Surprisingly, there was no difference between the highest and lowest quartile students terms of METT pre-assessment scores (t = -0.261, df = 20, P = 0.797). When the difference between METT pre and post-assessment results were examined however a difference did emerge between the high and low quartile groups. No difference was found between the pre- and post-assessment score in the lowest quartile test subjects (paired t-test, t = -0.265, df = 7, P = 0.799), but there was a difference between these two scores for the highest quartile group (t = -2.580, df = 13, P = 0.014). Means and standard deviations of pre- and post-assessment scores are shown in Table 1. The highest quartile students improved their ability to identify facial micro-expression after training whilst the lowest quartile students did not (Figure 1).

Qualitative comments

Students in both groups saw the relevance of the training. The following quotes were made by participants from the highest and lowest quartile groups respectively:

'I think this program was relevant and very insightful for those studying medicine. In an OSCE station this would come into use with patient-doctor consultation and history taking'

'Generally I thought this was a worthwhile study, and I particularly liked the training and the fact that it gave you the chance to recognise the actual expressions.'

They also found some aspects difficult, for example, one lowest quartile student commented:

'Some facial expressions were really hard to distinguish between, but the training really helped'.

Students however, saw some limitations in it's application, for example this student in the lowest quartile group:

'The training program was very good but the test showed the picture too quickly, so I thought it unrealistic. Especially when in the OSCE or real life I would be getting information from tone of voice and other body language'.

Discussion

In the current study there was no difference between the abilities of students assessed as being either good or poor communicators in the METT baseline measure of perception of facial micro-expression (pre-assessment). This suggests that an inability to recognise facial expressions in patients was not the reason that these students were performing poorly in their communication skills assessments. There are various other potential reasons that communication with patients is ineffective including poor non-verbal communication behaviour from the health professional[18, 19], or lack of appropriate verbal responses to cues from the health professional[20, 21]. It may even be, as was suggested in the study by Archinard et al, that the facial expression information could be perceived by the health professional but not consciously acted upon[22]. From this small study it is impossible to determine which areas these students were poorly performing in.

The highest quartile students showed a significant improvement in their ability to perceive facial micro-expressions after training whilst the lowest quartile students did not, therefore the METT could be used to improve performance. Why there was a difference in improvement between the two groups in the current study is not clear, although it could be due to a variety of reasons including the low quartile group; requiring a longer period of training, having greater difficulty in perceiving the differences highlighted in the training, or being poorer at learning or less motivated to improve. Anxiety, including social anxiety may also impact on attention and learning[23, 24]. This study could not be used to determine which of these possible reasons is valid for these students. Understanding why the higher quartile group benefited most is important for the potential to understand which aspects of the training improved their performance but did not impact on the lower quartile group and why this was the case. This could inform targeted training for future medical students. The students generally commented that they found training interesting and viewed it as useful.

This study has several limitations. The METT involves static facial micro-expressions. This may not be directly comparable to the ability to perceive such expressions in real time interactions, indeed this point was raised by one of the students in the study (see qualitative results). There are anatomical and physiological differences in brain response when an individual is viewing dynamic facial images compared to static images[25] and this may affect behavioural responses. Future work should concentrate on perception of facial expressions in video footage or real interactions.

Unfortunately the participation rate was low for this pilot study. More subjects would be required to confirm this effect and explore the link between assessed communication ability and improvement in perception of micro-expressions with training. This pilot study did however show the feasibility of utilising this CD ROM for undergraduate medical student training.

When considering facial expressions alone, Ekman[26] points out eight kinds to be aware of: from none to sub-visible, momentary, subtle, full, false, referential and mock. Our study was restricted to momentary facial micro-expressions, therefore the ability to perceive other types of expressions was not investigated. Previous work has shown that medical students do benefit from training in the recognition of multiple facial expressions but not full facial expressions[16]. The present study therefore adds to this knowledge with the more subtle facial micro-expression.

There is also a lack of evidence of benefit to communication behaviour in this study. The ethos of breaking down communication into micro-skills is the basis for one of the most frequently used guides for clinical communication skills training in undergraduate medical education, the Calgary Cambridge Guides[27]. This project is an attempt to understand the cognitive basis for one of the micro-skills involved in communication, micro-expression perception, and the ability to improve that micro-skill through training.

Conclusion

This pilot study provides initial evidence that after training in the recognition of static facial micro-expressions medical students identified as poor communicators do not improve whilst those identified as good at communication do. This finding should be further explored to understand the basis of this difference and how best to target training for future medical undergraduates. Further, the impact of such training on clinical communication should be assessed.

Notes

Acknowledgements

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Authors' original="" submitted="" files="" for="">Below are the links to the authors’ original submitted files for images.
12909_2009_318_MOESM1_ESM.pdfAuthors’ original file for figure 2

The authors declare that they have no competing interests, including no connections with the Paul Ekman Group.

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