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

Abstract

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.

Keywords:

• Undergraduate
• medical education research
• communication skills
• student support

Glossary

Behavioural empathy: Is the action component of empathy. It implies for a person to demonstrate unequivocally that the feelings of an interactional partner are understood and to act accurately based on this understanding.

Mercer, S. W., & Reynolds, W. J. (2002). Empathy and quality of care. British Journal of General Practice, 52, S9-12.

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Sylvie Felix and Fabienne Thévenaz for their help in the ETMED-L project’s recruitment process.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in zenodo at http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5702895.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation [grant number 10001 C_197442].

Notes on contributors

Valerie Carrard

Valerie Carrard, PhD, Psychiatric Liaison Service, Department of Psychiatry, Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV) and University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland. [email protected]

Céline Bourquin

Céline Bourquin, PhD, Psychiatric Liaison Service, Department of Psychiatry, Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV) and University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland. [email protected]

Sylvie Berney

Sylvie Berney, MD, Service of General Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry, Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV) and University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland. [email protected]

Katja Schlegel

Katja Schlegel, PhD, Institute of Psychology, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland. [email protected]

Jacques Gaume

Jacques Gaume, PhD, Addiction Medicine, Department of Psychiatry, Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV) and University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland. [email protected]

Pierre-Alexandre Bart

Pierre-Alexandre Bart, MD, Department of Internal Medicine, Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV) and University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland. [email protected]

Martin Preisig

Martin Preisig, MD, MPH, Centre for Psychiatric Epidemiology and Psychopathology, Department of Psychiatry, Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV) and University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland. [email protected]

Marianne Schmid Mast

Marianne Schmid Mast, PhD, Department of Organizational Behavior, Faculty of Business and Economics (HEC Lausanne), University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland. [email protected]

Alexandre Berney

Alexandre Berney, MD, Psychiatric Liaison Service, Department of Psychiatry, Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV) and University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland. [email protected]