Meditation and Student Empathy

Stress Clinical Trial

Official title:

Meditation and Student Empathy

Clinical Trial Details — Status: Completed

Administrative data

• NCT number: NCT03330665
• Other study ID #: BHS-1245
• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Start date: November 1, 2016
• Est. completion date: September 7, 2021

Study information

• Verified date: February 2022
• Source: New York Institute of Technology
• Contact: n/a
• Is FDA regulated: No
• Study type: Interventional

Clinical Trial Summary

Physician empathy and reducing stress are major factors in attaining positive clinical outcomes for patients. Fostering empathy in medical students is particularly important as they are the future of the healthcare workforce and a trend of declining empathy during medical education may lead to decreased health care quality outcomes. Meditation may be an avenue to promote positive student attitudes including empathy, though very few studies have examined this idea through empirical research. Using validated measures, the Jefferson scale of empathy and the perceived stress scale, we seek to investigate whether use of a meditation app will be associated with higher levels of self-rated empathy and lower self-rated stress.

Recruitment information / eligibility

• Status: Completed
• Enrollment: 78
• Est. completion date: September 7, 2021
• Est. primary completion date: September 1, 2020
• Accepts healthy volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers
• Gender: All
• Age group: 18 Years and older

Eligibility

Inclusion Criteria:

-Medical students from New York Institute of Technology

Exclusion Criteria:

-Not a medical student

Related Conditions & MeSH terms

• Empathy
• Stress

Intervention

Behavioral:
• Meditation
Meditate 3 times a week using headspace app

Locations

Country	Name	City	State
n/a

Sponsors (1)

Lead Sponsor	Collaborator
New York Institute of Technology

Outcome

Type	Measure	Description	Time frame	Safety issue
Primary	Perceived stress scale (PSS)	Perceived stress scale measures stress levels. 10 item scale where subjects are asked to indicate by circling how often they felt or thought a certain way on a scale of 1-4. Items are them added up- a higher score means higher stress.	6 months
Primary	Jefferson scale of empathy	Jefferson scale of Empathy measures empathy levels. 20 item scale where subjects are asked to indicate by circling how often they felt or thought a certain way about empathy related situations on a scale of 1-7. Items are them added up- a higher score means higher empathy.	6 months