Table 3. Demographic and methodological characteristics of included studies.

MBBS: bachelor of medicine, bachelor of surgery, MS: medical student, NR: not reported, RCT: randomized controlled trial

Study (author, year)	Country	Study design	Sample size (N)	Student year	Mean age (years)	Gender distribution
Gerbarg et al. (2023) [18]	Puerto Rico/USA	Pilot pre-post	12	MS1 and MS2	NR	7 female, 6 male
Muthe et al. (2025) [19]	India	Quasi-experimental	140 (50 cases, 90 comparisons)	First-year MBBS	Not specified	Not specified
Smitha (2016) [20]	India	Prospective pre-post	60	Mixed MBBS years	Not reported	Mixed (NR)
Manzoor et al. (2025) [21]	India	RCT	170 (85/group)	Not specified	~21.5	~44.7% M, ~55.3% F
Nagendrappa et al., (2025) [22]	India	Prospective single-group	60	Not specified	20.38 ± 0.87	23 Male, 37 Female
Sudhir et al. (2015) [23]	India	Observational pre-post	30	Various MBBS phases	19-25	12 Male, 18 Female
Dhanvijay et al. (2018) [24]	India	Pre-post observational	60	First-year medical	18-22 (range)	Not specified