ArticleThe British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners2022
Impact of physician empathy on patient outcomes: a gender analysis.
Article in The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers.
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17 citing papers in PubMed.
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- Residents' Communication Skills and Patient-Centered Care: An Eight- year Observational Study from Lebanon.Advances in medical education and practice · 2026Article
- Cinemeducation: a descriptive mixed-methods analysis of perspectives in a medical humanities course.Medical education online · 2025Article
- Exploring gender differences in empathy development among medical students: a qualitative analysis of reflections on juvenile correctional school visits.Medical education online · 2025Article
- Partial language concordance in primary care communication: What is lost, what is gained, and how to optimize.Patient education and counseling · 2025Article
- Do students' attitudes toward required readings and service-learning for a Medical Humanities course predict their perception of whether the course fosters their personal and professional development?Frontiers in medicine · 2025Article
- Simulation-Based Trauma-Informed Care Education Instills Empathy and Improves Clinician Practices Towards Refugee and Migrant Populations.MedEdPORTAL : the journal of teaching and learning resources · 2024Article
- A mixed methods evaluation of a World Health Organization competency-based training package for foundational helping skills among pre-service and in-service health workers in Nepal, Peru and Uganda.Global mental health (Cambridge, England) · 2023Article
- Exploring factors affecting patient satisfaction in online healthcare: A machine learning approach grounded in empathy theory.Digital healthArticle
- Medical Humanities in Undergraduate Psychiatry Teaching: Learner Assessment and Mediators of Better Learning Outcomes.Journal of medical education and curricular developmentArticle
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5 authors.
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Abstract
backgroundEmpathy in primary care settings has been linked to improved health outcomes. However, the operationalisation of empathy differs between studies, and, to date, no study has concurrently compared affective, cognitive, and behavioural components of empathy regarding patient outcomes. Moreover, it is unclear how gender interacts with the studied dimensions.
aimTo examine the relationship between several empathy dimensions and patient-reported satisfaction, consultation's quality, and patients' trust in their physicians, and to determine whether this relationship is moderated by a physician's gender. DESIGN AND
settingAnalysis of the empathy of 61 primary care physicians in relation to 244 patient experience questionnaires in the French-speaking region of Switzerland.
methodSixty-one physicians were video-recorded with two male and two female patients. Six different empathy measures were assessed: two self-reported measures, a facial recognition test, two external observational measures, and a Synchrony of Vocal Mean Fundamental Frequencies (SVMFF), measuring vocally coded emotional arousal. After the consultation, patients indicated their satisfaction with, trust in, and quality of the consultation.
resultsFemale physicians self-rated their empathic concern higher than their male counterparts did, whereas male physicians were more vocally synchronised (in terms of frequencies of speech) to their patients. SVMFF was the only significant predictor of all patient outcomes. Verbal empathy statements were linked to higher satisfaction when the physician was male.
conclusionGender differences were observed more often in self-reported measures of empathy than in external measures, indicating a probable social desirability bias. SVMFF significantly predicted all patient outcomes, and could be used as a cost-effective proxy for relational quality.
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