ABSTRACTIntroduction:Empathy is a socio-emotional skill that allows the understanding of our behavioral effects on other individuals and provides a greater tolerance of different perspectives. It provides better performance during graduation and throughout the health professional's career. The way an individual reacts and evaluates an object or concept constitutes his attitude, which can be assessed through stated responses explicit attitude) and inferred from unconscious acts and automatic responses (implicit attitude). The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is based on the time interval between the presentation of a stimulus and the response generated as a way of understanding the thought.The care of elderly patients is a challenge in clinical practice and the evaluation of the implicit attitude towards these patients is, therefore, of fundamental importance.Objectives:To evaluate the effect of the use of the Health Empathy Map (HEM) on the implicit attitude of medical students towards elderly patients. To compare the explicit and implicit attitude of medical students towards the elderly patient.Materials and methods:Randomized experimental study, consisting of 4 phases, carried out with 39 students from the 8th period of the medical course at UNIPTAN. In the1st phase, the student's implicit attitude towards the elderly patient was evaluated through the IAT. Sociodemographic questionnaires and the Neri Scale for the assessment of attitudes towards old age were applied to assess explicit attitudes. In the 2nd phase, the participants watched a video of the care of an elderly patient. In the 3rd phase, 50% of the sample was invited to fill out the HEMin relation to the watched video. Finally, in the 4th phase, all participants repeatedthe IAT.Results:The average of the values obtained in the Neri Scale tends to reveal more positive attitudes of the students towards the elderly. The analysis of IAT values using the formula product: square root of the differenceshowed an implicit negative attitude towards the elderly. Student's t test for independent samplesand student's t test for paired/dependent samplesshowed that the IATscores did not show significant differences between the 1st and 4th phases. Pearson's correlation analysisrevealed that there is no dependence between the results of the IAT and the Neri Scale. Conclusion:The use of HEMwas not ableto change the implicit attitude of medical students towards the elderly after a single exposure, since to modify the implicit associations acquired throughout life, continuous and long-term training is probably necessary.In addition, a discrepancy was observed between the instruments for assessing attitude: the explicit attitude was positive towards the elderly and the implicit attitude was negative.