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. 2025 Feb 25;25(1):304.
doi: 10.1186/s12909-025-06875-8.

A national perspective: integrating medical humanities to address burnout and stress in Chinese medical education

Huiwen Zhai #  1 , Jiaolong Xue #  2 , Haotan Wu #  3 , Shuang Liao  1 , Christopher Lavender  1 , Yangludan Lv  4   5 , Wanfei Xie  1 , Di Wang  6 , Yu Cheng  7   8
Affiliations

A national perspective: integrating medical humanities to address burnout and stress in Chinese medical education

Huiwen Zhai et al. BMC Med Educ. .

Abstract

Background: The significance of issues in medical humanities, such as empathy, professionalism, patient-orientation, disclosure of harms, and communication skills, has been widely acknowledged in previous studies. While these studies have showcased the impact of individual facets of medical humanities on clinical practice, there exists a dearth of comprehensive assessments that encompass these constructs and their relationship with burnout and distress among medical students. This study aims to fill these gaps by exploring Chinese medical students' overall perceptions of medical humanities across different educational phases and shedding light on the intricate associations between perceptions of humanities, burnout, and stress.

Methods: We conducted a nationwide survey using a web-based questionnaire across 38 Chinese universities. The questionnaire includes Medical Humanities constructs, the Maslach Burnout Inventory constructs and the Perceived Stress constructs. The survey was administered using the snowball sampling method, with the data collection period running from September 8, 2022, to September 22, 2023. Participants included a national sample of 904 students (out of a total of 969) enrolled in medical schools. To investigate the relationships among all the constructs, PLS-SEM analysis was conducted by using the SmartPLS 3.3.9 software in this study.

Results: The student's perception of medical humanities was significantly influenced by several factors: years of medical school education (β = -.077; P = .045), work burnout (β = -.208; P < .001), and perceived stress (β = -.467; P < .001). Work burnout was impacted by clinical clerkship experience (β = .106; P = .001), whereas perceived stress was influenced by the number of years in medical school (β = 0.102; P = .002). Additionally, work burnout acts as an intermediate variable between clinical clerkship experience and students' perception of medical humanities.

Conclusion: This study illuminated the complex relationship between medical education, burnout, stress, and students' perception of medical humanities issues. It underscores the critical importance of balancing technical proficiency with humanistic values in medical training. Implementing strategies that support students' well-being and foster empathy is essential in nurturing a compassionate and effective healthcare workforce.

Keywords: Medical education; Medical humanities; Perceived stress; Work burnout.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declarations. Ethics approval and consent to participate: This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of School of Sociology and Anthropology, Sun Yat-sen University (Approval No: SYSUIRBDA20220820). All experiments were performed in accordance with relevant guidelines and regulations. Consent for publication: Not applicable. Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
The conceptual model in the hypothesis
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Estimates from the regression analysis. *H: hypothesis
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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