The study looked at how well everyday people, crowdsourced online can judge doctors’ communication skills when they have to disclose a medical error in a simulated scenario. Internal-medicine residents recorded their responses to a case involving a delayed breast-cancer diagnosis, and two groups rated how well they communicated: patient advocates who had personally experienced medical harm, and regular laypeople from the general public. The advocates were tougher in their scoring, but overall, both groups tended to agree on who communicated well and who didn’t.

The important takeaway is that ordinary people, when used in sufficient numbers, can provide reliable, meaningful feedback on how physicians handle these sensitive conversations. That means hospitals and training programs could use crowdsourced laypeople to help teach and evaluate error-disclosure skills, making the process more scalable and accessible. While advocates still offer a unique and more critical perspective, laypeople can still capture the overall quality of communication and do so consistently when enough of them rate each case.