Use of Emotional Language in Medical Student Encounters with Standardized Patie

• In Event: The Power of Emotion on College Student Learning and Success: Embracing Opportunities to Enhance Instructional Practices

Abstract

Actors trained to portray medical patients (i.e., standardized patients) are often used in medical education in order to allow students to practice clinical and communication skills in a low stakes environment (Cleland, Abe, & Rethans, 2009). This research focuses on a manipulation where standardized patients were randomly assigned to display either calm or hostile behaviors during medical training encounters. For example, the standardized patient was either pleasant and cooperative (i.e., control), or rude, confrontational, and combative (i.e., experimental treatment). Medical students were instructed to take a full medical history from the standardized patients and were unaware of the manipulation. This study presents linguistic analysis of N = 27 medical student interactions with standardized patients with a special focus on use of emotion-laden vocabulary. A specific emotion based LIWC dictionary (see Lapinski, et al., 2013) was employed and trends in both medical student and standardized patient language use are explored.

Authors

• Lindsay Neuberger, University of Central Florida

• Daniel Topping, U of Central Florida

• Sofia Hsu, U of Central Florida

• Sabrina Ghim, U of Central Florida

• Erica Landis, U of Central Florida