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

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