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Scooped by
Edwin Rutsch
July 8, 2011 2:18 PM
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"It’s an oft-repeated and erroneous stereotype that autistic people lack empathy." Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg, who was diagnosed with Asperger's at the age of 50, blogs about the different kinds of empathy and to what extent they are present in those with autism. img http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism
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Scooped by
Edwin Rutsch
June 26, 2011 1:25 PM
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Empathy is not the same thing as sympathy. Empathy is a way to experience an emotionally or painful situation together, helping the patient feel less alone and understood. Sympathy is more of feeling sorry for a person or patient's situation. Empathy can help a person move beyond feelings of negativity and hopelessness about a situation so that they can start to focus on moving through the situation.
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Scooped by
Edwin Rutsch
June 26, 2011 1:31 AM
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In the ideal situation empathy essentially allows one to walk in the other person’s shoes and see what that’s like.
This can result in significant validation for the receiving person and be a very healing experience because of that sense of being understood. Empathy can bolster confidence and bring a person out of deep isolation. It is a very humanizing process that has a spiritual and sacred aspect because of the connectedness that can occur between the two people involved in the interaction.
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Scooped by
Edwin Rutsch
June 24, 2011 1:16 PM
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“Patients can understand this empathy, and listening to their story is healing, even if you are not able to change the objective condition,” said Rabbi Karff. “You may not be able to undo the bruise, but there’s a healing that takes place in the listening. This is the relational or spiritual part of being a doctor. There is a nonreligious spirituality in being a physician, and that was what we were trying to foster. As a teacher, I drew on my 40 years of being a rabbi with people, many of whom are facing the darker side of life.
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Scooped by
Edwin Rutsch
June 22, 2011 6:42 PM
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Empathy is a key element of patient-physician communication that is relevant to and positively influences patients' health.
The authors systematically reviewed the literature to investigate changes in trainee empathy and reasons for those changes during medical school and residency.
The results of the reviewed studies, especially those with longitudinal data, suggest that empathy decline during medical school and residency compromises striving toward professionalism and may threaten health care quality.
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Scooped by
Edwin Rutsch
June 11, 2011 1:24 AM
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Here is an invitation to medical students, nursing students, and all other health care students in the world to explore compassion (tender, loving, fun care) and its delivery from September, 2010 to September 2011. The plan is to gather data so that we can collectively then create an embedded course in all the years of medical school in order to graduate compassionate beloved physicians.
Can compassion (tender, loving, fun care) become a central interest and action in your life and at all times?
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Scooped by
Edwin Rutsch
June 5, 2011 1:01 PM
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Showing clinical empathy to patients can improve their satisfaction of care, motivate them to stick to their treatment plans and lower malpractice complaints, found a new study.
"Empathy is the ability to understand another's experience, to communicate and confirm that understanding with the other person and to then act in a helpful manner," writes Dr. Robert Buckman, Princess Margaret Hospital and the Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto. "Despite some overlap with other compassionate responses, particularly sympathy, empathy is distinct."
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Scooped by
Edwin Rutsch
May 29, 2011 4:58 PM
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We want competent physicians, but we also want compassionate ones. How do we get them? Is it nature or is it nurture? Is it more important to search out more compassionate students, or should we instill compassion somehow in the ones we start along the training pipeline? I think the answer lies in nurturing what nature has already put there. Throughout most of my career in pediatric critical care I have taught medical students, residents, and fellows. So I have seen young physicians as they made their way as best they could through the long training process. the main principle to keep before us is not so much that we need to figure out a way to teach compassion, but rather to devise ways such that the training process does not reduce, or even extinguish, the innate compassion all humans have toward one another. img http://bit.ly/dP1O76
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Scooped by
Edwin Rutsch
May 25, 2011 2:28 PM
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Empathy is commonly regarded as an essential attribute for doctors and there is a conviction that empathy must be taught to medical students. Yet it is not clear exactly what empathy is, from a philosophical or sociological point of view, or whether it can be taught. The meaning, role and relevance of empathy in medical education have tended to be unquestioningly assumed; there is a need to examine and contextualise these assumptions. This paper opens up that debate, arguing that ‘empathy’, as it is commonly understood, is neither necessary nor sufficient to guarantee good medical or ethical practice.... The authors argue that good communication with patients is necessary for good practice and that a very thin version of ‘empathy’ is necessary to achieve that good communication. But this thin version of ‘empathy’ differs from thicker conceptions of empathy as conceived in moral philosophy, sociology or psychology. img http://bit.ly/hZGXA5.jpg
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Scooped by
Edwin Rutsch
May 24, 2011 9:32 PM
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The present study aimed at exploring empathic abilities in alcoholism, and notably the hypothesis of a differential deficit between emotional and cognitive empathy.
