Home // International Journal On Advances in Life Sciences, volume 11, numbers 1 and 2, 2019 // View article

Identification of Appropriate Facial Expressions for Medical Doctors

Authors:
Akemi Oe
Yoshitoshi Murata

Keywords: doctor-patient interaction; facial expression; nonverbal communication

Abstract:
Establishing trust between a patient and a doctor depends as much on their relationship as on the doctor’s medical abilities. One of important factors in building and maintaining a relationship is whether the doctor produces facial expressions appropriate to the patient’s condition. The purpose of this study is to identify facial expressions appropriate to various patient conditions. We focused on the greetings given by young doctors at the beginning of medical interviews of adult patients in the general ward of a hospital. Images of a role-playing patient portraying one of three physical conditions were shown to seven student doctors, who were then videotaped as they greeted the “patient.” We identified appropriate facial expressions for each condition on the basis of both human evaluation and computer-aided facial expression emotion analysis. We also identified an appropriate facial expression when a young doctor auscultates a patient and clarified differences in the evaluation of facial expressions due to the gender and age of the evaluators. Finally, we clarified facial expressions required for pediatricians.

Pages: 44 to 55

Copyright: Copyright (c) to authors, 2019. Used with permission.

Publication date: June 30, 2019

Published in: journal

ISSN: 1942-2660