Pounds Gabrina, Salter Charlotte, Platt Mary Jane, Bryant Pauline
University of East Anglia.
Commun Med. 2017;14(2):165-180. doi: 10.1558/cam.31522.
The ability to empathise with patients is an important professional skill for doctors. Medical students practise this skill as part of their medical education, and are tested on their use of empathy within their final examination. Evidence shows that appropriate training makes a difference but that natural aptitude also plays a role. Most medical schools, therefore, probe applicants' basic understanding of empathy at admissions interviews. The purpose of the project presented in this paper was to apply existing understanding of how empathy may be communicated in a clinical context (building on a literature review by Pounds [2011]) to develop a new empathy-specific medical admissions interview station, probing applicants' empathic communicative performance (not just theoretical knowledge) and fitting the widely used Multiple Mini Interview (MMI) format. The paper outlines how this tool was developed, trialled and implemented by: (1) conceptualising empathic communication in discourse-pragmatic terms - that is, as a set of specific but context-dependant empathic speech acts; and (2) formulating and trialling a written and two oral versions of a situational test, capable of probing the applicants' ability to communicate empathically in everyday conversation and suitable for use at Norwich Medical School and other similar educational institutions.
对医生来说，具备同情患者的能力是一项重要的专业技能。医学生在医学教育过程中会练习这项技能，并在期末考试中接受共情能力运用的测试。有证据表明，适当的培训能起到作用，但天赋也发挥着一定作用。因此，大多数医学院校在招生面试中会考察申请者对共情的基本理解。本文介绍的项目目的是，运用现有的关于如何在临床环境中传达共情的理解（基于庞德[2011年]的文献综述），开发一个新的针对共情的医学招生面试环节，考察申请者的共情沟通表现（而非仅仅是理论知识），并采用广泛使用的多站迷你面试（MMI）形式。本文概述了该工具是如何通过以下方式开发、试验和实施的：（1）从话语语用学角度将共情沟通概念化——即，将其视为一组特定但依赖于语境的共情言语行为；（2）制定并试验一个情境测试的书面版本和两个口头版本，该测试能够考察申请者在日常对话中进行共情沟通的能力，适用于诺维奇医学院及其他类似教育机构。
