Profiles of Empathy and Emotional Intelligence Promoted by Written Examination Combined to Oral Interviews During the Selection of 1st Year Health Students at the Paris University of Medicine

Considering empathy and emotional intelligence in the early stages of health studies has become a significant concern, all the more as empathy level among medicine students seems to decrease by the years. This loss of clinical empathy takes particularly place after the 3rd year of medicine studies, when students start being in contact with real patients. Starting from that, the investigators will study if the selection that occurs by the end of the 1st year of health studies in France, and which select students that can enter one of the course (medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, midwifery), is designed to promote not only academic skills but also interpersonal abilities. That selection procedure is especially important because it will determine the profiles of health professionals that will enter medical course and will be the future practitioner. In order to to consider more the interpersonal abilities of the students during the selection process, some Multiple Mini-Interview (MMI) have been introduced. The MMI will be used to attribute the last 20% of the places available (80% of the places will be directly attributed by the classic written examen)

METHODS : In this research, it will be proposed to all the 1st year health students registered in Paris University of medicine for the year 2019/2020 (about 1200 students) to complete four self-administered questionnaire : the Jefferson Scale of Empathy (student version),the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI), the Questionnaire of Cognitive and Affective Empathy (QCAE) and the Emotional Expressivity Scale (EES). The students will get a personal access to the questionnaires by their digital workspace on the University's website. By the end of the year, they will be separated in 2 groups : students that have succeeded to the selection process and that can enter one of the health course, and students that failed. Then the investigators will compare the scores of the several self-administered questionnaires in the 2 groups.

That study wants to determine if the selection process in first year of health student in the Paris University of Medicine is able to promote students profiles with strong interpersonal abilities so as academics skills. That study will also try to determine if the introduction of MMI has an impact on the empathy scores of the selected students.