How Do Distress and Well-being Relate to Medical Student Empathy? A Multicenter Study

By Matthew R. Thomas, Lotte N. Dyrbye, J. Huntington, K. Lawson, P. Novotny, J. Sloan, Tait D. Shanafelt. Journal of general internal medicine, 2007

618 citations recorded by the source corpus.

ObjectiveTo determine whether lower levels of empathy among a sample of medical students in the United States are associated with personal and professional distress and to explore whether a high degree of personal well-being is associated with higher levels of empathy.DesignMulti-institutional, cross-sectional survey.SettingAll medical schools in Minnesota (a private medical school, a traditional public university, and a public university with a focus in primary care).ParticipantsA total of 1,098 medical students.MeasurementsValidated instruments were used to measure empathy, distress (i.e., burnout and symptoms of depression), and well-being (high quality of life).ResultsMedical student empathy scores were higher than normative samples of similarly aged individuals and were similar to other medical student samples. Domains of burnout inversely correlated with empathy (depersonalization with empathy independent of gender, all P < .02, and emotional exhaustion with emotive empathy for men, P = .009). Symptoms of depression inversely correlated with empathy for women (all P ≤ .01). In contrast, students’ sense of personal accomplishment demonstrated a positive correlation with empathy independent of gender (all P < .001). Similarly, achieving a high quality of life in specific domains correlated with higher empathy scores (P < .05). On multivariate analysis evaluating measures of distress and well-being simultaneously, both burnout (negative correlation) and well-being (positive correlation) independently correlated with student empathy scores.ConclusionsBoth distress and well-being are related to medical student empathy. Efforts to reduce student distress should be part of broader efforts to promote student well-being, which may enhance aspects of professionalism. Additional studies of student well-being and its potential influence on professionalism are needed.

Subfields: General Health Professions, Psychiatry and Mental health, Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b372dd4320f14efbcac0addc76ade2f8d948a001

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In General Health Professions

In Psychiatry and Mental health

Tait D. Shanafelt

In Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health

Citations in the corpus

Burnout and Suicidal Ideation among U.S. Medical Students (2008, methodology): “The SF-8 has also been used in samples of residents (32) and medical students (14, 27, 28).”
Single Item Measures of Emotional Exhaustion and Depersonalization Are Useful for Assessing Burnout in Medical Professionals (2009, methodology): “Furthermore, burnout has been associated with suboptimal patient care practices,(8) medical errors,(9) and reduced empathy.(10) The most widely used, well-validated instrument for the assessment of burnout is the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI).”
Exploring self‐compassion and empathy in the context of mindfulness‐based stress reduction (MBSR) (2010, background): “…of personal accomplishment, quality of life, social support satisfaction, marital adjustment and commitment, while demonstrating negative associations with symptoms of depression, emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, burnout and perceived stress (Steffen & Masters, 2005; Thomas et al., 2007).”