Assessment of Compassion in Physician Assistant Students.

PURPOSE: It has been shown that empathy erodes in the later phases of education of both medical students and physician assistant (PA) students. This brief study assessed compassion in PA students at different levels of training to explore if a similar phenomenon occurs. METHODS: Students at entry, midway, and at the end of PA training were surveyed using Pommier's Compassion Scale. RESULTS: Although overall compassion scores were lower when comparing students further along in training, differences were not significant. Females scored significantly higher on the kindness subscale overall. Scores for the common humanity subscale declined for both males and females. CONCLUSIONS: Unlike scales measuring empathy have shown, scores using a compassion rating scale did not decline with progression through PA school. Further research is needed to elucidate differences in subscales of compassion.

"We never used to do things this way": behavioral health care reform in New Mexico.

This column describes the first year of efforts in New Mexico to reform the behavioral health system. The process, guided by principles of cultural exchange theory, seeks to establish a "collaborative culture" among all stakeholders involved, including state agencies, consumers, families, advocates, and providers. Challenges have included inadequate system funding; insufficient development of skill sets among state personnel; underestimation of time and labor needed to address complex tasks; varying federal statutory and funder requirements for individual agencies; lack of a solid infrastructure for data collection, management, and dissemination; and clear definitions of the roles and relationships of local stakeholders to the state leadership group.