Empathy Gaps In Medical Decision-Making

Empathy is to feel and understand someone else’s pain, nonetheless it is not as simple as it seems. Leslie Jamison’s essay, The Empathy Exam describes her experience as a medical actor while putting herself into the patients’ shoes by associating her background. Jamison exemplifies her story in an almost journal like form sharing each incident one by one and linking them together. She simply begins by elucidating the general knowledge of her occupation to involve the readers so they can understand her emotions and follow along attentively. Stephanie Phillips is the role she took upon for the exam and having experienced the same situations Jamison introduces the concern about empathy and what empathy truly is. She searches for her own personal definition of empathy and what it is like to have and want empathy throughout

According to Gerdes and Segal (2001), empathy is the ability to perceive, understand, experience, and respond to the emotional state of another person. They advocate that therapists should be able to pay attention to clients’ “behavior, facial expression, the tone of voice, choice of words, and so on, should be able to keep objectivity and regulate emotion (Gerdes and Segal, 2001). In Thelma’s case, Yalom shows highly empathy to Thelma. During the sessions, Yalom kept paying attention to Thelma’s tone of voice, behavior, and choice of words. For example, Yalom (1989) wrote that “Thelma’s tone of voice contained no invitation to come closer,” “Thelma turned away and looked out the window…she was speaking more deliberately, in a bitter, forlorn

Ward, J., Cody, J., Schaal, M., & Hojat, M. (2011). The empathy enigma: An empirical study of decline in empathy among undergraduate nursing students. Journal of Professional Nursing, 28, 34-40. doi:10.1016/j.profnurs.2011.10.007

Emotional attunement involves doctors trying to imagine the patient’s experience, and this way they may find themselves resonating. Patients may not always explicitly verbalize their emotions and leave clues instead; therefore it is up to physicians to develop the skills necessary to acknowledge these clues and make the patient feel understood. In a study by Suchman et al (4), it was observed that when doctors recognized and responded to emotions that were present but not directly expressed, patients disclosed more information that aided in their quality of care and improved the patient-physician relationship. Even if the physicians asked the appropriate questions, if they did not exhibit an empathetic response to show that they understood the patient, patients were unlikely to share vulnerable information. There is also growing evidence that suggests empathy from physicians can decrease a patient’s anxiety (5). Patients trust physicians who respond to their anxiety and, in some cases, decreasing anxiety has been linked to better

Empathy is simply a noun with three syllables. However, I believe having this quality is an essential in being a health care professional. To me, empathy doesn’t simply mean being able to understand the feelings of another. Empathy entails emotionally stepping into the shoes of an individual, and syncing their feelings into your own. Being empathetic allows for us to establish bonds of trust between one another, giving us insights as to what we are feeling, and ultimately contributing towards decision making. As much as I would like to say I was born with this trait, I acquired this trait later on in my life, however it was definitely was worth cultivating. During my freshman and sophomore years of high school, I volunteered at The First Church

Even though he is an opponent of empathy, Paul Bloom makes an important observation about the inherent bias that empathy fosters. He states that empathy influences an individual to act more empathetic towards those who exhibit

I think for someone to be successful in the healthcare field they must possess good communication skills and be able to have empathy towards their patients. You need to be able to communicate well with everyone around you to be able to help the patient. By connecting with the person you are trying to help they may open up about things that could help you treat them. Showing you care and being empathetic will also help the patient feel more comfortable with you. It is important to show empathy by talking calmly, leaning in while the patient is talking, and really showing that you care about them. I think you can look ‘fake’ when showing you are empathetic however. It is important to not take things too far or else your intentions may come across

The definition of empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. In the video about all of the people in different situations at the hospital, people often don’t understand what is going on around them.When someone goes in for an appointment at the clinic, they could sit there for a very short period of time or a very long stretch of time. Some of the people that only sit there for five minutes get irritated with the doctors and nurses for taking so long. What they may not understand is someone may be with that doctor or nurse and be getting the worse news of their life, like they have cancer. The person in the waiting room could get irritated enough that they storm out of the hospital, but if they were in the other

