BackgroundClinical empathy, a critical skill for the doctor–patient relationship, is infrequently taught in graduate medical education. No study has tested if clinical empathy can be taught effectively.ObjectiveTo assess whether medicine residents can learn clinical empathy techniques from theater professors.DesignA controlled trial of a clinical empathy curriculum taught and assessed by 4 theater professors.SettingVirginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia, a large urban university and health system.ParticipantsTwenty Internal Medicine residents: 14 in the intervention group, 6 in the control group.InterventionSix hours of classroom instruction and workshop time with professors of theater.MeasurementsScores derived from an instrument with 6 subscores designed to measure empathy in real-time patient encounters. Baseline comparisons were made using two-sample T tests. A mixed-effects analysis of variance model was applied to test for significance between the control and intervention groups.ResultsThe intervention group demonstrated significant improvement (p ≤ .011) across all 6 subscores between pre-intervention and post-intervention observations. Compared to the control group, the intervention group had better posttest scores in 5 of 6 subscores (p ≤ .01).LimitationsThe study was neither randomized nor blinded.ConclusionsCollaborative efforts between the departments of theater and medicine are effective in teaching clinical empathy techniques.
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