Introduction: Residents and medical students spend thousands of hours of medical education learning the physician’s perspective but rarely find themselves on the other side of the stethoscope. In this study we evaluated whether a brief, novel curriculum of simulating the patient experience could improve medical learners’ reported empathy for patients and ability to explain medical interventions.
\nCurricular Design: Fifty-eight medical learners (medical students and resident physicians) participated in a 50-minute didactic session where learners simulated patient experiences such as wearing a patient gown and cervical collar, walking with crutches, and tasting potassium chloride and thickened water. Learners evaluated their perceptions of the curriculum with a survey.
\nImpact/Effectiveness: Participants reported limited experience as patients, with 66.7% never having been hospitalized and 50% not taking any daily medications. Learners rated the curriculum highly on a seven-point Likert scale with 98% expressing it helped them to empathize with patients (90% either agreed or strongly agreed) and 95% expressing that it would help them explain interventions (81% either agreed or strongly agreed). There was no difference between medical students and residents regarding reported effect on empathy (M 6.24 vs 6.44; P = .30) or effect on ability to explain the intervention (M 6.06 vs 6.24; P = .43). This brief curriculum simulating the patient experience was well-received by medical student and resident learners, who overwhelmingly felt it improved their empathy for patients and explanations of common interventions. This approach to fostering empathy could help both medical student and resident learners, many of whom may have limited experience as a patient.
","language":"eng","license":{"name":"Creative Commons Attribution 4.0","short_name":"CC BY 4.0","text":"Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.\r\n\r\nNo additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0"},"keywords":[{"word":"Simulation"},{"word":"Empathy"},{"word":"education"},{"word":"curriculum"},{"word":"Medical Education"}],"section":"Education Special Issue - Brief Educational Advances (Limit 1500 words)","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4fg4g4jg","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Romy","middle_name":"","last_name":"Portieles Peña","name_suffix":"","institution":"The University of Chicago Medical Center, Department of Internal Medicine, Chicago, Illinois","department":""},{"first_name":"William","middle_name":"","last_name":"Weber","name_suffix":"","institution":"Rush University Medical Center, Department of Emergency Medicine, Chicago, Illinois","department":""}],"date_submitted":"2025-06-11T21:47:36.042000Z","date_accepted":"2025-10-08T13:18:59.613000Z","date_published":"2025-11-26T17:05:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/westjem/article/48535/galley/43149/download/"}]}