Empathy alleviates the learning burnout of medical college students through enhancing resilience

Abstract

Objective The problem of learning burnout of medical students is becoming prominent, and empathy can play a good predictive role in learning burnout. The present study aimed to investigate the relationship between empathy and learning burnout, as well as the mediation effect of resilience in this relation. Methods Five hundred and eighty-eighth college students from a key medical university in Yunnan Province was investigated using the Basic Empathy Scale, Learning Burnout Scale, and Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale. All the measures showed good reliability and validity in the present study. Data were analyzed using SPSS 23.0 and Amos 22.0. Results Using structural equation modeling, we tested a conceptual model indicated that: (1) medical students' empathy negatively and significantly predicted learning burnout; (2) medical students' empathy positively predicts mental resilience; (3) resilience of medical students negatively predicts learning burnout; (4) resilience partially mediated the relationship between empathy and learning burnout of medical students, while also controlling for family socioeconomic status. Conclusion These findings highlight the mediating role of resilience in the effect of empathy on learning burnout of medical college students. It may contribute to a better understanding of the effect of empathy. Moreover, it can also provide constructive suggestions for protecting and improve empathy and resilience of medical college students.

The relationship between learning burnout, professional commitment, and psychological capital in undergraduate clinical medical students

“…In terms of the differences in the learning burnout reported by male and female undergraduate clinical medical students, male students had significantly higher overall scores. Their experience of learning burnout was more intense than that of their female counterparts, which is consistent with the findings of Wu et al [ 13 ] The questionnaire responses revealed that male students were more susceptible to distractions such as computers and online games after entering university, and had poor self-discipline. This lack of self-discipline manifests in behaviors such as arriving late for classes and leaving early, a lack of concentration, falling asleep, and habitual phone use during class, leading to a waning interest and motivation to study.…”

Clinical empathy: definition, measurement, correlates, group differences, erosion, enhancement, and healthcare outcomes

“…However, based on the finding that the emotional exhaustion factor of burnout [53] is in the opposite pole of the JSE scores factor [35], we expect to find an inverse association between cognitively defined clinical empathy (measured by the JSE) and indicators of burnout experiences, and a positive association between a measure of emotional empathy and burnout. This expectation was indeed confirmed in a study in which it was reported that a cognitive empathy measure, as opposed to emotional empathy, significantly predicted a lower degree of burnout and stronger mental resilience in medical students [69].…”

Alleviating learning burnout of Chinese middle school students by school‐based mindfulness training: The mediating role of psychological resilience

“…The dispositional mindfulness‐psychological resilience‐learning burnout model is only a sub‐model of mindfulness intervention based on JD‐R theory. For example, Previous studies have found that learning burnout and dispositional mindfulness are closely related to psychological stress, cognitive emotion regulation, empathy, job satisfaction, depression, and anxiety (Chen, 2021; Koutsimani et al, 2019; Liu et al, 2022; Mesmer‐Magnus et al, 2017; Wu et al, 2022). Therefore, future studies should consider building mediation models of these factors between dispositional mindfulness and learning burnout or constructing more complex multiple mediation models.…”

“…Furthermore, as a personal internal resource, psychological resilience often acts as a mediating bridge between psychological problems and their internal/ external influencing factors (Liu et al, 2017). It cannot only alleviate the adverse effects of learning stress (Liu et al, 2018), psychological overrun (Zhefeng, 2019), and negative cognitive emotional regulation (Chen, 2021) on learning burnout but also enhance the positive effects of empathy (Wu et al, 2022), trait emotional intelligence (Fiorilli et al, 2017), learning motivation (Zheng, 2021), and positive cognitive emotional regulation (Chen, 2021) on learning burnout.…”