CLINICAL EMPATHY

Unlike sympathy, which is defined as feeling sorry for another person, empathy is an ability to stand in another person’s shoes and  to understand his situation. Not only our private relationships but also professional conversations require more empathy than sympathy inasmuch as feeling sorry for others does not help them. Especially, in hospitals and in doctor-patient relationships, clinical empathy is essential because in this way, doctors desire to help patients. Additionally, empathy is necessary to establish trust; it is also the foundation of a good doctor-patient relationship. Sometimes, doctors can affect patients’ life innocuously but unfortunately, they can also influence their lives deeply and badly in a serious situation without empathy. So, being a good doctor requires understanding patients; it is not just about science. For these reasons, learning and using empathy is very important for patients’ and doctors’ lives.

First of all, doctors affect a lot of important situations in patients’ lives both with their treatment and behaviour. Moreover, as long as a patient feels his doctor’s support, he will come around easily; even if the patient’s disease is fatal, and these supportive attitudes decrease the patients’ depression. It is assumed that doctors’ answers should include more information to alleviate patients' distress but contrary to common belief, these approaches just distress them because bombarding patients with information does not alleviate their anxiety. Creating worries for patients is one of the major shortcomings of bombarding them with information. If patients understand the situation  better, they will come around quickly. In some cases, both patients and their families are affected by doctors’ attitudes deeply because these families are already worried about patients’ health and they need doctors to show empathy, hence doctors’ attitudes are very important.

Everything which affects patients’ life, also influences doctors’ life, being a good doctor requires good relationships with  patients; furthermore, studies have linked empathy to greater patient satisfaction, better outcomes and decreased physician burnout. We can clearly infer the importance of empathy in this research. Considering the importance of understanding patients provides compassionate care, and empathy also helps establish stronger bonds between doctors and patients. Additionally giving importance to patients’ life stories alters doctors’ attitudes towards  them. Some doctors cannot empathize, that’s why; all  doctors should take courses about empathy. To exemplify these courses’ contents; most of the courses are focused on improving doctors’ listening skills and ability to decode facial expressions and body language; some programs also use actors as patients in order to  simulate these relationships. Some courses are explicitly prescriptive; make eye contact with patient, pay attention to the tone of voice, etc. whether doctors can empathize or not, they should attend these kinds of courses to learn to empathize in  the right  way.

In brief, empathy is the basic bond in the doctor-patient relationship; therefore, doctors should give importance to empathy and should take empathy courses. Empathy makes patients’ happier and it helps them to come around easily, so doctors become more successful in their career. Without empathy, life is not comfortable either for the patient or for the doctors.