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.