Empathy among Medical Students: Is There a Relation with Quality of Life and Burnout?

Abstract

BackgroundWe aimed to assess medical students' empathy and its associations with gender, stage of medical school, quality of life and burnout.MethodA cross-sectional, multi-centric (22 medical schools) study that employed online, validated, self-reported questionnaires on empathy (Interpersonal Reactivity Index), quality of life (The World Health Organization Quality of Life Assessment) and burnout (the Maslach Burnout Inventory) in a random sample of medical students.ResultsOut of a total of 1,650 randomly selected students, 1,350 (81.8%) completed all of the questionnaires. Female students exhibited higher dispositional empathic concern and experienced more personal distress than their male counterparts (p<0.05; d≥0.5). There were minor differences in the empathic dispositions of students in different stages of their medical training (p<0.05; f<0.25). Female students had slightly lower scores for physical and psychological quality of life than male students (p<0.05; d<0.5). Female students scored higher on emotional exhaustion and lower on depersonalization than male students (p<0.001; d<0.5). Students in their final stage of medical school had slightly higher scores for emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and personal accomplishment (p<0.05; f<0.25). Gender (β = 0.27; p<0.001) and perspective taking (β = 0.30; p<0.001) were significant predictors of empathic concern scores. Depersonalization was associated with lower empathic concern (β = −0.18) and perspective taking (β = −0.14) (p<0.001). Personal accomplishment was associated with higher perspective taking (β = 0.21; p<0.001) and lower personal distress (β = −0.26; p<0.001) scores.ConclusionsFemale students had higher empathic concern and personal distress dispositions. The differences in the empathy scores of students in different stages of medical school were small. Among all of the studied variables, personal accomplishment held the most important association with decreasing personal distress and was also a predicting variable for perspective taking.

Behaviour-based functional and dysfunctional strategies of medical students to cope with burnout

“…Some studies have found that burnout increases with each year of study among medical students [35–38]. Other studies have reported an n-shaped curve with burnout climaxes in the middle phases of the medical curriculum [39–41]. The results of the study presented here indicate that the different semesters show similar prevalence rates for burnout.…”

Does Formulation of Service Users’ Difficulties Improve Empathy in Forensic Mental Health Services?

“…This does not support the work of Paro et al (2014), who found that personal accomplishment, rather than depersonalization, was predictive of the variance in perspective taking. Despite obvious differences between the studies in terms of location (Brazil) and target population (medical students), it is not clear why their findings would have differed from the current study.…”

“…Qualitative exploration could have enhanced understanding of the nature of the significant relationships, and further explored staff's perception of the utility of formulation. Alongside this, Paro et al (2014) highlighted the problem of social desirability bias in self-report measures of empathy, such as those used in the current study. Qualitative interviews may have given the researcher the opportunity to explore these issues; however, a mixed-method approach was beyond the resources of this project.…”

The Roles of Empathy, Attachment Style, and Burnout in Pharmacy Students’ Academic Satisfaction

“…Students reporting lower levels of academic satisfaction presented higher burnout, supporting the hypothesis that students' depersonalization may be a possible explanation for lower academic satisfaction 78 which can undermine students' satisfaction and accomplishments in their future professional lives. 79,80 Psychological interventions focused on reducing burnout symptoms in pharmacy school, previously used to manage students' psychological distress and lack of academic motivation, 41,81,82 could have beneficial results in our population.…”