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

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.