CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 110Healthcare professionals’ stress and burnoutDiversity and Career in MedicineInnovations in Medical Education

Cross-cultural differences in mental health, quality of life, empathy, and burnout between US and Brazilian medical students

Lucchetti, Giancarlo, Damiano, Rodolfo Furlan, DiLalla, Lisabeth F., Lucchetti, Alessandra Lamas Granero, Moutinho, Ivana Lúcia Damásio, da Silva Ezequiel, Oscarina, Kevin Dorsey, J.·2018·Academic Psychiatry
DOI 10.1007/s40596-017-0777-2
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

Objective This study aimed to compare mental health, quality of life, empathy, and burnout in medical students from a medical institution in the USA and another one in Brazil.Methods This cross-cultural study included students enrolled in the first and second years of their undergraduate medical training. We evaluated depression, anxiety, and stress (DASS 21), empathy, openness to spirituality, and wellness (ESWIM), burnout (Oldenburg), and quality of life (WHOQOL-Bref) and compared them between schools.Results A total of 138 Brazilian and 73 US medical students were included. The comparison between all US medical students and all Brazilian medical students revealed that Brazilians reported more depression and stress and US students reported greater wellness, less exhaustion, and greater environmental quality of life. In order to address a possible response bias favoring respondents with better mental health, we also compared all US medical students with the 50% of Brazilian medical students who reported better mental health. In this comparison, we found Brazilian medical students had higher physical quality of life and US students again reported greater environmental quality of life. Cultural, social, infrastructural, and curricular differences were compared between institutions. Some noted differences were that students at the US institution were older and were exposed to smaller class sizes, earlier patient encounters, problem-based learning, and psychological support.Conclusion We found important differences between Brazilian and US medical students, particularly in mental health and wellness. These findings could be explained by a complex interaction between several factors, highlighting the importance of considering cultural and school-level influences on well-being.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1007/s40596-017-0777-2

Cites

21 of 21 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

1 of the 22 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
Lucchetti, G., Damiano, R. F., DiLalla, L. F., Lucchetti, A. L. G., Moutinho, I. L. D., da Silva Ezequiel, O., & Kevin Dorsey, J.
Affiliations
  • Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora (BR)
  • Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo (BR)
  • Southern Illinois University Carbondale (US)
Corresponding author
Lucchetti, Giancarlo
ORCID
Venue
Academic Psychiatry
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Published
2017-08-31
Volume
42
Issue
1
Pages
62-67
ISSN
  • 1042-9670 (ISSN-L)
  • 1545-7230
DOI
10.1007/s40596-017-0777-2
OpenAlex
W2751253315
Cited by
110
References
22
Citations by year
2026: 2 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 11 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 52 · 2020: 12 · 2019: 10 · 2018: 4
FWCI
11.53
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Licence
Locations
  • Academic Psychiatry (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
Funders
scholarship from CAPES (Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel), Brazil
Topics
  • Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Healthcare professionals’ stress and burnout
  • Social Sciences › Gender Studies › Diversity and Career in Medicine
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Innovations in Medical Education
Keywords
medical students, mental health, quality of life, empathy, burnout, depression, anxiety, stress, wellness, cross-cultural comparison, United States, Brazil, medical education, problem-based learning, psychological support, student well-being
MeSH terms
Anxiety, Brazil, Burnout, Professional, Cross-Sectional Studies, Cross-Cultural Comparison, Depression, Empathy, Female, Humans, Male, Mental Health, Quality of Life, Surveys and Questionnaires, Stress, Psychological, Students, Medical, United States, Young Adult

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review