Teaching Empathy In Healthcare

Empathy is essential to effectively engaging patients as partners in care. Clinicians’ empathy is increasingly understood as a professional competency, a mode and process of relating that can be learned and taught. Communication and empathy training are penetrating healthcare professions curricula as knowledge about the most effective modalities to train, maintain, and deepen empathy grows. This book draws on a wide range of contributors across many disciplines, and takes an evidence-based and longitudinal approach to clinical empathy education. It takes the reader on an engaging journey from understanding what empathy is (and how it can be measured), to approaches to empathy education informed by those understandings. It elaborates the benefits of embedding empathy training in graduate and post-graduate curricula and the importance of teaching empathy in accord with the clinician’s stage of professional development. Finally, it examines systemic perspectives on empathy and empathy education in the clinical setting, addressing issues such as equity, stigma, and law. Each section is full of the latest evidence-based research, including, notably, the advances that have been made over recent decades in the neurobiology of empathy. Perspectives among the interdisciplinary chapters include: Neurobiology of empathy Measuring empathy in healthcare Teaching clinicians about affect Teaching cultural humility: Understanding the core of others by reflecting on ours Empathy and implicit bias: Can empathy training improve equity? Teaching Empathy in Healthcare: Building a New Core Competency takes an innovative and comprehensive approach towards a developed understanding of empathy in the clinical context. This evidence-based book is set to become a classic text on the topic of empathy in healthcare settings, and will appeal to a broad readership of clinicians, educators, and researchers in clinical medicine, neuroscience, behavioral health, and the social sciences, leaders in educational and professional organizations, and anyone interested in the healthcare services they utilize.

In this thorough revision, updating, and expansion of his great 2007 book, Empathy in Patient Care, Professor Hojat offers all of us in healthcare education an uplifting magnum opus that is sure to greatly enhance how we conceptualize, measure, and teach the central professional virtue of empathy. Hojat’s new Empathy in Health Professions Education and Patient Care provides students and professionals across healthcare with the most scientifically rigorous, conceptually vivid, and comprehensive statement ever produced proving once and for all what we all know intuitively – empathy is healing both for those who receive it and for those who give it. This book is filled with great science, great philosophizing, and great ‘how to’ approaches to education. Every student and practitioner in healthcare today should read this and keep it by the bedside in a permanent place of honor. Stephen G Post, Ph.D., Professor of Preventive Medicine, and Founding Director of the Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care, and Bioethics, School of Medicine, Stony Brook University Dr. Hojat has provided, in this new edition, a definitive resource for the evolving area of empathy research and education. For those engaged in medical student or resident education and especially for those dedicated to efforts to improve the patient experience, this book is a treasure trove of primary work in the field of empathy. Leonard H. Calabrese, D.O., Professor of Medicine, Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University The latest edition of Empathy in Health Professions Education and Patient Care grounds the clinical art of empathic caring in the newly recognized contributions of brain imagery and social cognitive neuroscience. Furthermore, it updates the accumulating empirical evidence for the clinical effects of empathy that has been facilitated by the widespread use of the Jefferson Scale of Empathy, a generative contribution to clinical research by this book’s author. In addition, the book is so coherently structured that each chapter contributes to an overall understanding of empathy, while also covering its subject so well that it could stand alone. This makes Empathy in Health Professions Education and Patient Care an excellent choice for clinicians, students, educators and researchers. Herbert Adler, M.D., Ph.D. Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior,Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University It is my firm belief that empathy as defined and assessed by Dr. Hojat in his seminal book has far reaching implications for other areas of human interaction including business, management, government, economics, and international relations. Amir H. Mehryar, Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of Behavioral Sciences and Population Studies, Institute for Research and Training in Management and Planning, Tehran, Iran

Suitable as a text for medical humanities courses and for a much wider readership, Peter Barritt has brought together a collection of ideas, thoughts and references to illustrate how considering the arts develops a more human approach to medicine.

This timely book provides a focused approach for developing a challenging yet vital and necessary area for professional success in health care practitioners -- the development of professional behaviors. It addresses the essential elements that are necessary to perform professionally in society, such as dependability, professional presentation, initiative, empathy, and cooperation. These behaviors are developed through the recognition of skills, practice, experience, role mentorship, and evaluative feedback. The issues of professional behavior are directed specifically toward the health care professional. Emphasizing the importance of these behaviors in students can only help to strengthen them for professional roles. This book utilizes case vignettes, structured learning activities and exercises, and self-reflection and evaluation techniques. It helps to define what professionalism means, and presents strategies to enhance its development. Features Professional Development Assessment. Case Vignettes, Activities, and Exercises. Structured Activities for Professional Behaviors.

Human beings, regardless of age, sex, or state of health, are designed by evolution to form meaningful interpersonal relationships through verbal and nonverbal communication. The theme that empathic human connections are beneficial to the body and mind underlies all 12 chapters of this book, in which empathy is viewed from a multidisciplinary perspective that includes evolutionary biology; neuropsychology; clinical, social, developmental, and educational psychology; and health care delivery and education.

This book investigates new insights into the factors influencing empathy in medical students. Addressing the widely perceived empathy gap in teaching and medical practice, the book presents a new study into how this emotion is facilitated in the UK undergraduate medical curriculum, and its influence on doctor-patient relationships. The author utilises Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to investigate how medical students’ perspective on empathy changed throughout their education. It presents the risks students perceive when connecting emotionally with patients; their use of detachment as a taught coping mechanism; and the question of how they regulate their emotions. The book reveals the tension between students’ connection with and detachment from a patient and their aim to achieve an appropriate balance. The author presents a number of factors which seem to enhance empathy, and explores the balance of scientific biomedical versus psychosocial approaches in medical training. In contrast to the commonly-reported opinion that there has been decline in medical students’ empathy, this book contends that student empathy in fact increased during their training. This new study offers invaluable insight into how students and practitioners may be supported in dealing appropriately with their emotions as well as with those of their patients, thereby facilitating more humane medical care.

This book explores the importance of compassion and empathy within educational contexts. While compassion and empathy are widely recognised as key to living a happy and healthy life, there is little written about how these qualities can be taught to children and young people, or how teachers can model these traits in their own practice. This book shares several models of compassion and empathy that can be implemented in schooling contexts, also examining how these qualities are presented in children’s picture books, films and games. The editors and contributors share personal insights and practical approaches to improve both awareness and use of compassionate and empathetic approaches to others. This book will be of interest and value to all those interested in promoting compassion and empathy within education.

This highly practical, user-friendly guide is based on a broad definition of relational empathy in the clinical context. With a clear focus on understanding the patient's situation, perspective and feelings, and communicating and acting on that understanding in beneficial way, the book establishes the flexible, person-centred CARE Approach.Connecti