Volume 4 Issue 9 Sept 2014
EMPATHY HUNT!!
First of all, heartiest congratulations to previous editorial team of MINDS for successfully coming out with the revised edition of “Glimpses of psychiatry for Doctors and medical students”. Indeed a great work!!
Surprised? Let’s go and hunt what is most important yet often missing in a doctor-patient relationship.…
Empathy (Greek; em-into, pathos-feeling) is an emotional process through which we place ourselves in another person’s internal world and thereby experience that world vicariously. In short, empathy is being able ‘to walk in another’s shoes’ in an objective and non-judgmental way. (Note: It is not the same as sympathy, which is allowing the feelings to rule you). Human science emphasize that empathy is a necessary dimension of the work of a medical personnel which can increase their patient’s recovery, trust, coping skills, and compliance with therapy, while also enriching the doctor-patient experience.
Positive communication is a cornerstone in developing empathy. With noteworthy development of evidence based medicine, super specialties and various objective diagnostic tests, doctor patient relationship tends to fade away. Numbing of empathy for clients may cause experience of burnout among therapist and poor satisfaction in patients. Also when medicine as a field is viewed as business, doctors are motivated to quickly discharge patients to maximize hospital profits and to practice defensive medicine to avoid malpractice claims, thus spreading a belief in students that human contact is least important parameter in patient care.
Let’s learn to tickle our mirror neurons to relate cognitively and emotionally with others especially those in distresses to evolve as a ‘humane’ therapist…
Assistant Professor, MGMIHS, Navi Mumbai
