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. 2021 May 20;31(4):1273-1277.
doi: 10.1007/s40670-021-01317-8. eCollection 2021 Aug.

Behind the Mask: Emotion Recognition in Healthcare Students

Marco Bani  1 , Selena Russo  1 , Stefano Ardenghi  1 , Giulia Rampoldi  1 , Virginia Wickline  2 , Stephen Nowicki Jr  3 , Maria Grazia Strepparava  1   4
Affiliations

Behind the Mask: Emotion Recognition in Healthcare Students

Marco Bani et al. Med Sci Educ. .

Abstract

Current widespread facemask usage profoundly impacts clinical practice and healthcare education where communicational dimensions are essential to the care and teaching processes. As part of a larger study, 208 medical and nursing students were randomly assigned to a masked vs unmasked version of the standardized facial emotion recognition task DANVA2. A significantly higher number of errors existed in the masked vs unmasked condition. Differences for happy, sad, and angry faces, but not for fearful faces, existed between conditions. Misinterpretation of facial emotions can severely affect doctor-patient and inter-professional communication in healthcare. Teaching communication in medical education must adapt to the current universal use of facemasks in professional settings.

Keywords: DANVA2; Doctor patient communication; Emotion recognition; Facemask; Medical education.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing InterestsThe authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Modified version of the DANVA2-AF was created digitally adding a light blue surgical mask to each photo
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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