Empathy is a part of my every day life at work. I recently had a patient that was being treated for an abscess caused by drug addiction. The addictive mindset of a patient is not one I can have sympathy for, but can have empathy for. I cannot imagine the sequence of events that lead them to their choices, but on the other hand I am able to place myself in their current situation of, being treated in the hospital for addiction, and recognize how painful it must be to be in their shoes both emotionally and physically. Knowing how I would feel in their situation and the thoughts that would go through my mind enhance my ability to care for these patients.

In Paul Bloom’s, “The Baby in the Well: The Case Against Empathy,” he argues, while there is a place for empathy in the world and it is important to create positive relationships, reason must be what we lean towards. Bloom believes empathy focuses on a small group or an individual which in turn blinds someone to larger issues at hand. In order to get his point across he uses a formal writing style to show the importance of the subject. Bloom uses research conducted by psychologists and economists to prove points and show evidence. He also points out real world events, such as a missing girl that became head news at the same time as a genocide and how people reacted to each respectively. Although his article is convincing that reason is more

Cowan wrote an article titled, The paradox of empathy: When empathy hurts, for Counseling Today. Cowan took a different approach on empathy. His description of empathy was about how when the counselor has too much empathy it can be terrorizing for the client. Empathy has depth, meaning that it goes beyond what the client can tell the counselor. The empathy emanating from the counselor allows the client think that everything he has yet to accept about himself is recognized by the counselor. This can be intimidating; so the overall effect on the patient is

Though all of the characteristics listed are of great value, empathy is the most important characteristic to me. To have empathy, one must truly put themselves in the patient's position. I feel that empathy and love are connected, meaning that you cannot have one without the other. If a physician has empathy and love for a patient, he treat the patient as if he is treating himself or his own family. I feel that having empathy can lead to having each of the characteristics found in successful medical students. If you have empathy, you will want the best for each patient. That will lead you to have discipline, integrity, maturity, and intelligence. These attributes will lead you to study hard and gain intelligence. Intelligence will lead to confidence

The most frequently taught description of empathy in today’s college textbooks defines it as “emotional reactions that are focused on, or oriented toward, other people and include feelings of compassion, sympathy, and concern” (Baron & Branscombe, 2012). Furthermore, students are also learning that there may be a societal decline in empathy that is occurring among college students at a small but somewhat significant level. Unfortunately, there are currently no empirical answers for this decline. Empathy is an enigma that science has longed to understand and explain since Theodor Lipps and Edward Tichener named the earliest known concept of imitation and empathy, “Einfuhlung,” in the early 1900s (Gerdes, Lietz,

According to Warner (1994), empathy helps a client to hold his/her experience in attention. This process stimulates and works on a client’s profound psychological issues. Some people who have not received empathic responses from their significant others during childhood, tend to experience core issues at very high or very low levels of intensity. They have difficulties stopping or starting meaningful experiences and challenges to take the point of view of others. This is called a fragile process. Difficult processes are distorted into five groups: (1) fragile process – when feelings are experienced as very intensive and cannot be kept at a moderate level leading to shame or discomfort; (2) dissociated process – selves are not integrated with

Understanding morality and empathy exhibited in a population may grant a great insight into its dynamic. However, surveys may be susceptible to bias; a more accurate method may be by assessing one’s morality and empathy through one’s unconscious behaviors. In the peer-reviewed, Emotion article “The Empathy Impulse A Multinomial Model of Intentional and Unintentional Empathy for Pain,” researchers from Pennsylvania State University and the University of Iowa experimented to see how the conscious and unconscious aspects of empathy for pain contribute to the process of identifying pain in others. Subsequently, Cameron, one of the researchers, summarized his findings in the Time article “How Science Can Tell Whether You’re a Good Person.” Then,