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Connection: Journey's End, RC Sherriff (1928)
Published in Ewan Jeffrey, David Jeffrey, Enhancing Compassion in End-of-Life Care Through Drama, 2021
Empathy is the ability to appreciate the emotions and feelings of others and to develop a connection with them. Empathy enables doctors to understand the inner experience of patients, to communicate this understanding, and to respond in a therapeutic way. It is both the recognition and acknowledgement of the other’s individuality and humanity.5 Guidance from the General Medical Council (GMC) refers to empathy and describes it as one of the qualities of a good doctor.6 Compassion, empathy and caring are central to the doctor–patient relationship. One of the justifications for including a study of the humanities in medical education is to foster empathy in medical students. There is a danger that with the increasing bureaucracy in medical education idealism and empathy may dwindle.5
Effective collaboration
Published in Alan Bleakley, Medical Education, Politics and Social Justice, 2020
Carefully designed and controlled studies show the benefits of empathy to patient health outcomes. For example, Hojat and colleagues (2011) looked at the clinical outcomes of 891 diabetic patients treated by 29 family physicians (usually the most empathic of doctors along with paediatricians and psychiatrists) over a period of three years in a North American setting. They found that the patients of doctors with the highest empathy scores were significantly more likely to show good control of haemoglobin A1c and LDL-C than patients of doctors with the lowest empathy scores, having controlled for factors such as patients’ and doctors’ genders and ages, and standing of patients’ health insurance. Del Canale and colleagues (2012) carried out a similar study in Italy with the outcome measure as number of acute complications – such as coma and ketoacidosis – experienced by a cohort of nearly 21,000 diabetic patients treated by 242 primary care doctors. The more empathic doctors’ patients experienced significantly fewer adverse events.
The clinician-patient interaction
Published in Paul M.W. Hackett, Christopher M. Hayre, Handbook of Ethnography in Healthcare Research, 2020
Patients, however, categorize their clinicians on two axes: the professional axis and the communication axis. There are four possible categories along these two axes: Professional but non-communicative clinician; A caring but unprofessional clinician; Not professional and not communicative clinician; and a professional, effectively communicating clinician. The pattern of communication does not necessarily indicate the clinician’s level of professionalism, but the patient interprets a clinician who does not communicate well as someone who does not understand the human soul, and therefore, is less professional. After all, what is the quality of medicine if it lacks the mechanisms that encourage a clinician-patient dialogue? Thus, for the patient, the lack of empathy reflects the clinician’s inhumanity or lack of professionalism, and therefore necessarily reduces trust.
Dismantling medical education’s incompatible ideology
Published in Medical Teacher, 2023
However, research has also shown that empathy declines during medical school and residency (Neumann et al., 2011)). Some scholars have suggested that empathy contributes to physician burnout because of the physician’s increased investment in patients’ pain and emotional distress (e.g. Larson and Yao 2005). The potential for empathy to harm physician wellbeing was highlighted in a scoping literature review of physician empathy in intensive care settings (Bunin et al. 2021). While these authors confirmed that most research identifies the benefits of physician empathy, 22.2% of the manuscripts reviewed identified that empathy was associated with significant risks including declining physician wellness (e.g. Zaki 2020) and impaired decision making (e.g. Cicekci et al. 2017). The toll of empathy on physicians was highlighted in Ventriolio’s narrative literature review examining suicide among doctors, stating that ‘suicide in doctors is influenced by exposure to the physical and emotional distress endemic to the profession,’ which is compounded by the requirement for clinicians to engage in ‘emotional giving to the brink of exhaustion.’ (Ventriglio 2020).
Quantitative metrics and psychometric scales in the visual art and medical education literature: a narrative review
Published in Medical Education Online, 2022
Prior to selecting any psychometric tool, study designers should first explore the strengths and weakness of that tool. Consider the psychometric scales used to measure cognitive empathy. In recent years, researchers have attempted to demonstrate quantitatively that empathy changes, and in many cases declines, throughout medical training [7,9–11]. But some argue that the measurement scales used to assess empathy may be flawed given the lack of an agreed-upon operational definition of empathy, the lack of inter-instrument reliability, and, perhaps most important, their reliance on student (or physician) self-assessment [56–61]. Given that ‘the preponderance of evidence suggests that physicians have a limited ability to self-assess,’ would it not be more valuable to evaluate empathy through a third-party assessment of clinical encounters with patients (either real or standardized)? [60–62] All of the psychometric scales cited in this review also require individuals to internally judge their agreement (or disagreement) with various statements related to ambiguity, bias, burnout, compassion, communication, and grit. Educators wishing to evaluate novel visual arts programming using psychometric measurement should take this locus of measurement into account before selecting one of these psychometric scales.
Empathy and attitudes about substance abuse among social work students, clinical social workers, & nurses
Published in Journal of Social Work Practice in the Addictions, 2022
Shawn A. Lawrence, Coleen Cicale, Tracy Wharton, Reshawna Chapple, Chris Stewart, Mary Ann Burg
Davis (1990) posited that empathy cannot be taught while Rogers (1956/1992) on the other hand felt that empathy is a skill that can be taught along with positive regard and a nonjudgmental approach. Some believe that if empathy is an innate quality then it cannot be taught but may or may not be developed beyond what is already present, and others believe that empathy is a skill that can be enhanced by training. However, the question remains, can a clinician feel empathy toward a client who is experiencing something the clinician has not. Gair (2012) conducted a study of the effects of empathy training with social work students. The study found that 23 of the students reported that they could not relate to one of the study vignettes because they had never experienced the situation themselves. It is important for social work educators to recognize that while our students are expected to express empathy, it may be difficult in situations with which they have no exposure. In cases such as these it will become critical to teach empathic skills without the result sounding forced. Maxwell and Racine (2010) concluded that a combined approach toward teaching values, ethics and empathy reduced the likelihood of a superficial adoption of empathy in nursing.