Conclusions: At the theoretical level, this first observation of a specific deficit for emotional empathy in alcoholism, combined with the exact inverse pattern observed in other psychiatric populations, leads to a double-dissociation, which supports the notion that emotional and cognitive empathy are 2 distinct abilities. At the clinical level, this deficit calls for considering emotional empathy rehabilitation as a crucial concern in psychotherapy.
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Scooped by
Edwin Rutsch
May 19, 2011 11:28 AM
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"The more that you understand about that patient as a person, the better care you can give them."..
"My hope is that it will increase empathy among the students," he said. "That they understand what it's like to live with a chronic health condition or disability, rather than see these patients as a condition and in terms of textbook stuff. It's going to be good for the patient, and good for the health- care professional, to understand how to confer in order to make things better for a patient with complex needs."
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Scooped by
Edwin Rutsch
May 17, 2011 2:39 PM
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We have discussed the term empathy several times.
The most clarifying definition of empathy is based on viewing it as a process. This process of empathy consists of the following stages.
- The patient expresses feelings by way of verbal and non-verbal communication. Patients are not always aware of these expressions....
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Scooped by
Edwin Rutsch
May 15, 2011 11:47 AM
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Scooped by
Edwin Rutsch
June 26, 2011 2:32 PM
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We hear a lot about the importance of compassion -- and the lack of it -- in medicine these days. Compassion comes from Latin words meaning to "suffer with." If taken literally, compassion in healing seems irrational. Why would a medical professional want to suffer alongside his or her patient?
Suffering with one's patient might cloud one's professional judgment. When sick, patients need the cool-headed objectivity of their doctor and nurse -- not co-suffering or sentimentality. But compassion means more than "suffering with." It involves entering the mind-space of other persons so completely that one senses what the experience of illness is like for them.
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Scooped by
Edwin Rutsch
June 26, 2011 11:51 AM
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It’s an oft-repeated and erroneous stereotype that autistic people lack empathy.
When I hear another iteration of this myth, I have an immediate, visceral reaction that combines impatience at its perpetuation with a keen understanding of its power to wreak havoc on the lives on autistic people. When it comes to our ability to find partners, to form friendships, to be welcomed in community, and to find work — particularly in the helping professions — this myth can have a devastating impact.
It’s one of the main reasons that so many autistic people remain in the closet, living their entire lives in fear of exposure.
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Scooped by
Edwin Rutsch
June 24, 2011 3:12 PM
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Empathy is a powerful, efficient communication tool when used appropriately during a medical interview. Empathy extends understanding of the patient beyond the history and symptoms to include values, ideas, and feelings. Benefits of improved empathetic communication are tangible for both physician and patient. An Overview of Empathy James T Hardee, MD http://xnet.kp.org/permanentejournal/fall03/cpc.pdfEmpathy is a powerful communication skill that is often misunderstood and underused. Initially, empathy was referred to as “bedside manner”; now, however, authors and educators consider empathetic communication a teachable, learnable skill that has tangible benefits for both clinician and patient: Effective empathetic communication enhances the therapeutic effectiveness of the clinician-patient relationship. Appropriate use of empathy as a communication tool facilitates the clinical interview, increases the efficiency of gathering information, and honors the patient.
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Scooped by
Edwin Rutsch
June 23, 2011 12:39 PM
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Aspergers and Autism Community... I know that many Aspergers have trouble expressing feelings such as empathy, but do any of you feel as if you actually lack empathy?
I find it hard to put myself in someone else's shoes and try and understand what sorrow they may be experiencing.
There have been plenty of situations in my life where common etiquette would dictate that I empathize with someone, but I don't. I simply don't care about other people's problems and I don't expect them to care about mine.
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Scooped by
Edwin Rutsch
June 18, 2011 12:47 PM
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Medical school seems to have a profound negative effect on empathy according to a research review just published in Academic Medicine.
The review of 18 studies found that self-reported emotional understanding declines markedly during medical training. Counter-intuitively, the crucial downturn happens when medical students start seeing patients....
