Empathy: Being A Health Care Professional

Empathy is a two way process, its about trying to fully understand what your client is saying and feeling and also showing your understanding to your client.

Empathy is the ability to understand another person's viewpoint, to recognise and experience their feelings, and to be aware and understanding of their thoughts, from their perspective. When we are empathetic we allow ourselves to understand others and the intentions of others. Empathy requires that we connect with them and allows us to build a relationship with that person therefore empathy is also one of the most important forms of communication. By using empathy we are able to communicate better. Developing an empathic approach allows us to improve our communication skills. We can assume that when we take the time to understand

The importance of empathy in any helping profession, medical or social, cannot be overstated. The workers that exemplified it in their practice did the best that they could with their limited resources.

Daniel H. Pink once said, “Empathy is about standing in someone else’s shoes, feeling with his or her heart, seeing with his or her eye. Not only is empathy hard to outsource and automate but it makes the world a better place”. This quote is explaining the basics of empathy. Empathy is seeing a problem or life in general, from another person’s of view. It allows us to understand another and overall helps make the world a better place.

Empathy should play an active role in the daily lives of everyone, but in particular in the day-to-day lives of a healthcare professional. Healthcare professionals have the unique and challenging job of counseling patients in times of need, whether that is in the setting of a newly diagnosed disease or in the death of a family member. This unique challenge requires all healthcare professionals to be skilled at using empathy in the appropriate circumstances.

If you looked in the dictionary it would tell you empathy is being able to relate or understand the feelings of another person. Which is true but it’s also being able to stand in the other person’s shoes and seeing it from their viewpoint. Many people confuse empathy and sympathy. Sympathy is the feelings towards a person but unlike empathy you are not sharing the feelings. When you show empathy you would not be

"Empathy is seeing with the eyes of another, listening with the ears of another and feeling with the heart of another. " - Alfred Adler. It's important to be empathetic but their are risks associated with it. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee explores this in many situations and examples.

Empathy is the ability to understand the situation and share the feelings and also be able to identify a client's experiences. A counsellor must be able to imagine how it feels to be in a client's shoes and manage to understand the situation from their point of view. "Empathy has been described in different ways: walking in another's shoes, entering into another person's frame of reference or having the ability to experience life as the other person does by entering the person's world of thoughts, feelings, emotions and meanings", (Martha,2012) .In the other hand, the good counsellor still have the ability to be understanding even though the they are not agree with the client's perspective in order to solve the client's issues effectively.

• Empathy: Empathy is someone who is able to feel what others feel and see things in other people’s point of view.

Empathy is defined as the ability to communicate an understanding of a client’s feelings, and is a crucial component of the helping relationship (Boggs. 2011, p.106). Empathy is an essential concept to nursing practice as it allows the nurse to gain perspective in order to provide appropriate actions and interventions significant to that patient’s individual experience. In Tilda Shalof’s “A Nurses’ Story”, the author, a registered nurse in the intensive care unit (ICU), struggles with a particularly difficult patient case and must reflect upon her own values and subsequent judgments in order to provide adequate nursing care.

When someone has empathy if gives them the ability to look at the situation from the perspective of the client. According to Martin (2014), “empathy in a counseling relationship, involves the ability and willingness to experience a client’s beliefs, thoughts, and feelings through the client’s personal lens” (63). Consequently, by having empathy it will allow you to properly evaluate the whole situation, and provide sustainable help. An empathic heart will promote active listening skills. Being empathic will give you an engaging mindset. Martin states (2014), “Active listening counseling relationship also includes behaviors such as maintaining direct eye contact and observing the client’s body language. This will make for better

Empathy is being able to understand and share another person’s feelings or emotions. It allows a team to develop trust and understand others. Leaders who express empathy towards their team shows that they truly care about the people within their team.

Most definitions of empathy are based on the same core idea - empathy is the ability to understand and identify someone else’s thoughts and feelings, as if they were one’s own (wordreference online dictionary, 2016). Although it’s been said “there are probably nearly as many definitions of empathy as people working on the topic.” (de Vignemont & Singer, 2006, p.435) suggesting that there is no singular way to even define empathy, let alone explain its impact on our behaviour. Due to the sheer depth and complexity of empathy it’s understandable that each discipline within psychology presents it’s own explanation for why we experience it, and how it can affect our interaction with the world around us. Psychologists have been exploring empathy for decades, in hope of gaining a complete grasp of what it means and how it can vary between each person, therefore its important we look at different psychological perspectives to try to understand it’s many dimensions.

Empathy is often described as having consideration of someone else feelings. Webster defines empathy as, the feeling that you understand and share another 's experience and emotions. Empathy consists of having the ability to feel another person 's feelings and the ability to place oneself in another person shoes or situation. In counseling, the therapist is expected to show empathy for their clients whose experiences are different from the counselor. The role of the counselor is to support the client with any issues or concerns. The role empathy plays in counseling.

Empathy is a feeling of putting yourself on others situation, giving caring and understanding the circumstances of someones who need help, being aware of what others felt behind his/her struggles and also a feeling you want to comfort his/her despite of their worst experiences.