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Residents’ and standardized patients’ perspectives on empathy: Issues of agreement
Journal article   Peer reviewed

Residents’ and standardized patients’ perspectives on empathy: Issues of agreement

Suely Grosseman, Dennis H. Novack, Pamela Duke, Stewart Mennin, Steven Rosenzweig, Tiffany J. Davis and Mohammadreza Hojat
Patient education and counseling, v 96(1)
Jul 2014
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pec.2014.04.007
PMID: 24793008
Featured in Collection :   UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel

Abstract

Communication skills Doctor–patient relationships Medical education Medical education – assessment/evaluation, clinical skills assessment Medical education – attitudes and psychosocial patient satisfaction Medical education – graduate medical education
We investigated correlations between residents’ scores on the Jefferson Scale of Empathy (JSE), residents’ perceptions of their empathy during standardized-patient encounters, and the perceptions of standardized patients. Participants were 214 first-year residents in internal medicine or family medicine from 13 residency programs taking standardized patient-based clinical skills assessment in 2011. We analyzed correlations between residents’ JSE scores; standardized patients’ perspectives on residents’ empathy during OSCE encounters, using the Jefferson Scale of Patient Perceptions of Physician Empathy; and residents’ perspectives on their own empathy, using a modified version of this scale. Residents’ JSE scores correlated with their perceptions of their own empathy during encounters but correlated poorly with patients’ assessments of resident empathy. The poor correlation between residents’ and standardized patients’ assessments of residents’ empathy raises questions about residents’ abilities to gauge the effectiveness of their empathic communications. The study also points to a lack of congruence between the assessment of empathy by standardized patients and residents as receivers and conveyors of empathy, respectively. This study adds to the literature on empathy as a teachable skill set and raises questions about use of OSCEs to assess trainee empathy.

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22 citations in Web of Science
27 citations in Scopus

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Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
International collaboration
Web of Science research areas
Public, Environmental & Occupational Health
Social Sciences, Interdisciplinary
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