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OpenTrials
Completed

NCT Number: NCT03330665

Meditation and Student Empathy

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.

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Key information

Conditions

Stress Empathy

Age range

18 year and older

Sex eligibility

All sexes

Study type

Interventional

Phase

Not applicable

Who can participate

Healthy volunteers accepted: Yes

Only the study team can determine whether someone qualifies for participation.

Inclusion criteria

-Medical students from New York Institute of Technology

Exclusion criteria

-Not a medical student

Treatment and study plan

Meditation

Behavioral

Meditate 3 times a week using headspace app

Other names: MIndfullness

Primary outcomes

  1. Perceived stress scale (PSS)

    Time frame: 6 months

    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.

  2. Jefferson scale of empathy

    Time frame: 6 months

    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.

Sponsors and collaborators

Lead sponsor

New York Institute of Technology

Other

Registry information

Important dates

Study start
2016
Primary completion
2020
Study completion
2021
First posted
Nov 6, 2017
Registry last updated
Feb 18, 2022

OpenTrials presents study information sourced from ClinicalTrials.gov. The official registry record should be consulted for the latest information.

View the official ClinicalTrials.gov record (opens in a new tab)

This listing is for discovery and informational purposes only. It is not medical advice, does not guarantee that a study is recruiting, and does not determine eligibility. Contact the study team and a qualified healthcare professional when considering participation.

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