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Enhancing Empathy in Medical Communication Through Perspective-Taking

NCT00861991 · Status: COMPLETED · Phase: NA · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 608

Last updated 2009-03-16

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

Background: Empathy is critical to clinician-patient communication and patient outcomes. Perspective-taking, an intervention demonstrated in other contexts to induce empathy, has never been studied in a medical context. As a first step in evaluating its potential clinical value, the studies described below assess perspective taking in a series of clinical skills examinations. These examinations are simulated clinical encounters: students encounter and are evaluated by standardized patients (SPs)--actors trained to take on patient roles. Though not real clinical encounters, clinical skills examinations have been demonstrated to test clinical competency well enough to be incorporated into the licensure examination of the National Board of Medical Examiners.

Objective: To assess if perspective-taking improves the satisfaction of standardized patients in three clinical skills examinations.

Hypothesis: Students receiving a perspective taking intervention will receive better standardized patient satisfaction scores than control students.

Design and Setting: Three randomized, controlled studies. Studies 1 and 3: Junior medical students(N = 503), 6-station clinical skills examination. Study 2: physician assistant students (N = 105), 3-station clinical skills examination.

Intervention: The intervention students received a perspective-taking instruction prior to their examination asking them to put themselves in their "patients" shoes and to imagine what they were thinking and feeling. The control students received standard pre-examination instructions. Simulated patients were blind to study condition. Main Outcome Measure: Simulated patient satisfaction scores.

Conditions

  • Patient Satisfaction

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Perspective taking instruction

Students were asked to take the perspective of their standardized patients during clinical skills examinations

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • George Washington University

    lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

  • Benjamin C Blatt, MD · George Washington University

Study Design

Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Masking
SINGLE
Model
PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age
20 Years
Max Age
45 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2006-06-30
Primary Completion
2007-08-31
Completion
2007-08-31

Countries

  • United States

Study Locations

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Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT00861991 on ClinicalTrials.gov