How stressful is doctor-patient communication? Physiological and psychological stress of medical students in simulated history taking and bad-news consultations.

Introduction: Medical communication can be a stressful experience for both doctors and patients. In particular, inexperienced doctors facing the demanding task of a bad news consultation may experience high levels of distress. The aim of this exploratory study is to test students' differential cardiovascular reactivity to history taking and bad news consultations with a simulated patient, and to test the relation between the students' self-reported stressfulness of the consultation and their cardiovascular response.