Analogue Patients

The International Encyclopedia of Health Communication, pp. 1–10

Abstract

Abstract Analogue patients (APs) are individuals instructed for research purposes to imagine themselves in the position of a patient as portrayed in a written or recorded medical interaction. Subsequently, their experience or evaluation of and/or response to the interaction is assessed. Well thought‐out use of APs in patient–clinician communication research may enlighten the mechanisms underlying medical interactions, and thereby increase our ability to improve these interactions to the benefit of patients, their informal caregivers, and clinicians. Commonly, APs participate in experimental studies in which they are randomized to evaluate scripted variants of a medical interaction, so‐called vignettes. Sometimes, APs are involved to observe recordings of actual consultations. Involving APs rather than real patients allows for systematically testing the effect of variations in healthcare clinicians' communicative behavior, which may be unethical in real clinical practice. Moreover, researchers may use APs for practical (e.g., easier recruitment) or methodological (e.g., less socially desirable answers) reasons. A point of consideration is that the use of APs reduces ecological validity of the study. That is, findings cannot straightaway be extrapolated to real clinical consultations. Ecological validity will depend on APs' ability to engage with a vignette. Hence, attention to procedures to assess and enhance APs' level of engagement is necessary. Further research is needed to fully understand how APs' engagement, and thus the validity of using APs, can be improved.

Authors 6

1. Ellen M. A. Smets

   Amsterdam University Medical Centers · University of Amsterdam

   Affiliation as printed

   Amsterdam University Medical Centers, University of Amsterdam, and Public Health Research Institute, The Netherlands

2. Liesbeth Mirjam van Vliet Aachen

   Leiden University

   Affiliation as printed

   Leiden University, The Netherlands

3. Arwen H. Pieterse Aachen

   Leiden University Medical Center

   Affiliation as printed

   Leiden University Medical Center, The Netherlands

4. Leonie N.C. Visser

   Karolinska Institutet · Amsterdam University Medical Centers · Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

   Affiliation as printed

   Alzheimer Center Amsterdam, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam UMC, The Netherlands, and

   Center for Alzheimer Research, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden

5. Nanon Labrie

   Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

   Affiliation as printed

   Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands

6. Marij A. Hillen

   Amsterdam University Medical Centers · University of Amsterdam

   Affiliation as printed

   Amsterdam University Medical Centers, University of Amsterdam, and Public Health Research Institute, The Netherlands