Patient Empathy

Having empathy with the patient can increase the comfort and trust in the provider-patient relationship and can also psychologically be better for the patients. Participants in this study were students from different universities. They watched a DVD simulation-based empathy workshop and then self reported their sympathy through a survey. The background section of this article goes over the differences between “emphatetic medical care” and just general care. In emphatetic medical care, the caregiver centers his treatment based on the patient. This patient-centered care enables the physician to treat every patient individually, being aware of their special circumstances.This way the physician can take into account the patient’s culture, situation
and background. For example, if a physician had to give diet tips but had no idea about the type of food that particular patient eats then his advice would not be very helpful as different cultures have very different types of food. And the more situation-specific an advice is, the more likely it is to be followed by the patient. Coming back to the actual study, 293 students from different medical professions participated in this study. The results showed that after the DVD simulation-based empathy workshop, self reported empathy increased significantly. This experiment shows that something as simple as a workshop can teach and encourage empathy during medical training that will lead to more compassionate health care.
Speaking of patient-centered care, it is important to take into the patient’s socioeconomic status in account also.
The original research article titled “General practitioners’ patient-centredness and responses to patients’ emotional cues and concerns: relationships with perceived empathy in areas of high and low socioeconomic deprivation” by Jenna-Marie Lundy et al,tries to find out how differently do patients perceive emotional cues and compassion based on their socio economic status. This study was performed in Scotland in areas with different levels of deprivation. 112 consultations were videotaped by eight different general practitioners who had low and high empathy rated by the patients using the Consultation and Relational Empathy measure. These video tapes were then later analyzed and objective assessment was made using the Measure of Patient-Centredness . Three components of the Measure of Patient-Centredness are exploring disease and illness experience, understanding the whole person and finding common ground. The results showed that general practitioners rated as more empathetic were more patient-centred. In settings with high deprivation, empathy was related more to finding “common ground”, whereas in low deprivation areas it was more about understanding the whole person. The general practitioners also reacted differently to emotional cues between low and high socioeconomic settings. By the results, it is obvious that patients judge their general practitioners differently based on their socioeconomic status which goes to imply that doctors should direct their care in a way that is desired and received better by people of that socioeconomic status to make their care more effective and helpful to the
patients.
As shown by research, compassion does improve the quality of healthcare and therefore, it should be emphasized during medical training. Physicians can show compassion by practicing patient-centered care which is done by focusing on every patient’s special circumstances individually. This promotes compassion and personalizes the experience for the patient and increases the comfort level. They can also do so by doing charity and exemplifying for the future doctors. The Journal of Compassionate Healthcare really emphasizes compassion because having compassion is very essential and is also a sign of a better human being. It is a very important element to have not just in the medical field but in every profession.