Patients prefer to see their doctor’s face, suggests a study showing surgeons are considered more trustworthy and empathetic when wearing a clear plastic mask compared to a standard surgical one.

In the US study patients rated their surgeons significantly higher in providing understandable explanations, demonstrating empathy and eliciting trust if they donned a see-through mask.

Furthermore, patients’ comments about the clear masks were more positive overall than for the traditional masks, the authors noted in JAMA Surgery.

The routine wearing of masks among doctors since the start of the pandemic could have “inadvertently causing a potential barrier to effective communication”, warned the researchers.