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.
Empathy gives us as clinicians the ability to understand and connect with the client’s emotions. By building a relationship with a client it gives the clinician a better perspective of the client’s thoughts and feelings. Emotions are not something you can leave at the door and pick up later, it reflects on the individual’s performance. By simply asking how their day is going can create a conversation, this way the client can express themselves and not keep their emotions bottled up. Empathy can be cognitive or emotionally based. Cognitive empathy is being able to know what another person feels and what he/she might be thinking.
Empathy is a key helping value and has many definitions. According to Egan and Schroeder, empathy is a personality trait that allows a person to feel what others feel and have the ability to understand other people from the inside. It is also a state of feeling for others that is situation specific and can be a, “Feeling for and understand of another’s persons experiences” (Egan and Schroeder, 2009). Empathy is a “Basic value that informs and drive all helping behavior”, a communication skill and has three phases, empathic resonance, expressed empathy and received empathy (Egan and Schroeder, 2009).
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.
Empathy is a probable psychological motivation for helping others in suffering. Precursors to empathic distress empathy and compassion are likely from experiences from one’s personal distress. (Zahn-Waxler & Radke-Yarrow 1990). But when society attempts to imagine what it is like to be in a situation they have not yet been in or experienced, they don't stimulate the emotional areas of their brain as strappingly. Instead, they just trying to visualize the problem which can stimulate the visual system in in excess. Which suggests that they are not able to relate to it sensitively (Anders).
We need to have empathy in our lives because we all judge people way more than we should. As soon as we meet someone new we automatically judge them. If we all just had empathy we wouldn’t judge them for what they are doing wrong but how they could get help. The book “To Kill A Mockingbird” kind of hit on the subject hypocrisy. Our world runs on hypocrisy when it should be running on empathy. Mostly everyone in the world judges someone before they really know them and they point out all of their flaws. When instead all of us should be seeing how we can help that new person that you met or maybe see what they are going through first before we make a final judgement.
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.
I had briefly met my patient during last week’s clinical rotation where I introduced myself to him, acquired the necessary vital signs assigned that day, and engaged the patient in a rather fleeting conversation. After completing our assigned rounds, I was then given a chance to look at the patient’s chart so I can gather information that would help me with my care plan documentation. Oddly enough, it was not through our brief conversation, but through those records that I was able to know him more. The patient chart had such a trove of data, enough for me to form an idea of who the patient was, that after reading through the notes I had gained a greater understanding and was able to share his feelings. The chart noted the patient’s medical
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
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
Healthcare leaders are focusing on people by attracting, engaging developing and retaining the world’s best personnel in building a quality patient center care organization. In viewing “real people,’ it is not only important to understand what they go through as our patients it more important to empathize and recognize their concerns when encountering adverse situations and by setting precedence limit these experiences by instituting a commitment to creating an atmosphere of tranquility. However, how do we start to figure out all our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats Module 6 (2017), of course in the way of providing annual educational training for the staff in empathy, teaching on understanding the emotional needs of our patients as well as the physical, need.
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
Learning these type of empathy will save your life and it can give a life lesson from it learning how to do understand a patient’s pain, good communication and along with having the ability to treat others
My research paper is based around the topic of compassion in medicine, so basically every section of my paper will have some element of pathos. However, the strongest point of the pathos argument will be in the effects of a lack of compassion on the patients and the health care providers. I believe the pathos of my paper will make the readers put themselves into the my paper, my making the see the argument through the lens of health care providers or the
The dictionary defines empathy as “the feeling that you understand and share another person’s experiences and emotions”, but personally I believe it is far more complex (Merriam-Webster). To me, empathy is more than the ability to understand another’s emotions or experiences, it is the ability to see beyond yourself and your world without being prompted to. I Those who have the greatest amount of empathy do not need to be told that there are people in the world that struggle and face sadness. It is in their nature to know that it is this way and they feel for their fellow being, wanting to help in some way. Throughout this semester I have come to understand that empathy plays a key role in defining an individual, a community, and how the two interact with each other. There is a distinct differences between those individuals that have empathy and those that do not, it shows clearly in their attitude and actions towards others. It is those individuals that have empathy that make up strong communities, and empathy is arguably the most important part of a community because it allows for a sense of understanding and togetherness.