Empathy In Health Care Essay

474 Words1 Page

Empathy is extremely important in healthcare professions. Empathy is being able to identify what emotion a patient is feeling as well as being able to know how that specific emotion feels. (Halpern, 2003) Patients have a better response to empathy than to sympathy. (Shane Sinclair, 2017) Patients who feel that their healthcare practitioner not just knows their emotions but, actually knows what it feels like to experience them, place more trust in them. (Halpern, 2003) This is a critical part of treatment, without that patient-practitioner trust, it becomes seemingly more difficult to treat patients. Patients that trusts their practitioners are more open about their history, making diagnoses as well as treatment simpler. (Halpern, 2003) If the …show more content…

(Halpern, 2003) In conjunction with the improvement of their therapy it also reduces patient’s anxiety. (Hirsch, 2007) There has been results that show that patients who suffer from diabetes mellitus can control their blood glucose levels more because they see a health care practitioner who shows a lot of empathy. (Brett Williams, 2015) Empathy is an important skill to have when communicating with patients because this way the patient is placed as the most important part of the equation, not the disease or the treatment thereof. Essentially patient-centred care is being practiced. (Brett Williams, 2015) A study has shown that compassion is the favoured type of patient care. For the healthcare practitioner does not just show empathy, they also go above and beyond for their patients. (Shane Sinclair, 2017) Empathy can also be satisfying for the healthcare practitioner. (Garden, 2009) A good practitioner should find a balance between empathy and when to focus on the task at hand. For instance a doctor should be empathetic when discussing a patient’s diagnosis, but if said patient requires surgery, the doctor should be solemnly focused on the

Open Document