Apart from the start of clinical practice phase of training the other major influence in empathy decline was personal distress, which concurs with studies that suggest that people in general report less empathy as they feel worse.
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Scooped by
Edwin Rutsch
June 8, 2011 12:41 PM
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We want competent physicians, but we also want compassionate ones. How do we get them? Is it nature or is it nurture? Is it more important to search out more compassionate students, or should we instill compassion somehow in the ones we start along the training pipeline? I think the answer lies in nurturing what nature has already put there. img http://bit.ly/hZGXA5
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Scooped by
Edwin Rutsch
June 1, 2011 3:07 PM
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The lack of ability to emphathise is central to many psychiatric conditions. Empathy is affected by neurodevelopment, brain pathology and psychiatric illness. Empathy is both a state and a trait characteristic. Empathy is measurable by neuropsychological assessment and neuroimaging techniques.
This book specifically focuses on the role of empathy in mental illness. It starts with the clinical psychiatric perspective and covers empathy in the context of mental illness, adult health, developmental course, and explanatory models.
Psychiatrists, psychotherapists and mental heath professionals will find this a very useful encapsulation of what is currently known about the role of empathy as it relates to mental illness.
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Scooped by
Edwin Rutsch
May 25, 2011 8:17 PM
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Doctors appointments could be less distressing if doctors expressed more empathy toward patients and their relatives, according to physicians in an editorial in this week's Canadian Medical Association Journal.
"Empathy is the best way to acknowledge what the patient is going through," said Buckman, an oncology professor at the University of Toronto. "Doctors are often thrown in awkward and emotional situations, especially when they have to deliver bad news to the patients. They can help resolve that awkwardness by showing empathy."
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Scooped by
Edwin Rutsch
May 24, 2011 9:57 PM
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If you do manage to accurately empathise with someone, then this will become clear to that person in due course - they will come to sense that you have an understanding of them. If that person is to trust you to help them, if they are to let their pride down, and reveal their fears and desires, they will have to believe that you are likely to understand these and relate to them on an intuitive level. If they sense that you will not understand them as a person, their guard will remain up - the risks of opening up will seem to outweigh the potential benefits of doing so. img http://bit.ly/jpVFWi
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Scooped by
Edwin Rutsch
May 24, 2011 12:12 AM
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The most important role of her stage career was that of Vivian Bearing in Margaret Edson’s glorious play Wit. In 2000, after performing the play (in a third production) at Houston’s Alley Theater, Megan, at the request of the directors of University of Texas/Houston Health Science Center, began to develop a course that proposed applying various skills from the profession of theater to the practice of medicine.
And so “Becoming An Empathic Physician” was born. The course is about ways of looking beyond the patient’s condition to see the person inside, and about knowing how important that is for the patient’s recovery. It is about finding a balance that allows the caregiver to engage with the patient without becoming personally lost. And it is about becoming aware of being aware, in healthcare as in the larger world.
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Scooped by
Edwin Rutsch
May 17, 2011 2:59 PM
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Many doctors find it hard to provide the compassion that their patients deserve.
I wondered: How do I show him compassion?
Many say our health-care system lacks compassion. I too at times feel that pills and surgeries, CT scans and radiation therapies, biopsies and blood tests have become a priority in medicine and that compassion — the “touchy-feely” part of medicine — has become an afterthought in patient care.
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Scooped by
Edwin Rutsch
May 16, 2011 6:57 PM
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Swedish Continuing Medical Education: http://www.swedish.org/compassion2011 Most physicians are empathetic by nature and are drawn to medicine because they want to “make a difference.” But the rigors of training and practice often cause us to disconnect from our compassionate selves. 01 Welcoming Remarks - Gordon Irving M.D. 02 Empathy: Concepts & Significance in Medicine - James P. Robinson MD, PhD 03 Generating Compassion - David Elaimy 04 Perfectionism: The Disconnect - David Hanscom M.D. 05 Connecting with Your "Authentic Self" - Raz Ingrasci 06 An Introduction to BALINT Groups - Paul Costello M.D. 07 "Stop Trying to Cure Me and Start Listening" David Tauben M.D. 08 Empathy and Emotions Matter: A Psychophysiologic Approach to Chronic Pain and Related Syndromes Howard Schubiner M.D. 09 Afternoon Workshop: Connecting with Your "Authentic Self" - Raz Ingrasci
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