Investigating alexithymia, empathy, and resilience in medical students during pandemic era: a cross-sectional study in northern Iran

Alexithymia is defined as emotional response inhibition. As well, empathy refers to the ability to put oneself in someone’s position and resilience is the capacity to recover from a series of negative emotional experiences. Considering the psychological distress induced by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic together with academic stress and the role of empathy in physician–patient relationships, the present study was to investigate alexithymia, empathy, and resilience in Iranian medical interns and residents.

This cross-sectional study was fulfilled in northern Iran in 2021–2022. In total, 394 medical interns and residents were initially recruited for this purpose. Then, an online sociodemographic survey form (SDSF), the Jefferson Scale of Empathy (JSE), the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20), and the Connor–Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC) were completed. The data analysis was performed using the IBM SPSS Statistics (ver.26) software in regard to the p < 0.05 significance level.

The mean age of the study participants was 28.8 ± 5.00. As well, 38.1% of these individuals were male, 62.2% of the cases were single, and 54.6% of them were medical interns. The mean value of empathy, resilience and alexithymia was 89.90 ± 14.00, 49.75 ± 10.56, and 46.40 ± 16.40, respectively. No significant relationship was found between empathy and educational level (p = 0.532). As well, medical interns empathy and resilience than residents (p = 0.000 & p = 0.000, respectively). Besides, male participants had more empathy and resilience (p = 0.000 & p = 0.007).

Low empathy and resilience in medical interns and residents, especially in women who make up the majority of them, can be a warning for health care in Iran.