What Is Clinical Empathy in Anesthesiology? Perspectives From Practicing Anesthesiologists.

Background: To train and encourage providers to be more empathic, it is crucial to first understand what behaviors providers consider acts of empathy in clinical practice. Research has asked this important question of patients and certain physician specialties, but has left out a unique physician population-anesthesiologists. Given the link between patients' preoperative anxiety and poorer postoperative outcomes, anesthesiologists' ability to address patients' needs effectively, particularly during shorter interactions with new patients, may impact patient outcomes.

From Cueless to Cue-Full: Understanding Health Care Cues' Impact on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Disclosure.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) individuals face health care disparities, highlighting the need for inclusive and affirming health care environments. Critical to this issue is the willingness to disclose sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) in health care settings, as it can significantly influence the quality of care. Despite prior literature emphasizing affirming spaces, the link between the physical health care office environment and SOGI disclosure remains underexplored.

Gender Bias in the Perception of Others' Fatigue: Women Report More Fatigue Than Men But Have Their Fatigue Underestimated by Others.

Fatigue is one of the most common health complaints, yet assessing it can be difficult when perceptions of others' fatigue are distorted by gender bias. This research is the first to examine whether such a bias is present in the perception of men's and women's fatigue. Across two studies (total = 201), perceivers viewed silent videoclips of men and women targets in a social interaction and were asked to estimate each targets' fatigue.

The damaging legacy of damage-centered LGBTIQ+ research: Implications for healthcare and LGBTIQ+ health.

Research on LGBTIQ+ populations has focused primarily on identifying problems in the community (e.g., health disparities) and their predictors (e.

Leveraging insights from the psychological science of gender stereotyping to advance scholarship on gender-diverse individuals' pain experiences.

There is evidence of gender disparities in pain experience and pain care as well as the role of stereotypes in perpetuating discriminatory care, however most of this work focuses on comparisons between cisgender men and women; little is known about gender-diverse individuals' pain experiences and outcomes. We consider the value of extending existing cisgender-focused frameworks to understand how the application of gender stereotypes in clinical care contribute to pain care disparities and perpetuate bias, stigma, and discrimination experienced by gender-diverse people. First, we review the literature on stereotype content and stereotype application processes that are theorized to contribute to gender discrimination in pain treatment.

"Having providers who are trained and have empathy is life-saving": Improving primary care communication through thematic analysis with ChatGPT and human expertise.

In the rapidly evolving field of healthcare research, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and conversational models like ChatGPT (Conversational Generative Pre-trained Transformer) offer promising tools for data analysis. The aim of this study was to: 1) apply ChatGPT methodology alongside human coding to analyze qualitative health services feedback, and 2) examine healthcare experiences among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) patients ( = 41) to inform future intervention. The hybrid approach facilitated the identification of themes related to affirming care practices, provider education, communicative challenges and successes, and environmental cues.

Documenting Race and Gender Biases in Pain Assessment and a Novel Intervention Designed to Reduce Biases.

Disparities in pain care are well-documented such that women and people of color have their pain undertreated and underestimated compared to men and White people. One of the contributors of the undertreatment of pain for people of color and women may be the inaccurate assessment of pain. Understanding the pain assessment process is an important step in evaluating the magnitude of and intervening on pain disparities in care.

The Effect of Singular Nonverbal Behaviours of Experimenters on Pain Reports.

Introduction: Studies suggest facial expressions of caregivers may be important in placebo effects; however, this has not been systematically tested. This experiment investigated the effects of caregivers' singular positive nonverbal behaviours (NBs) on pain reports.

Methods: Fifty-one males and 53 females (total of 104) participants were randomized to four groups that were displayed positive facial expressions, tone of voice, body movement, or neutral NBs of videotaped experimenters.

Preserving privacy in the era of openness: Commentary on open science requirements for identifiable data in psychological science journals.

