Viser le bien-être des étudiant·e·s en médecine: résultats d’une intervention psychoéducative implantée en faculté de médecine à l’Université de Namur

Context: Medical students'psychological health is steadily declining, specifically when it comes to stress, burnout and empathy. Authors invite pedagogues to implement interventions to tackle this phenomenon from the beginning of medical training. Aims: The present study aims to introduce and evaluate the efficacy of a fifteen hours psycho-educational intervention, to enhance medical students'well-being. We expected the experimental group's psychological health to be better after the intervention, compared to the control group and compared to the measures before the intervention. Methods: Subjects were recruited in three departments in the University of Namur (Belgium): medical, pharmacological and biomedical. Medical students, who constituted the experimental group, underwent a psycho-educational intervention from September 2021 to December 2021. The control group (pharmacological and biomedical students) continued their education, without receiving any intervention. Before and after the intervention, both groups responded to two measurement occasions. Measures were as follows: perceived stress, depression, student burnout, emotional competencies, perceived social support, and empathy. Results: We observe a slowed augmentation of perceived stress, depression, student burnout, and a slight decrease in intrapersonal emotional competencies in the experimental group compared to the control group. Results also show a slight increase of personal distress and perspective taking for the experimental group. Conclusion: The 15-hour psycho-educational intervention seems to yield positive effects, by decelerating the increase of stress, depression and burnout, and grants a better perspective taking by medical students. Limitations and perspectives are discussed.