Cumulative Risk on the Oxytocin Receptor Gene (OXTR) Predicts Empathic Communication by Physician Assistant Students.

In the relationship between patients and health care providers, few communicative features are as significant as the providers' ability to express empathy. A robust empirical literature describes the importance of physician communication skills-particularly those that convey empathy-yet few studies have examined empathic communication by physician assistants, who provide primary care for an increasing number of Americans. The present study examines the empathic communication of physician assistant students in interactions with standardized patients.

Empathy Between Physician Assistant Students and Standardized Patients: Evidence of an Inflation Bias.

Purpose: Empathic communication with patients is an essential component of quality primary care. This study examines the ability of physician assistant (PA) students to communicate empathically in clinical interviews with standardized patients.

Methods: In their first year of training, PA students conducted 3 clinical interviews with standardized patients over a 6-month period in 2014, during the second half of their didactic year.

Creating the final conversations scale: a measure of end-of-life relational communication with terminally ill individuals.

Final conversations (FCs) are defined as the communicative interactions, both verbal and nonverbal, that occur between terminally ill patients and relational partners. In this study, the "Final Conversations Scale" was developed and tested. A total of 152 participants that had engaged in final conversations with individuals that were terminally ill completed the newly developed instrument.