Evidence of Differential Attainment in Canadian Medical School Admissions: A Scoping Review.

PURPOSE: In Canada, many groups (e.g., Black, Indigenous, rural backgrounds) have historically faced and continue to encounter systemic barriers in accessing the medical profession. These barriers often manifest in performance disparities, known as differential attainment, during medical school admissions. This scoping review summarizes the nature and extent of evidence on the association of differential attainment in medical school admissions selection tools and outcomes with applicant social identity in the Canadian context. METHOD: The authors used Arksey and O'Malley's scoping review framework to summarize research studies published between 2000-2022 with empirical evidence of differential attainment in admissions selection tools and outcomes with respect to a range of applicant social identity categories. The authors recorded whether studies adopted a structuralist and/or intersectional perspective. RESULTS: Ultimately, 15 studies were included in the review. While the evidence on differential attainment associated with social identity in Canadian medical education was heterogeneous, numerous studies highlight differential attainment in the admissions process associated with applicant race and/or ethnicity (6 studies), age (5 studies), gender (4 studies), socioeconomic status (3 studies), geographic location (4 studies), and rural or urban background (5 studies). These attainment differences were reported at 3 phases of the admissions process (invitation to interview, offer of admission, and acceptance of offer), and were driven by several admissions selection tools, including grade point average, Medical College Admission Test score, and interview performance. CONCLUSIONS: The review highlights evidence that suggests systemic, structural inequities in admissions systems manifest as differential attainment in Canadian medical school admissions. Based on this evidence, those who identify as Black or Indigenous and those with low socioeconomic status or rural backgrounds were generally more adversely affected. Admission practices must be studied and improved so medical education systems can better avow equality and human dignity and achieve equity goals.

A Novel Mindful-Compassion Art-Based Therapy for Reducing Burnout and Promoting Resilience Among Healthcare Workers: Findings From a Waitlist Randomized Control Trial.

Protecting the mental health of healthcare workers is an urgent global public health priority. Healthcare workers, especially those immersed in palliative care, are prone to burnout due to the intense emotions associated with end-of-life caregiving. This study examines the efficacy of a novel, multimodal, and group-based Mindful-Compassion Art-based Therapy (MCAT) that integrates reflective self-awareness with creative emotional expression for protecting healthcare workers' mental health. A dual-arm open-label waitlist randomized controlled trial was conducted. A total of 56 healthcare workers were recruited from the largest homecare hospice in Singapore and randomized to the immediate-treatment condition of a standardized 6-week, 18-hours MCAT intervention (n=29), or the waitlist-control condition (n=27). Self-administered outcome measures on burnout, resilience, emotional regulation, self-compassion, death attitudes, and quality of life were collected at baseline, post-intervention/second-baseline at 6weeks, and follow-up/post-intervention at 12weeks. Results from mixed model ANOVAs reveal that treatment group participants experienced significant reduction in mental exhaustion, as well as significant improvements in overall emotional regulation, nonreactivity to intrusive thoughts, approach acceptance of death, and afterlife belief as compared to waitlist-control immediately after MCAT completion. Effect sizes of these impacts ranged from medium to large (η 2=0.65 to 0.170). Results from one-way ANOVAs further reveal that the treatment gains of reduced mental exhaustion and increased emotional regulation were maintained among treatment group participants at 12-weeks follow-up compared to baseline, with new benefits identified. These include increased ability to observe and describe one's experiences, elevated overall self-compassion, greater mindful awareness, enhanced common humanity, and better quality of life. Effect sizes of these impacts were large (η 2=0.128 to 0.298). These findings reflect the robust effectiveness and positive residual effects of MCAT for reducing burnout, building resilience, nurturing compassion, fostering collegial support, and promoting mental wellness among healthcare workers. The clinical model and applicability of MCAT in larger and more diverse caregiving contexts, such as family dementia care, are discussed. Clinical Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov # NCT03440606, #NCT04548089.

A novel mindful-compassion art therapy (MCAT) for reducing burnout and promoting resilience for end-of-life care professionals: a waitlist RCT protocol.

INTRODUCTION: End-of-life (EoL) care professionals are prone to burnout given the intense emotional nature of their work. Previous research supports the efficacy of art therapy in reducing work-related stress and enhancing emotional health among professional EoL caregivers. Integrating mindfulness meditation with art therapy and reflective awareness complementing emotional expression has immense potential for self-care and collegial support. Mindful-compassion art therapy (MCAT) is a novel, empirically informed, and highly structured intervention that aims to reduce work-related stress, cultivate resilience, and promote wellness. This study aims to assess the potential effectiveness of MCAT for supporting EoL care professionals in Singapore. METHODS: This is an open-label waitlist randomized controlled trial. Sixty EoL care professionals, including doctors, nurses, social workers, and personal care workers, are randomly allocated to one of two groups: (i) an intervention group that receives MCAT immediately and (ii) a waitlist-control group that receives MCAT after the intervention group completes treatment. Face-to-face self-administered outcome assessments are collected at three different time points-baseline (T1) for both groups, post-intervention (T2), and 6-week follow-up (T3) for intervention group-as well as pre-intervention (T2) and post-intervention (T3) for the waitlist-control group. The primary outcome measure is burnout, and secondary measures include emotional regulation, resilience, compassion, quality of life, and death attitudes. Between- and within-participant comparisons of outcomes are conducted, and the appropriate effect size estimates are reported. An acceptability and feasibility study is to be conducted by using a triangulation of qualitative data with framework analysis. DISCUSSION: The outcomes of this study will contribute to advancements in both theories and practices for supporting professional EoL caregivers around the world. It will also inform policy makers about the feasibility, acceptability, and effectiveness of delivering a multimodal psycho-socio-spiritual intervention within a community institutional setting. The study has received ethical approval from the institutional review board of Nanyang Technological University. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT03440606 . Retrospectively registered February 21, 2018.

Interpretation bias characterizes trait rumination.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Rumination, a maladaptive cognitive style of responding to negative mood, is thought to be maintained by a variety of cognitive biases. However, it is unknown whether rumination is characterized by interpretation biases. METHODS: Two experiments examined the link between rumination and interpretation biases, revealed in lexical-decision tasks (LDT). A homograph with both benign and ruminative or otherwise negative meaning was presented on each trial and followed by a letter string, to which participants responded by judging whether it was a word or a non-word. Letter strings were non-words or words related or unrelated to one meaning of the homograph. RESULTS: In both experiments, faster latencies to respond to targets related to the ruminative meaning of the homographs were produced by students with higher scores on self-report measures of rumination. Moreover, these biases were associated with both brooding, the maladaptive form of rumination, and reflection, the more adaptive component. No measure of rumination was significantly correlated with general biases toward negative meaning (Experiment 1) or with threatening interpretations of homographs (Experiment 2). LIMITATIONS: The paucity of available rumination-related homographs dictated the use of non-fully randomized stimuli presentation (Experiment 1) or the use of only one set of the meanings associated with the homographs (Experiment 2). CONCLUSIONS: Rumination is associated with a tendency to interpret ambiguous information in a rumination-consistent manner. This tendency may exacerbate ruminative thinking and can possibly be a target for future intervention.