Effect of a Community Service-Learning Intervention on Medical Empathy and Clinical Self-Efficacy in Medical Students

Medical empathy and clinical self-efficacy are key professional competencies that are difficult to develop through traditional classroom-based training alone. At the Faculty of Medicine of FES Iztacala (UNAM), the curriculum includes a community practice component in the Practica Clinica I module that is rarely implemented in practice, creating a gap between the formal and real curriculum. This quasi-experimental pre-post study evaluates the effect of a structured Service-Learning (SL) intervention - a community anthropometry and somatometry assessment session conducted at a primary school - on medical empathy, perceived clinical self-efficacy, and clinical report performance in 35 fourth-semester medical students. Medical empathy will be measured using the Jefferson Scale of Empathy, Student version (JSE-S), validated in Spanish for Latin American populations. Clinical self-efficacy will be measured using the Medical Self-Efficacy Scale (EAM), a 5-item Likert instrument developed by the principal investigator (Cronbach's alpha=0.818, McDonald's omega=0.862). Clinical performance will be assessed using a standardized 33-point rubric evaluated blindly by two independent faculty members, with inter-rater reliability calculated using the Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC). Children participating in the community session will receive a personalized health report with their anthropometric results and, if clinically relevant findings are detected, will be referred to the University Health Clinic (CUSI) at FES Iztacala at no cost.

NCT Number	NCT07528521
Lead Sponsor	Luis Angel Flores Sagrero Collaborators: Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico
Conditions	Medical Education
Enrollment	35 participants
Start Date	2026-04-08
Primary Completion	2026-05-13 (estimated)
Study Completion	2026-05-27 (estimated)
Updated on ClinicalTrials.gov	2026-04-14