Empathy – It’s Not Just For The Good Times
Source:
Jodi Halpern, Empathy and Patient–Physician Conflicts, Journal of General Internal Medicine Vol 22, No 5/May, 2007, 696-700.
Dealing With Patient-Clinician Conflict
The author points out that clinicians have a penchant for thinking of empathy as operative only in those relationships with patients that are successful and marked by a tone of mutuality when empathy is even more important in dealing with problematic relationships, especially when anger is present on both sides.
This article goes on to define empathy as engaged curiosity about another’s particular emotional perspective and to describe five methods for fostering empathy when dealing with conflicts with patients.
- Recognizing one’s own emotions
- Attending to negative emotions over time
- Attuning to patients’ verbal
- Recognizing nonverbal emotional messages
- Becoming receptive to negative feedback
Commentary
While the specific recommendations appear, at on the surface, to be too simplistic to resolve the more complex contretemps that can exist between patient and physician, they are, at the least, steps in the right direction. Moreover, the author’s pointed reminder that empathy is a tool to be used rather than a description of a relationship’s mood is invaluable.
Finally, contentiousness between patient and clinician must result in resolution rather than a Pyrrhic victory for one side or another, especially since noncompliance is the likely attendant outcome.
This s a brief, well constructed paper that offers almost immediate returns on the reading. I recommend it not only to clinicians but to patients with chronic conditions whose health or even life may depend of their skills in negotiating with their doctors.