Time for Empathy

In my last post, I discussed a study of the relationship between empathy and clinical outcomes. Let me clarify the definition of empathy and then look at a comment in the discussion section of the research paper:

Having quoted a gobbledyook definition of empathy, I revised my last post with this addition:

In simple English, empathy in the setting of healthcare means (1) the clinicians "get it" about their patients' experiences and (2) the patients see that their clinicians both "get it" and want to help them. 

Now look at this comment: "We noticed that the highly empathic physicians saw a smaller number of patients than the other groups of physicians.... [T]his could be due to highly empathic physicians spending more time with their patients, thus leading to fewer patients being seen."

The researchers recommend further studies to explore this possibility. We can guess what the results will be.

When caring for patients, it takes time to hear the stories that enable clinicians to understand what happened to their patients and to grasp the impact on their patients. It also takes time to develop the trust that is part of communicating a commitment to helping.

If we are to preserve compassion in modern medicine, we must value the time it takes

• to teach doctors-in-training about compassion.
• for clinicians to understand their individual patients.
• for clinicians and patients to develop mutual trust.

I wrote these two articles to help the discussion along: What's the Story?  and  Story Time.

Comments

[Jan Hasak]

Your post couldn't be more timely. Just this past week I accompanied a friend to her first oncology appointment. What a wonderfully empathetic oncologist she found! Even though she has stage IV breast cancer, he never made her feel a stainless-steel hopelessness. He exuded a special quality of caring that I rarely see in doctors. And I have seen my share, having been diagnosed twice with cancer. Thank you for informing your readers of this fascinating and encouraging study.
Jan

[Ronni Gordon]

Sometimes the wait at the Dana-Farber clinic is so long that I get annoyed. But when I realize that part of the wait is due to the time my nurse practitioner and doctor spend with patients including me, I take it more in stride. (I see them on alternate visits.) The doctor is a little more in and out, but he manages to show he wants to know how I feel. I love love love my NP, who just sits back and wants to find out how everything is. That's definitely part of the empathy dynamic and makes me feel very understood.

[Finn]

I sometimes wait quite a while before seeing my internist, but it doesn't bother me because I know she will give me all the time I need and listen to everything I say. If she's running behind schedule, I just figure that another of her patients needed more of her time than anticipated. When I was in chemo, that patient was often me. Now I hope that I am sometimes the patient who needs less time than expected and helps her get back on schedule.