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Empathy Experts:
Video and Links:
Jodi Halpern
2012 -Gathering
the Patient’s Story and Clinical Empathy
Until the past two decades, physicians (unlike other caregivers) have
been skeptical about empathy, assuming that it would interfere with
their clinical objectivity and effectiveness. This has shifted as
research has shown that empathy plays a fundamental role in both
diagnostic accuracy and treatment effectiveness. Repeated studies show
that patients first give superficial clues about their histories until
they sense empathy, and only then disclose anxiety-provoking information
(as happened in the reported case).
What is Clinical Empathy? Journal of General Internal Medicine:
Patients seek empathy from their physicians. Medical educators
increasingly recognize this need. Yet in seeking to make empathy a
reliable professional skill, doctors change the meaning of the term.
Outside the field of medicine, empathy is a mode of understanding that
specifically involves emotional resonance. In contrast, leading
physician educators define empathy as a form of detached cognition. In
contrast, this article argues that physicians' emotional attunement
greatly serves the cognitive goal of understanding patients' emotions.
This has important implications for teaching empathy.
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