Trial reportBMC medical education2020
Balint groups and narrative medicine compared to a control condition in promoting students' empathy.
Trial report in BMC medical education, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 25 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
25 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Balint groups for improving the ability of doctors and medical students to manage the doctor-patient relationship: a systematic review, quantitative meta-analysis and qualitative meta-synthesis of intervention studies.BMC medical education · 2025Pooled it
- The role of training and education for enhancing empathy among healthcare students: a systematic review of randomised controlled trials.BMC medical education · 2025Pooled it
- The effectiveness of Balint groups at improving empathy in medical and nursing education: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.BMC medical education · 2024Pooled it
- Educational efficacy of medical humanities in empathy of medical students and healthcare professionals: a systematic review and meta-analysis.BMC medical education · 2023Pooled it
- Increasing motivation and well-being among medical students using curricular self-experience group sessions-a randomized controlled trial.Medical education online · 2025Trial
- A scoping review on the use of virtual patients for enhancing empathy in medical students.Medical education online · 2026Article
- Teaching empathy in Balint groups.The Libyan journal of medicine · 2026Article
- Creating a third space during clerkships: a qualitative study of a well-being intervention in the clinical learning environment.BMC medical education · 2026Article
- Factors associated with student success in objective structured clinical examinations and written exams.BMC medical education · 2026Article
- Investigating the effects of a short narratology module on empathy and patient-centred communication in early-stage medical students: an empirical mixed-methods pilot study.BMC medical education · 2025Observational
- Improvements in depression symptomatology in a sample of undergraduate students: a pre-post Balint group intervention study.BMC psychology · 2025Article
- Article
- Learning about social suffering through illness narrative: possibilities and challenges.BMC medical education · 2025Article
- Patient's perceived empathy can predict doctor-patient relationship in medical interaction.BMC medical education · 2025Article
- Learning environment as a predictor for medical students' empathy: a multicenter cross-sectional study from 12 medical schools in China.BMC psychology · 2025Article
- Parallel Chart Writing and Resilience Impact the Narrative Competence of Medical Staff in China: A Cross-Sectional Study.Health science reports · 2025Article
- Determinants of Chinese physicians' engagement in narrative medicine: a comprehensive SEM-ANN analysis.Frontiers in medicine · 2025Article
- Narrative Medicine: theory, clinical practice and education - a scoping review.BMC health services research · 2024Article
- Narrative competence disparities between Children's hospital and General hospital in China: A comparative survey.PloS one · 2024Article
- A narrative medicine intervention in pediatric residents led to sustained improvements in resident well-being.Annals of medicine · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThe perceived importance of clinical empathy may decline among students during medical training. Several interventions have been shown to be effective in promoting or preserving medical students' empathic abilities, such as empathy skills training or Balint groups. Although narrative medicine training shares some features with these interventions, no randomized study to date examined the efficacy of narrative medicine training. This study aimed to assess the effects of Balint groups and narrative medicine training on clinical empathy measured by the self-rated Jefferson's School Empathy Scale - Medical Student (JSPE-MS©) among fourth-year medical students.
methodsStudents who gave their consent to participate were randomly allocated in equal proportion to Balint groups, narrative medicine training or to the control group. Participants in the intervention groups received either seven sessions of 1.5-h Balint groups or a 2-h lecture and five sessions of 1.5-h narrative medicine training from October 2015 to December 2015. The main outcome was the change in JSPE-MS© score from baseline to one week after the last session.
resultsData from 362 out of 392 participants were analyzed: 117 in the control group, 125 in the Balint group and 120 in the narrative medicine group. The change in JSPE-MS© score from baseline to follow-up was significantly higher in the Balint group than in the control group [mean (SD): 0.27 (8.00) vs. -2,36 (11.41), t = 2.086, P = 0.038]. The change in JSPE-MS© score in the narrative medicine group [mean (SD): - 0.57 (8.76)] did not significantly differ from the changes in the control group (t = 1.355, P = 0.18) or the Balint group (t = 0.784, P = 0.43). Adjusting for participants' characteristics at baseline, Balint groups remained associated with better outcomes compared to the control group (β = 2.673, P = 0.030).
conclusionsBalint groups may promote clinical empathy to some extent among medical students, at least in the short run.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.