Empathy, burnout, life satisfaction, correlations and associated socio-demographic factors among Chinese undergraduate medical students: an exploratory cross-sectional study

Background Medical education is widely known to be a demanding process that may cause various mental health problems, such as burnout, which can lead to lowered levels of life satisfaction among medical students. Research shows that empathy is negatively correlated with burnout, but there are few studies on the relationship among empathy, burnout and life satisfaction in medical students. The objective of the present study is to explore the correlations of empathy and burnout with life satisfaction and the associated socio-demographic factors among Chinese undergraduate medical students. Methods In this cross-sectional study, 1271 undergraduate medical students (age 19.42 +/- 1.34 years, 36% male) from 1st to 4th grades completed questionnaires including the Interpersonal Reactivity Index Chinese version (IRI-C), the Maslach Burnout Inventory Modified Chinese version (MBI-MC), the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS) and socio-demographic characteristics. Statistical analyses included Student's t-test, one-way ANOVA, post hoc Bonferroni tests, hierarchical linear regression analysis and general linear model-univariate full factorial model. Results Over four academic years, medical students' empathy levels declined, but their burnout levels almost plateaued and their life satisfaction levels witnessed an initial fall before a rebound. Empathy was correlated with students' age and grade, and burnout was associated with students' maternal education. Significant differences in life satisfaction were detected with regard to medical students' age, academic year, the number of children in the family, place of residence and parents' educational levels. Conclusions Empathy explained 0.6% of the variance in life satisfaction in contrast to 13.7% of the variance explained by burnout in life satisfaction. Although empathy did not have a main effect on life satisfaction, there was an interaction effect of empathy and burnout on life satisfaction among students of high and low empathy and burnout levels. Students with high levels of empathy and low levels of burnout were most satisfied with life. Medical institutions and related authorities need to find effective measures to enhance students' empathy levels and reduce burnout to improve their life satisfaction.