Patients look for empathy in healthcare and this is not surprising. According to Dr. Ted A James, MD, MHCM in His Harvard Medical School article, patients feel that EMPATHY AND COMPASSION ARE JUST AS IMPORTANT AS MEDICAL TRAINING when it comes to choosing a physician.
Many would sooner change physicians if they felt that their doctor was uncaring. Hospitals need to be aware that patients assess their services on the basis of how their doctors and staff make them feel.
What is Empathy?
To quote Dr. James, “Empathy is about awareness of other people’s emotions and understanding their feelings. Compassion is about taking action in response to empathy.” Both play a role in establishing trust with patients and providing care that meets patients’ needs but empathy comes before compassion.
The Benefits of Empathy
● When patients feel heard and understood, it improves patient satisfaction, treatment compliance, and clinical outcomes.
● It also leads to fewer disputes and litigation. There’s also an improvement in reimbursements because of high patient experience scores.
● It allows doctors and patients to connect at a more human level.
Creating an Empathetic Culture in Healthcare
An empathetic culture in healthcare must begin at the top with senior leaders exemplifying this behavior. Their examples will invariably flow down to the entire organization. Hiring procedures must be intentional in employing candidates who tend to show empathy. In fact, it needs to be listed in the job description with empathetic employees being duly recognized and rewarded.
Empathy Can Be Learned
Studies show that empathy training tends to improve physician empathy. But empathy needs to be an intentional focus of healthcare organizations with staff coming in contact with patients, receiving empathy training, notes Dr. James.
Call to Action
Dr. James calls for a redesigning of the care process with empathy-centered design thinking as a means of embedding empathy in healthcare.
Read more of this fascinating article on the simple steps of incorporating empathy in healthcare:
https://lnkd.in/e5i_6Yuu
