In someone else's shoes, are all wearers the same? Empathy in multi-ethnic Asian medical students.

Objectives: Considerable research interest has been observed in ascertaining the actual pattern of empathy skill acquisition, but this aspect remains largely unexplored in Asian medical students. This study explored the empathy trait in Asian medical students from different levels of seniority and investigated the association between students' empathy traits and their socio-demographic and socio-economic backgrounds.

Methods: To explore the empathy trait, the Year 1 to Year 5 medical students completed the students' socio-demographic/economic and validated Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) questionnaires.

Asian medical students' attitudes towards professionalism.

Professionalism is the basis of trust in patient-physician relationships; however, there is very limited evidence focusing on attitudes towards professionalism among medical students. Hence, the main aim of our study was to investigate Malaysian medical students' attitudes towards professionalism with specific emphasis on the comparison between pre-clinical and clinical students. Our secondary aim was to compare the differences in perception of medical students in Malaysia (pre-clinical and clinical) with Asian medical students studying in Dublin, Ireland This study utilized the Professionalism Mini-Evaluation Exercise (P-MEX) instrument which consists of 25 items that represent four skill categories: Doctor-Patient Relationship skills, Reflective skills, Time Management and Inter-Professional Relationship skills.