Clinical trial NCT06656650: Commensality Groups: a Professional Fulfillment Intervention for Medical Students in Their Clinical Years
Official title: Commensality Groups: a Professional Fulfillment Intervention for Medical Students in Their Clinical Years
Study type: INTERVENTIONAL
Overall status: NOT_YET_RECRUITING
Phase: NA
Conditions: Professional Fulfillment
Burnout
Social Isolation or Loneliness
Keywords: commensality groups
medical students
Lead sponsor: University of Southern California
Sponsor class: OTHER
First posted: 2024-10-24
Enrollment: 80
Sex: ALL
Standard ages: CHILD
ADULT
OLDER_ADULT
Accepts healthy volunteers: yes
Allocation: RANDOMIZED
Intervention model: PARALLEL
Primary purpose: TREATMENT

Brief summary: Medical students are at high risk for burnout, depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation and substance use disorder with burnout seen as a mitigating factor for suicidal ideation. Help-seeking among medical students suffering from burnout is only 30%. The highest rates of burnout among medical students is at the end of their clinical rotations, with estimates of up to 60%. "Commensality groups" have been found to significantly reduce burnout and improve meaning in work by creating opportunity for connection and collegiality among physicians. These groups consist of providing a reimbursed monthly meal with structured questions that generate conversation for the first 15 minutes with 6-8 participants meeting monthly, for six months. Physician participants in Commensality groups maintain these gains one year later.

The investigators propose to apply the model of Commensality groups to medical students who are launching into their experience clinical practice, and have been on clinical rotations for at least 4 months. The investigators will form randomly assigned groups of 6-8 medical students with 1 resident leader. The resident leader role has been added to encourage compliance with the standardized discussion questions and to avoid the potential negative impact of a "venting" session. The overall intention of this study is to explore whether Commensality groups can increase well-being for medical students in their clerkship years, as it has previously been shown to do for residents and physicians.


Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

* Currently a medical student on clerkships at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California

Exclusion Criteria:

* Not currently on a leave of absence, research year, or otherwise not enrolled in the medical school program

Primary outcomes:
measure: Survey
timeFrame: Baseline (within one month prior to launch of study), immediately post intervention (within one month after final intervention), approximately 3 months after the final intervention, and approximately 6 months after the final intervention
Secondary outcomes:
Other outcomes:
Locations:
Study officials:
affiliation: Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California
name: Chantal Sheridan, PhD
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
affiliation: Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California
name: Maria Juliani, PhD
role: STUDY_DIRECTOR
References:
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