Significance of eye contact in medical interview : Analysis of videoed interview by medical students for five years

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Although eye contact is one of the most important factors in medical interview, it has been investigated mostly qualitatively. We tried to measure the rate of eye contact time during interview to explore the association of eye contact with patients' evaluation. Subjects were one hundred and eighty-seven Five Year medical students of Kochi Medical School and their interview with patients or simulated patients were measured with OSCE, Patient's Assessment Scale, and variables determined with video playback. They were total time of interview, total time of eye contact, the rate of eye contact during interview, and timing of eye contact. We trained an assessor to secure reliability of video assessment. Results were as follows :1. With OSCE assessment, over 60% of the students acquired more than average in about eighty percent of the items. Factor analysis extracted eight factors with top three of them explaining forty-three percent of the variance.2. More than eighty percent of interviewees evaluated "good" or "excellent" in the items such as greetings or eye contact, while seventy-three percent evaluated "good" or "excellent" in the item, "Felt free to talk", and sixty-two percent evaluated "good" or "excellent" in the item, "I was appreciated."3. The average of interview time was twelve minutes and forty-eight seconds and the average of eye contact was eight minutes and forty-eight seconds ; the rate of eye contact during interview was sixty-nine percent in average. When interviewer was female, interviewee put a high value on the interview with the rate of eye contact increasing, while in case interviewee was male, the opposite was true. Simulated patients put a high value on the interview with the rate of eye contact increasing.These results suggest that the effects of eye contact varied according to sex and psychopathology indicating some hint about learning of medical interview.