Empathy and HealthCare

By Anthony Raphael

Empathy in Healthcare: More than a Soft Skill
Empathy, the ability to understand and share the feelings of others, is a vital skill in healthcare. It extends beyond simple compassion, allowing healthcare professionals to understand patients’ experiences from their perspective. It forms the foundation of a patient-centered approach, promoting better communication, fostering trust, and ultimately improving patient outcomes. Despite its significance, empathy is often overlooked in medical education, overshadowed by the technical and scientific aspects of healthcare.

Health care practitioner empathy interventions seem to improve patient satisfaction, but inadequate reporting hinders the ability to draw definitive conclusions relating to the overall effect size, according to a review published online Jan. 30 in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Leila Keshtkar, Ph.D., from the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom, and colleagues conducted a systematic review of randomized trials to examine the effect of health care practitioner empathy on patient satisfaction. The analysis included 14 randomized trials with 80 practitioners and 1,986 patients.

Brain health refers to the state of a person’s brain function across various domains, including cognitive, behavioral and motor functions. Healthy brains are associated with better individual health, increased creativity, and enhanced productivity. A person’s brain health is intricately connected to personal, social and environmental factors. Racial, ethnic, and social disparities affect brain health and on the global scale these disparities within and between regions present a hurdle to brain health.

To overcome global disparities, greater collaboration between practitioners and healthcare providers and the people they serve is essential. This requires cultural humility driven by empathy. Empathy is a core prosocial value, a cognitive-emotional skill that helps us understand ourselves and others.

The mission of the Center for Empathy in Medicine at the Institute for Innovations in Medical Education is to develop and implement innovative curriculum for enhancing and supporting empathy throughout our healthcare system and especially in undergraduate and graduate medical education.

The center’s goals are to develop a workforce of expert educators who can teach and assess empathy, establish a robust research program to evaluate the impact of these efforts, and define best practices in empathy education within an academic health center. The center works in close partnership with the Empathy Project. 

The Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA is pleased to present Semel Grand Rounds, our weekly educational conference featuring presentations on evidence-based clinical practices, cutting-edge insights from neuroscience, and the role of society in shaping mental health.

Building the Empathy Movement

http://TheEmpathyCenter.org
http://EmpathySummit.com
http://CultureOfEmpathy.com

http://EmpathyCircle.com

http://EmpathyTent.com

http://BestEmpathyTraining.com

by Ingrid Nembhard

Patients who are treated with empathy by their doctors and other clinicians have better health care outcomes, according to a new study from Wharton health care management professors Ingrid Nembhard and Guy David. The paper is titled “A Systematic Review of Empathy in Health Care,” and it appears in the journal Health Services Research. The co-authors are Wharton undergraduate student Iman Ezzeddine, and David Betts and Jennifer Radin, both of Deloitte Consulting.

Nembhard spoke to Knowledge at Wharton about the study, which concludes with a call for more organizational-level interventions to ensure empathy for all patients, systematically.

#EmpathyCircles: A highly effective #Empathy building practice. http://EmpathyCircle.com    
#EmpathyTraining: http://BestEmpathyTraining.com

by John Lopez

A recent study has shown that the AI language model, ChatGPT, outperforms human doctors in terms of the quality and empathy of their written advice, The Guardian reports.

The research suggests that AI assistants have the potential to play a significant role in medicine and could help improve doctors' communication with their patients.

AI Passes Quality and Empathy Test for Doctors!
The study, published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, examined data from Reddit's AskDocs community, where verified healthcare professionals answer members' medical inquiries from internet users.

#EmpathyCircles: A highly effective #Empathy building practice. http://EmpathyCircle.com    
#EmpathyTraining: http://BestEmpathyTraining.com

Researchers from the University of California, San Diego; John Hopkins; and other universities asked OpenAI's ChatGPT 195 questions posted to Reddit's AskDocs forum, and compared both the quality and the empathy of the chatbot's responses to answers from verified physicians on Reddit. 

A team of healthcare experts, including professionals working in internal medicine, pediatrics, oncology, and infectious disease, scored both the bot and the human answers on a five-point scale, assessing the "quality of information" and "the empathy or bedside manner" provided.

In the study, clinicians preferred the chatbot's response to the physician's in 78.6% of the 585 scenarios. The chatbot's responses were rated 3.6-times higher in quality and 9.8-times higher in empathy than those of the physicians. 

Empathy is a core skill that medical students are required to develop and feel. However, with increasing patient load and long working hours, the effect of this emotion might get diminished with time. This article will ponder upon the various causes that might result in reduced empathy among healthcare practitioners.

Why empathy matters in healthcare?
As per an international media outlet, empathy is associated with reduced patient pain, increased patient satisfaction and also prevents doctor burnout. Studies have found that empathy changes during the course of medical school. The change in levels of compassion and empathy is observed in the transition of medical students from a lecture- based model to the second phase of medical school which is more clinical and patient-oriented.

#EmpathyCircles: A highly effective #Empathy building practice. http://EmpathyCircle.com    
#EmpathyTraining: http://BestEmpathyTraining.com

by Jeremy Howick

Empathy is a core skill that medical students require. The General Medical Council, which sets the standards and outcomes for medical student education and training in the UK, says that empathy is central to their strategy.

