Improving Patient Experience by Teaching Empathic Touch and Eye Gaze: A Randomized Controlled Trial of Medical Students.

Background: Empathy is critical for optimal patient experience with health-care providers. Verbal empathy is routinely taught to medical students, but nonverbal empathy, including touch, less so. Our objective was to determine whether instruction encouraging empathic touch and eye gaze at exit can impact behaviors and change patient-perceived empathy.

Mindfulness as a predictor of positive reappraisal and burnout in standardized patients.

Background: Standardized patients (SPs) portray emotionally intense roles that can have unintended deleterious effects including burnout.

Purpose: This study explored SP characteristics that could serve as protective factors against these adverse effects. The literature suggests that positive reappraisal and mindfulness are protective factors, with positive reappraisal mediating the relationship between mindfulness and burnout.

Personality and clinical skills: any correlation?

Background: To determine correlations between personality factors and clinical skills of second-year medical school students.

Method: Participants were 206 medical students who had completed the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF) and the Clinical Skills Assessment II (CSA II).

Results: of the 16PF and CSA II were analyzed using Pearson R.

Further analysis of a doctor-patient nonverbal communication instrument.

This study examines the reliability and validity of the relational communication scale for observational measurement (RCS-O) using a random sample of 80 videotaped interactions of medical students interviewing standardized patients (SPs). The RCS-O is a 34-item instrument designed to measure the nonverbal communication of physicians interacting with patients. The instrument was applied and examined in two different interview scenarios.