International Journal of Evaluation and Research in Education (IJERE) Vol. 11, No. 3, September 2022, pp. 1183~1189 ISSN: 2252-8822, DOI: 10.11591/ijere.v11i3.22915  1183 Journal homepage: http://ijere.iaescore.com Learning of empathy among first-year medical students Bulan Kakanita Hermasari, Dian Nugroho Department of Medical Education, Universitas Sebelas Maret, Surakarta, Indonesia Article Info ABSTRACT Article history: Received Sep 15, 2021 Revised Jun 18, 2022 Accepted Jul 2, 2022 Empathy is one of the core competencies that doctors must possess. Teaching empathy is carried out since students are in undergraduate medical education. One of the learning activities that can be used to improve empathy skills is reflection. Many studies have reported on the empathic abilities of medical students. In addition, there have also been many scientific articles discussing the factors that affect the ability of empathy. However, how medical students learn empathy is still unclear, especially for first-year students who have just been exposed to medical science after graduating from high school. This study aimed to understand how first-year medical students learn empathy. A qualitative study with a phenomenological approach was carried out. We selected randomly, a total of 30 medical student reflection journals were analyzed using content analysis techniques. There are three themes, namely stimulus, process, and effect. Medical students learn empathy driven by internal and external stimuli so that a thinking process occurs through several learning activities. The existence of this stimulus and process influences both the self and the patient/client. The whole process of empathy learning can show how early- year students learn and the factors that influence student empathy learning. This study supports other research that discusses the learning process and factors that affect medical students' empathy. This result can encourage curriculum planners to design appropriate empathy learning for students. Keywords: Empathy Learning Medical student Reflection This is an open access article under the CC BY-SA license. Corresponding Author: Bulan Kakanita Hermasari Department of Medical Education, Universitas Sebelas Maret 36A Ir. Sutami Road, Surakarta, Central Java 57126, Indonesia Email: dr.bulan.kakanita@staff.uns.ac.id 1. INTRODUCTION Empathy is often associated with health service quality, especially at the first level of health care. This is because empathy is a core component of the doctor-patient relationship [1], [2]. Empathy is the ability of a doctor to understand the patient's illness and feel the overall background or context underlying the patient's condition [3], [4]. In addition, the ability can increase the interaction between doctor-patient and the patient's trust to the doctor [5], [6]. Therefore, empathy is one of the competencies that a doctor must possess and must be taught to medical students. Patient-centered health services have resulted in a shift in medical education emphasizing teaching professionalism, including empathy [7]–[9]. Several things are used to develop empathy learning, such as exploring conditions, perceptions/ideas, and patient expectations [10]. These principles are then used as the basis for designing learning activities and examinations/assessments of empathy competencies for medical students. Research on empathy for medical students has been found in the literature review. However, most of the existing research is in the form of quantitative studies to assess the ability of empathy [2], [7], [11], [12].