ABSTRACT
This study aimed to assess how the gender of medical students affects their communication styles and those of simulated patients (SPs) during objective structured clinical examination medical interviews in Japan. <br>1) Medical interviews conducted by 82 fourth-year medical students (53 male and 29 female) at Nagoya University School of Medicine were analyzed by means of the Roter Interaction Analysis System.<br>2) Compared with male medical students, female medical students engaged in significantly more emotionally focused talk, particularly empathy, and asked more open-ended questions. <br>3) With female medical students, SPs engaged in significantly more social talk (personal remarks), gave more biomedical information, and made more total utterances than they did with male medical students.<br>4) The gender of medical students significantly affected their communication styles and those of SPs. (127 words)