Introduction: The Consultation and Relational Empathy (CARE) measure developed and validated in primary care settings and used for general practitioner appraisal is a 10-item instrument used by patients to assess doctors' empathy. The aim of this study is to investigate the validity of the CARE measure in assessing medical students' empathy during a formative family medicine clinical test.
Method: All 158 final-year medical students were assessed by trained simulated patients (SPs) - who completed the CARE measure, the Jefferson Scale of Patient Perceptions of Physician Empathy (JSPPPE), and a global rating score to assess students' empathy and history-taking ability.
Results: Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis identified a unidimensional structure. The CARE measure strongly correlated with both convergent measures: global rating (ρ=0.79 and <0.001) and JSPPPE (ρ=0.77 and <0.001) and weakly correlated with the divergent measure: history-taking score (ρ=0.28 and <0.001). Internal consistency was excellent (Cronbach's α=0.94).
Conclusion: The CARE measure had strong construct and internal reliability in a formative, undergraduate family medicine examination. Its role in higher stakes examinations and other educational settings should be explored.
Keywords: assessment; clinical consultation; communication; empathy; medical student; primary care; psychometric; undergraduate; validation.