Empathy In The Healthcare Industry

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.

Patients seek medical attention for preventative measures, as well as, diagnostic measures. Patients must have a trusting rapport with their collaborative medical team, as the nurses and the doctors are the people who they trust their lives with. Patients do not always present to hospitals, urgent cares, walk-in clinics, or even doctor’s offices only when they are sick; patients visit to ensure their good health will continue, treatment regimens are of benefit, changes that may be needed in regimen. When someone thinks of a patient they may think of some of these characteristics: illness, disease, hospital, medications, health, and prevention.

The video presented the ethics and boundaries and factors that affect those boundaries such as addiction, abuse, absent role models, and patients assuming the professional shares the same feelings as he or she does. Then the video discusses issues the doctor may incur such as “special treatment” of patients, time management, poor awareness of feelings, and the response to the patient.

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

It is important to be aware of the changing world, changes in the law and how people perceive those who are vulnerable and dependent. At the heart of all of this, the patient’s needs and wishes still have to be at the center of any decision making and effective communication between professionals and patients is inherent in our moral duty to ensure that patients have access to the care they are entitled

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.

To effectively provide health care services to my patients, I undertake to listen to issues raised by patients and their relatives. During the process of interacting with my clients I will first of all introduce myself to

‘Listening to how patients feel about their care and treatment is one of my personal priorities. Knowing that patients feel safe and are being given the care and attention they need makes me feel that I am doing what I can each shift to improve their care’ (National Quality Board, p72 2015).

A 21-year-old female was brought in by the paramedics, briefing the team that she was found unconscious on the woman’s restroom floor. Upon arrival, she was confused and frightened as she stared at the uniformed strangers in an unfamiliar environment. As other paramedics were taking her vitals, I softly spoke to her and reassured her that she was in a safe place and she will be taken care of. By accompanying her and sharing each other’s stories, she was able to calm down as well as have her trust instilled in our team. As she went from a defensive to relaxed demeanor, I have realized that these bedside manners are what open a gateway to patient trust. Gaining patients trust was a challenging but crucial skill in order to provide strong patient care. Regardless of what she was doing at the event, our team’s focus was on her health. This mirrors the core mission statement of Rock Med, “setting the standards in non-judgemental medicine”. It is this approach that I want to apply into my career as a physician; taking the initiative by actively engaging with patient in order to bring comfort and trust in their most vulnerable time. I have seen many physicians disregard consoling patients during a time of need. It is not enough to simply treat the patient. A good physician will also bring comfort throughout the healing process, putting aside patient worries. This simple yet

With a great point to start off from, Cooper talks on research’s importance as something that gives this amazingly rounder concept of the working world, inner workings of our minds and depth to the complexity of the human condition. And, it comes with a catch. Trusting the skepticism of science and be skeptical of yourself and research, self-critical and to the best of knowledge just humble in the workings of science. It is not a toy to wave around all willy nilly. The talk on empathy especially got me as an individual who has went through a lot of stuff as well. When I become a counselor, say I have a gentleman that comes into my office who has an amazing career as a headliner in the best drag queen bars in Chicago. There is not a way I would be able to understand what his experience in life is like unless I use the power of conversation (more so science). Or, becoming a headline drag queen myself. Why is empathy such a difficult skill to teach or wrap around? Counselors are people who have to constantly collect data on feelings, thoughts, behaviors, aptitudes and

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

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.

The concept “Empathy” was born when British psychologist Edward Bradford Titchener translated the German word “Einfühlung” into English in 1909 (Greiner, 2012). Since then, empathy remained studied due to its vast significance in all aspects of social interaction. While empathy is a sub concept related to personhood and caring; it on its own can give a tremendous understanding of human interaction when used under the right circumstance. Empathy has been identified as a nursing concept in the nursing profession for the last 50 years; but more than often concept confusion occurs due to its similarity to the term sympathy (Greiner, 2012). This paper identifies a client situation, which lead to a further pursue of understanding the caring concept

Sex differences are apparent in many psychological and biological phenomena. According to Baron-Cohen & Wheelwright (2003) the ability to empathise with others is more accessible to females; the Empathising Quotient (Baron-Cohen & Wheelwright, 2004) in which women scored significantly higher than men further established this prediction. The same result was echoed between the sexes in Reading the Mind in the Eyes test (Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright & Hill, 2001), which is also used to measure empathy (Chapman et al, 2006). However, the opposite is true for males in that they obtain a greater capability for systemising and scored significantly higher in the Systemising Quotient (Baron-Cohen, Richler, Bisarya, Gurunathan & Wheelwright, 2003) than females.

- Empathy: (00:26) When the client stated that he thought he was receiving his money today Katie could have said "I'm sorry, lets take a look at your account and check on that for you. Can you provide me with your loan/phone number?"