The study had resident doctors (in specialties like internal medicine, pathology, and OB-GYN) use the VCA app to simulate telling a patient about a medical mistake. At first, they recorded themselves doing the disclosure. Their recordings were rated by several non-doctors on qualities like honesty, empathy, apology, clarity, and accountability. About four weeks later, the residents received a detailed feedback report (with scores, written comments from the lay-raters, and examples of strong responses), and they recorded a second round of simulated disclosures.

After the feedback, the residents’ average communication ratings improved modestly but significantly. On a 5-point scale, their mean score rose from ~3.53 to ~3.75. That suggests that practicing with realistic scenarios and hearing from “real people” how their communication came across helped them do a better job of expressing regret, explaining what went wrong, and showing empathy and responsibility. The improvement was seen across specialties and training years, indicating this kind of training could help many kinds of doctors especially those in fields where real-life error disclosures are rare (like pathology).