/Renaissance School of Medicine
Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care & Bioethics

Compassion Research Committee

Founder

Dr. Krisha Mehta is currently a second-year resident in the Stony Brook Internal Medicine Program. She obtained a Bachelor of Arts from Hunter College, CUNY in New York City studying studio art and biological sciences and her medical degree from Stony Brook University School of Medicine. She has always been inclined to the combined role of art and science in medicine, which seamlessly lead her to wanting to study how to bring the art of practicing medicine formally into the medical education curriculum. Her studies at Delek Hospital – a Tibetan hospital in Dharamshala India opened her mind to the idea that compassion is a skill that can be formally taught in medical education.

After getting certified through the Stanford-Compassion Institute program, she performed deep literature dives and developed a course that uses evidence-based research to teach medical students on how to build their skillsets, essentially an active toolbox, for compassion cultivation. She is the director and co-instructor of this course at Stony Brook School of Medicine and is currently working on helping other medical schools develop a similar program. She has also been invited to guest lecture other courses at Stony Brook and other medical schools in the tristate area. She also founded the compassion research committee in the Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care, and Bioethics, to bring together individuals who want to build a program that refocuses on humanities in our medical education. Their research on this subject through the compassion research committee focuses on how to equip future healthcare professionals to co-create compassionate systems that enhance the well-being of our providers and patients. Through this research, they were able to demonstrate that compassionate care education through a formal curriculum developed an enhanced ability to engage in self-compassion, to understand the shared human experience, and to be motivated to act to alleviate suffering – all statistically proven on validated scales of mindfulness and compassion. She has been able to present this work at national conferences including Society of General Internal Medicine.

Dr. Mehta has also been the recipient of the Art in Medicine award and the Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine award by Gold Humanisms Honor Society. She hopes to continue to assimilate compassionate care education as a formal curricular tool to all healthcare professionals and bring back to light the significance of practicing the art of medicine. 

Previous Compassion Research Committee Members

  • Rebecca Jennings
  • Emilia Rakhamimova
  • Nidhi Patel
  • Nisha Godbole
  • Christina Mazza
  • Gabriella LoMonaco
  • Alexander Cicala
  • Allison Dammann
  • Ali Kidwai
  • Shafkat Salam
  • Afra Rahman
  • Austin Hake

Projects

Compassion Curricula in Medical Education

Our current work involves a scoping literature review of the existing curricula for promoting compassion in medical students. There are a host of studies that have demonstrated a strong correlation between educational interventions and compassion levels in medical students, and subsequently, this leads to better patient care. This study will ultimately help guide future compassion curricula and interventions at the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University.

Using Empathy Education to Prevent Medical Student Burn-Out

Our current works involves a scoping review looking to assess the various modalities utilized in medical education to prevent empathic distress. The review hopes to analyze outcomes and determine whether modalities that teach compassion are found to be more effective or not. She hopes the research will inform future design of programs created to help medical trainees continue to provide empathic care.

Medical Education Research Study

The goal of this study is to evaluate whether a one-month course for medical students on cultivating compassion affects students’ self-reported measures of compassion. Using a validated survey we will assess whether this course cultivates self-compassion, as measured by changes in surveyed levels of compassion before and after course completion. We will also investigate the effect of this course on student’s ability to observe, describe, act with awareness, be mindful regarding their own biases and perceptions and connect with others. Our hypothesis is that the students participating in our selective will score higher on validated scales for self-compassion, compassion for others and mindfulness after completion of this course. We believe our results will better inform medical students, educators, and medical school administrators, on how to train providers/providers with evidence-based tools that can help cultivate compassion and allow a deeper understanding between patients and physicians.

Selective Course

Compassionate care makes a measurable difference in patient experience and outcomes, and enhances clinician meaning, resilience and well-being. Research has also shown that such compassion can be trained using evidence-based meditative and visualization practices. This course will focus on learning how to translate conceptual compassion into practical tools for medical trainees. The class will learn and practice compassion building exercises and subsequently participate in group discussion based on thematic questions about those exercises and experiences. There are assigned readings on the science and evidence-based nature of these exercises and there are weekly written reflection to allow students to gain insight into how to use and apply the tools they learn in class in clinical practice. This course will help students to understand how evidence-based resources can be used to build compassion toolkits for healthcare professionals.