However, a “hidden curriculum” in medical school can reduce medical student empathy. A new study, published in BMC Medical Education, is the first to systematically demonstrate why empathy declines during medical training and raises important questions about the priorities of current medical education.

Empathy is known to reduce patient pain and improve their satisfaction with care, and protects against doctor burnout. It’s also cost-effective according to a study that compared longer, empathic consultations with standard consultations.

#EmpathyCircles: A highly effective #Empathy building practice. http://EmpathyCircle.com    
#EmpathyTraining: http://BestEmpathyTraining.com

The role empathy plays in helping to improve patient satisfaction and reduce their pain is at the heart of a new healthcare research centre at the University of Leicester.

The Stoneygate Centre for Empathic Healthcare’s mission is to improve patients’ lives by pioneering a robust new approach to medical education and training that positions empathy at the heart of healthcare, fostering health and care services that are fit for the future....

Empathy is a core value in healthcare delivery, known to reduce pain experienced by patients, improve their satisfaction with care, and protect against doctor burnout. Yet levels of empathy in medical students declines significantly as their training progresses.

#EmpathyCircles: A highly effective #Empathy building practice. http://EmpathyCircle.com    
#EmpathyTraining: http://BestEmpathyTraining.com

Empathic care in medicine is associated with greater patient satisfaction, a new review has found.

“Patient satisfaction” is more than a fluffy metric that measures how satisfied “customers” are. Increased patient satisfaction is associated with, among other things, improved survival after heart attacks, a lower risk of being readmitted to hospital, higher general quality of care and better patient safety.

Empathic care is also associated with patients taking their drugs as prescribed, which itself improves patient outcomes.

This study aims to investigate the behavioral and neurophysiological changes accompanying the empathy for pain among individuals with insomnia in nonclinical samples, which has been scarcely explored in the existing literature despite the deleterious effects of sleep disturbance on social behavior, and interactions had been well-documented.

Jeremy Howick

Avoiding fatal patient safety failures requires “a more empathetic and collaborative approach from doctors”, the UK’s parliamentary and health service ombudsman, Rob Behrens, recently argued in The Times....

Evidence supports the idea that more empathy in hospitals and clinics – commonly taken to involve understanding and taking action – would reduce many persistent problems with patient care. As well as reducing patient complaints and medical errors, clinical trials have shown that if a healthcare professional shows empathy it can reduce pain (both chronic and acute) and post-operative morphine use, and improve immunity in post-operative patients.

According to the National Health Service (NHS), an estimated one in four adults in the UK experiences a mental health problem each year. This sobering statistic underscores the urgent need for dedicated, trained professionals in the field of mental healthcare. However, for those passionate about making a difference, the mental health sector presents a fulfilling and impactful career opportunity.

A career in mental health can span several disciplines, including psychiatry, psychology, nursing, social work, counselling, and more. As Professor Louis Appleby of the University of Manchester once said, "A mental health career is an opportunity to change lives - not just patients', but also your own." Profound, isn't it?

The Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA is pleased to present Semel Grand Rounds, our weekly educational conference featuring presentations on evidence-based clinical practices, cutting-edge insights from neuroscience, and the role of society in shaping mental health.

Building the Empathy Movement

http://TheEmpathyCenter.org
http://EmpathySummit.com
http://CultureOfEmpathy.com

http://EmpathyCircle.com

http://EmpathyTent.com

http://BestEmpathyTraining.com

A new study co-authored by Wharton’s Ingrid Nembhard finds that patients who are treated with empathy have better health outcomes. in this episode of the Knowledge at Wharton podcast, she explains why empathy in health care delivery should become standard.

 ChatGPT offers better and more empathetic advice than real doctors, and users prefer it to general practitioners (GPs), according to a new study. The research also suggests that AI assistants like ChatGPT could help reduce physicians’ workload in the future.

A medical panel preferred the AI chatbot’s responses to real doctors’ answers in eight out of 10 instances when both answered the same medical questions. The panel found ChatGPT’s responses to be 3.5 times more likely to be of superior quality and nearly 10 times as likely to be more empathetic than doctors’ responses. The study, conducted by researchers from the University of California San Diego School of Medicine, offers an early glimpse into the potential role of AI technology in the future of medicine

In this episode, we sit down with Stevan Walkowski, an osteopathic physician, to discuss the impact of technology on medicine and medical education.

Abstract
Background
Several studies suggest that medical student empathy declines throughout medical school. However, no studies have synthesised the evidence regarding why empathy declines.

Objective
To conduct a systematic review and thematic synthesis of qualitative studies investigating why student empathy may change throughout medical school.

Methods
We included any qualitative study that investigated why empathy might change during medical school. We searched the Medline, Scopus, CINAHL, ERIC, and APA PsycInfo databases for relevant studies. All databases were searched from their inception to 18 July 2022. 

#EmpathyCircles: A highly effective #Empathy building practice. http://EmpathyCircle.com    
#EmpathyTraining: http://BestEmpathyTraining.com