Ask, inform, or act: Communication with a robotic patient before haptic action

Currently in medical education, clinical students learn how to interact with real patients via simulated patients, which are inexpressive, teleoperated robot mannequins. We obtained five simulations that used such a robot to explore verbal communication between clinical students and the robot patient, specifically if the students sought approval before performing haptic-actions. We found that in our sample, student clinicians frequently acted without seeking approval or providing information to the robot patient. We hope to further our studies in order to identify if either current training of clinical students in communication is ineffective, or if the robot patients are too nonhuman-like and inexpressive to engender appropriate communication.