Research Article: Teaching Medical Students to Express Empathy by Exploring Patient Emotions and Experiences in Standardized Medical Encounters
Lead author: Roger Ruiz-Moral
Submitted by: Janice Radway, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania

This study, conducted at Universidad Francisco de Vitoria in Madrid, Spain, looks at how well third-year medical students pick up on patients’ non-verbal and contextual clues as an opportunity to express empathy. The students attended a didactic and then had two SP encounters. SPs were scripted to give “tracking clues” based on how the students responded. This training program was largely successful in teaching students to carry out a deeper exploration of patients’ beliefs, fears and expectations, and thus express more empathetic statements to the patients. Read the full article in Patient Education and Counseling here.

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