The impact of face-to-face mental health consumer-led teaching on occupational therapy student empathy levels: Two group comparison design.
Alexandra Logan, Elisa Yule, Julie Hughes and 5 others
PMID 35949169WHAT IT FOUND
Second-year occupational therapy students who received tutorials led by mental health consumers showed no greater empathy than those taught by standard tutors.
Both groups had high baseline scores and marginal, non-significant changes, suggesting this single tutorial did not impact empathy levels.
Key findings
01There was no statistically significant difference in total empathy scores between the consumer-led tutorial group and the standard tutor group at follow-up.
02Both groups started with high baseline empathy scores, and the marginal improvements seen in both were not considered clinically meaningful.
03The adapted version of the empathy scale used showed poor statistical fit, indicating it may not reliably measure empathy in this specific student population.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
The study was not randomized; tutorial groups were assigned based on the availability of consumer tutors. Both groups received the same co-designed materials and a prior consumer lecture, making it difficult to isolate the effect of the tutorial leader alone. The empathy scale was adapted for this study and showed poor statistical fit, raising questions about the accuracy of the measurements. Baseline empathy levels were already high, which may have limited the ability to detect further improvement (ceiling effect).
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflicts of interest. Consumer educators were paid casual academic rates funded by an in-house teaching development grant.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that consumer involvement is ineffective for OT education. This study tested a single 2-hour tutorial with an adapted empathy scale that had poor statistical fit, and both groups already had high baseline empathy scores.