The relationship between medical students' empathy, mental health, and burnout: A cross-sectional study.

Carrard, Valerie; Bourquin, Céline; Berney, Sylvie; Schlegel, Katja; Gaume, Jacques; Bart, Pierre-Alexandre; Preisig, Martin; Schmid Mast, Marianne; Berney, Alexandre (2022). The relationship between medical students' empathy, mental health, and burnout: A cross-sectional study. Medical teacher, 44(12), pp. 1392-1399. Taylor & Francis 10.1080/0142159X.2022.2098708

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OBJECTIVE

To investigate how medical students' empathy is related to their mental health and burnout.

METHODS

This cross-sectional study included 886 medical students from curriculum years 1-6. The cognitive, affective, and behavioural dimensions of empathy were measured with self-report questionnaires and an emotion recognition test. Regressions were used to test the relationship between the empathy dimensions, depressive symptoms, anxiety, and burnout as well as the influence of curriculum year and gender.

RESULTS

Cognitive and behavioural empathy were significantly related to less mental health issues and burnout, whereas affective empathy was related to more mental health issues and burnout. Students in later curriculum years reported less mental health issues and burnout than students in earlier years, whereas no systematic difference could be observed for empathy. Female students reported more mental health issues and burnout as well as higher empathy, except for behavioural empathy for which male students scored higher.

CONCLUSIONS

The cognitive, affective, and behavioural dimensions of empathy were differently related to the mental health and burnout of medical students. Students presenting mental health issues or burnout might have more difficulty to adapt their behaviour in social situations and keep a certain distance when taking others' perspective.

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

07 Faculty of Human Sciences > Institute of Psychology > Personality Psychology, Differential Psychology and Diagnostics

UniBE Contributor:

Schlegel, Katja

Subjects:

100 Philosophy > 150 Psychology
300 Social sciences, sociology & anthropology > 370 Education

ISSN:

1466-187X

Publisher:

Taylor & Francis

Language:

English

Submitter:

Pubmed Import

Date Deposited:

19 Jul 2022 07:33

Last Modified:

05 Dec 2022 16:21

Publisher DOI:

10.1080/0142159X.2022.2098708

PubMed ID:

35830537

Uncontrolled Keywords:

Undergraduate communication skills medical education research student support

BORIS DOI:

10.48350/171296

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/171296

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