Psychological science journals are increasingly adopting open science (OS) policies (e.g., Transparency and Openness Promotion) requiring researchers to make all data and materials publicly available in an effort to drive research toward greater transparency and accessibility.

Systematic manipulation of experimenters' non-verbal behaviors for the investigation of pain reports and placebo effects.

Objective: Non-verbal behaviors (NBs) of caregivers affect pain reports and placebo effects. However, little experimental research has systematically examined the caregivers' NBs. This study protocol and preparatory study report a systematic manipulation of experimenters' NBs to investigate pain report and placebo effects.

"You Look Young! Are You a Doctor?" A Qualitative Content Analysis of Anesthesiology Resident Responses to Ageism in Clinical Encounters.

Background: Healthcare trainees frequently report facing comments from their patients pertaining to their age. Exposure to ageist comments from patients may be related to greater stress and/or burnout in residents and may impact the quality of the resident-patient relationship. However, little empirical work has examined ageism expressed toward anesthesiology residents in clinical care, and therefore not much is known about how residents respond to these comments in practice.

Should I post? The relationships among social media use, emotion recognition, and mental health.

Introduction: While increased time spent on social media can be negatively related to one's overall mental health, social media research often fails to account for what behaviors users are actually engaging in while they are online. The present research helps to address this gap by measuring participants' active and passive social media behavioral styles and investigates whether and how these two social media behavioral styles are related to depression, anxiety, and stress, and the mediating role of emotion recognition ability in this relationship.

Methods: A pre-study ( = 128) tested whether various social media behaviors reliably grouped into active and passive behavioral styles, and a main study ( = 139) tested the relationships between social media use style, emotion recognition, and mental health.

More Than Meets the Eyes: Bringing Attention to the Eyes Increases First Impressions of Warmth and Competence.

The present research examined how face masks alter first impressions of warmth and competence for different racial groups. Participants were randomly assigned to view photographs of White, Black, and Asian targets with or without masks. Across four separate studies (total = 1,012), masked targets were rated significantly higher in warmth and competence compared with unmasked targets, regardless of their race.

Discrimination Exposure Based on Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation of Veterans Affairs Health Administration Patients.

This study contributes to research and policy aimed at reducing population-level health disparities by applying a Feminist Standpoint approach to the examination of rates and correlates of health care discrimination among patients at the Veterans Affairs Health Administration (VHA). Drawing on quality improvement survey data (N = 806) collected within the VHA in 2018, we document and describe rates of both direct and vicarious past-year exposure to health care discrimination disaggregated by race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, and gender. The analysis of within- and between-group rates and correlates of health care discrimination exposure reveals important subgroup-specific patterns that prior studies using aggregate or non-stratified data have masked.

A Formative Mixed-Methods Study of Emotional Responsiveness in Telepalliative Care.

It is unknown whether telemedicine-delivered palliative care (tele-PC) supports emotionally responsive patient-clinician interactions. We conducted a mixed-methods formative study at two academic medical centers in rural U.S.

Empathy, friend or foe? Untangling the relationship between empathy and burnout in helping professions.

The relationship between empathy and burnout in helping professions has been debated extensively, with some arguing the tendency to vicariously experience the emotions of another is a risk factor for burnout and others arguing that this disposition protects against burnout. We sought to aid this debate by assessing the relationship between two empathy facets, positive and negative, and burnout across three samples of helping professionals: practicing clinicians ( = 59), medical students ( = 76), and teaching assistants ( = 77). Results across all three samples consistently revealed that one's tendency to share in the positive emotions of another (i.

Veterans' Reported Comfort in Disclosing Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity.

Background: The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) does not routinely collect and document sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) data despite research on health disparities among sexual and gender minority (SGM) veterans. Due to the legacy of previous Department of Defense policies that prohibited disclosure of sexual or gender minority identities among active-duty personnel, minority veterans may be reluctant to respond to SOGI questions on confidential VHA surveys and in discussions with their VHA providers. Veterans may generally find SOGI questions uncomfortable and may not appreciate their relevance to health care.

