Raising medical student awareness of compassionate care through reflection of annotated videotapes of clinical encounters.

CONTEXT: With medical training focused on medical knowledge and skills, the nurturing of humanistic care can suffer.
OBJECTIVES: We designed and conducted an outpatient rheumatology patient-partner exercise that integrates the assessment of student compassionate care into an outpatient clinical skills training exercise.
METHODS: Eleven third-year medical students were videotaped performing a medical history on a patient volunteer. Students, the preceptor and a fourth-year medical student independently observed the videotape, tagged segments demonstrating observed or missed compassionate care opportunities and completed a compassionate care questionnaire. Students also participated in a focus group. Ten patients completed a comparable questionnaire and provided feedback on student encounters.
FINDINGS: Students recognized and reflected on opportunities for compassionate care. The preceptor's feedback was reinforced. Students' ratings of their demonstrations of compassionate care were lower after reviewing videotapes, and were also lower than preceptor ratings. Patients were satisfied with the exercise and highlighted student professionalism.
CONCLUSIONS: The exercise proved to be an effective format for promoting student reflection on and self-assessment of compassionate care. It demonstrated that nurturing compassionate care can be integrated into an outpatient clinical skills exercise.