Compassionatomy: Can Compassion Contemplative Practices Foster Student Connection with Body Donors and Enhance...

Compassion training (CT) has been used in medical education to enhance patient care and decrease provider burnout. A growing number of institutions incorporate humanistic practices into anatomy classes; however, there is no report of CT ever being incorporated. The authors hypothesized that implementing CT during a pre-clinical anatomy course, a program called Compassionatomy, would help students to identify with body donors, practice compassion contemplative exercises during and outside of anatomy labs, and maintain high empathy levels throughout the academic year. All first-year medical students at UC San Diego enrolled in 2022/2023 experienced Compassionatomy, which included combinations of CT during the 7 most emotionally challenging dissections. Longitudinal study participants (n = 36) completed 20 session evaluations-after each of 7 sessions with and 13 sessions without CT. Students' connection with the body donor, assessed by the Inclusion of Other in Self scale, increased over the year (p < 0.001) with more connection after CT than non-CT sessions (p = 0.048). This increase was associated with higher self-rated positive emotional valence (p = 0.03) but not arousal (p = 0.56). In-session engagement with compassion practices increased over time (p = 0.04). More engagement in contemplative practices outside anatomy was reported in the weeks following CT than non-CT sessions (p = 0.02). Empathy levels, assessed by the Jefferson Scale of Empathy (JSE), remained high across the year (p = 0.22) and did not differ between students in the cohort receiving Compassionatomy and the previous year's cohort who had not experienced Compassionatomy (p = 0.15). Results suggest that incorporation of CT into anatomy labs has benefits for enhancing connection with the body donor, the students' "first patient."