Expression of Empathy Towards Patients in the Healthcare Industry

Communication as a concept in and of itself, has possibly been around since life began on Earth. As defined, communication is the development and exchanging meaning from one group to another. There are two forms of communication in which meanings can be exchanged: verbally and nonverbally. Verbal communication can be either oral or written; a message is transmitted through a sender by means of signs and symbols. Nonverbal communication consists of body language such as facial expressions, posture and gestures, eye contact, tone of voice, contact, and time. Empathy is the ability to place yourself in someone else's shoes. The concept of empathy is expressed through communication. It ultimately allows you to better understand the other person by getting to know their perspective. Empathy is the experience of understanding another person's thoughts, feelings, and condition from their point of view. There are generally three categories of empathy: cognitive, emotional, and compassionate. Cognitive empathy is the ability to understand how a person feels and what they might be thinking. Emotional empathy is the ability to share the feelings of another person; it can manifest itself through physical responses of other people’s emotions. Compassionate empathy promotes feeling concern for someone, but also includes taking action to help the person.

These two amalgamations of communication and empathy serve a very important role in healthcare settings. Communication is important because it can lead to building a successful organization. Empathy is important because it helps us understand how others are feeling so we can respond appropriately to the situation. Effective communication which can convey empathy and compassion, in healthcare, promotes the ability to understand patients' feelings and facilitate a more accurate diagnosis and more caring treatment. Communication through empathy plays vital roles in the patient experience and are key components of the physician-patient relationship. In the primary research article, “Role of empathy in the perception of medical errors in patient encounters: a preliminary study,” the authors touch upon the correlation between a healthcare provider’s sense of empathy when interacting with a patient and how less or more likely for a patient to perceive medical errors. It was hypothesized that the greater the empathy shown by providers, the greater the chances are the patient will follow medical advice and follow treatment (Hannan 2).

A survey was conducted to provide the results of the test. This anonymous survey was administered to nursing and undergraduate psychology students at Florida International University as well as healthcare professionals and staff at Federally Qualified Health Center in Florida. In order to determine the patient’s thoughts of how well their healthcare provider displayed some sort of compassion or empathy the CARE measures was used. This method of measuring abstract through listening out means in which a physician’s empathy could be measured in. Each item on the list would be weighed by the patient on a 5-point scale, 1 being excellent and 5 being poor. So, a high empathetic score usually ranged between 10-30, with a low score ranging between 41-50. The patients were asked to think about their last treatment by a healthcare provider and if they followed the medical advice allocated to them and or returned to the same provider. They were also questioned whether or not the provider made any medical errors or malpractice. A medical error is considered to be “a failure in the process of care that could have been prevented” (20). Malpractice is improper, illegal, or negligent professional activity or treatment, which is often confused to be dissatisfactory encounters. The results derived from the surveys were not surprising.

From the results, patients were divided into separate groups which indicated the level of empathy score the rated in accordance to the provider. The statistical and analytical data, researchers were able to classify who follow-through with provider’s recommendations, intended to return and, the perception of a medical error. The mean score of the CARE test from the pool of 181 participants resulted at a 38.99, which is representative of a high empathy score. The resulting data showed, “Participants who rated their provider as having high empathy, as compared to those who rated them as having low empathy, had 80% lower odds of reporting medical error (CI 0.04–0.6) and had 220% higher odds of follow through with provider’s recommendations (CI 0.8–5.8)” (3). The survey provided an optional description box to the participants to express in words how well or badly their experience was with their providers. It was typically seen that mostly patients who experience empathy from their physicians wrote in the box and expressed how joyed they were with their experience. Providers who were scored with low empathetic scores displayed less positive patient results (4). There is a desperate need to integrate training and reinforcement of empathy as one of the main focuses in patient care to improve the quality of care and reduce medical errors.

The article clearly establishes the need to address the connection between empathy and patient health outcomes. Great patient care goes beyond checking off boxes, making diagnosis, and providing the best medical routes. Great patient care involves communication, specifically empathy. Empathy promotes social behaviors and behaviors that provoke helpfulness. Cognitive empathy helps improve interpersonal communication through be able to adjust information so that it can be perceived properly by the person being addressed. Emotional empathy builds emotional bridges with all people. Compassionate empathy promotes action. Compassionate empathy can be seen as the most genuine type of empathy because it is more than just understanding what another person is going through, but also sharing their feelings. Compassionate empathy prompts a person to freely go out of their way to provide the best for others.

Empathy can encourage patients to be motivated to follow medical advice. People want to do better for themselves when they believe they are being felt as though they are being heard and genuinely cared for. Healthcare professionals who practice empathy can reduce their risk of medical errors by thinking through the decision-making process to have the patient’s best interest at heart; practicing this can help assess alternative course of actions. Professionals who exhibit empathy can alter patient’s attitudes to make them less frustrated and more calm. Healthcare professionals need to adopt empathy into their everyday patient interactions. It can increase optum patient care and decrease medical mistakes. The findings serve as very important information for healthcare professionals.