Greater belief in science predicts mask-wearing behavior during COVID-19.

We investigated whether and how individual's belief in science directly impacts reported face mask wearing behavior in the United States and the mediating role of belief in mask effectiveness in preventing transmission of COVID-19 in this relationship. Mechanical Turk participants ( = 1050) completed measures on reported face mask wearing behavior, general beliefs in science, belief in face mask effectiveness in reducing transmission of COVID-19, and sociodemographic information. We found evidence that greater belief in science predicted greater belief in the effectiveness of face masks reducing the transmission of COVID-19, which in turn predicted more reported face mask wearing behavior in public, controlling for sociodemographic factors.

Is Technology Enhancing or Hindering Interpersonal Communication? A Framework and Preliminary Results to Examine the Relationship Between Technology Use and Nonverbal Decoding Skill.

Digital technology has facilitated additional means for human communication, allowing social connections across communities, cultures, and continents. However, little is known about the effect these communication technologies have on the ability to accurately recognize and utilize nonverbal behavior cues. We present two competing theories, which suggest (1) the potential for technology use to nonverbal decoding skill or, (2) the potential for technology use to nonverbal decoding skill.

Development of observational rating scales for evaluating patient-centered communication within a whole health approach to care.

Context: Teaching and evaluating patient-centered communication (PCC) skills that incorporate holistic approaches are increasingly relevant.

Objective: This study describes the development of the Observational Whole Health Measure (OWHM) for evaluating the extent to which primary care providers in the Veterans Health Administration engaged in PCC in the context of a holistic approach to care known as "Whole Health."

Design And Setting: Observational rating scales were created based on content from a national whole health clinical education program in the VA and refined from audio recordings of patient-provider interactions in primary care clinical encounters.

Compassionate and Clinical Behavior of Residents in a Simulated Informed Consent Encounter.

Background: Compassionate behavior in clinicians is described as seeking to understand patients' psychosocial, physical and medical needs, timely attending to these needs, and involving patients as they desire. The goal of our study was to evaluate compassionate behavior in patient interactions, pain management, and the informed consent process of anesthesia residents in a simulated preoperative evaluation of a patient in pain scheduled for urgent surgery.

Methods: Forty-nine Clinical Anesthesia residents in year 1 and 16 Clinical Anesthesia residents in year 3 from three residency programs individually obtained informed consent for anesthesia for an urgent laparotomy from a standardized patient complaining of pain.

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Veterans' Experiences of Discrimination in Health Care and Their Relation to Health Outcomes: A Pilot Study Examining the Moderating Role of Provider Communication.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) veterans report discrimination in health care, which may be associated with negative health outcomes/behaviors and has implications for LGBT identity disclosure to providers. Quality provider communication may serve to offset some of the deleterious effects of discrimination; however, no research to date has examined provider communication with respect to health among LGBT patients. Participants were 47 LGBT veterans who completed measures related to past health care experiences, experiences of discrimination in health care, perceptions of provider communication, and measures of anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms, and alcohol/tobacco use.

Experiences of trauma, discrimination, microaggressions, and minority stress among trauma-exposed LGBT veterans: Unexpected findings and unresolved service gaps.

Objective: LGBT veterans experience high rates of trauma, discrimination, and minority stress. However, guidelines for case conceptualization and treatment remain limited. The aim of the current study was to examine the experiences of trauma and other high impact experiences among LGBT veterans to inform case conceptualization and treatment.

Predictive Validity of Thin-Slice Nonverbal Behavior from Social Interactions.

We present five studies investigating the predictive validity of thin slices of nonverbal behavior (NVB). Predictive validity of thin slices refers to how well behavior slices excerpted from longer video predict other measured variables. Using six NVBs, we compared predictive validity of slices of different lengths with that obtained when coding is based on full-length (5-min) video, investigating the relative predictive validity of 1-min slices as well as of cumulative slices.