A Curriculum to Increase Empathy and Reduce Burnout.

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Physician Well-being
• Clinical Empathy

Background:

• Empathy is crucial for patient care, communication, and relationship-centered practice.
• Medical training often leads to decreased empathy, increased physician distress, and burnout.

Purpose of the Study:

• To pilot a 6-month curriculum for interns aimed at enhancing empathy and mitigating burnout.
• To assess the impact of the curriculum on intern well-being and empathy levels.

Main Methods:

• A 6-month curriculum was delivered to 27 interns, incorporating literature review, neurobiology of empathy, stress physiology, humanities, growth mindset, and mindfulness.
• Empathy and burnout scores were measured pre- and post-curriculum.

Main Results:

• Intern burnout and empathy levels remained stable overall, but attendance correlated with positive outcomes.
• Each attended session was associated with a significant decline in emotional exhaustion (P=.007) and an increase in personal accomplishment (P=.001).
• Empathic concern showed a positive trend (P=.066) with session attendance. Participants reported applying learned skills both professionally and personally.

Conclusions:

• Integrating empathic and self-care skills training can counteract the decline in empathy and well-being during residency.
• This pilot curriculum demonstrated potential for adoption by other residency programs to improve physician well-being and patient care.
• Resident physicians successfully applied learned skills in both work and personal contexts.