MedDataX Logo

Commensality Groups: A Professional Fulfillment Intervention for Medical Students in Their Clinical Years

NCT06656650 · Status: ACTIVE_NOT_RECRUITING · Phase: NA · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 80

Last updated 2026-01-21

No results posted yet for this study

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.

Conditions

  • Professional Fulfillment
  • Burnout
  • Social Isolation or Loneliness

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Commensality groups

Participants will attend at least 3 out of 6 commensality groups over the course of 6 months.

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • University of Southern California

    lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

  • Chantal Sheridan, PhD · Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California

  • Maria Juliani, PhD · Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California

Study Design

Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
TREATMENT
Masking
NONE
Model
PARALLEL

Eligibility

Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2025-01-15
Primary Completion
2026-02-15
Completion
2026-02-15

Countries

  • United States

Study Locations

Related Clinical Trials

More Related Trials

Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT06656650 on ClinicalTrials.gov