The Role of Empathy in Health and Social Care Professionals

Abstract

The current article is an integrative and analytical literature review on the concept and meaning of empathy in health and social care professionals. Empathy, i.e., the ability to understand the personal experience of the patient without bonding with them, constitutes an important communication skill for a health professional, one that includes three dimensions: the emotional, cognitive, and behavioral. It has been proven that health professionals with high levels of empathy operate more efficiently as to the fulfillment of their role in eliciting therapeutic change. The empathetic professional comprehends the needs of the health care users, as the latter feel safe to express the thoughts and problems that concern them. Although the importance of empathy is undeniable, a significantly high percentage of health professionals seem to find it difficult to adopt a model of empathetic communication in their everyday practice. Some of the factors that negatively influence the development of empathy are the high number of patients that professionals have to manage, the lack of adequate time, the focus on therapy within the existing academic culture, but also the lack of education in empathy. Developing empathetic skills should not only be the underlying objective in the teaching process of health and social care undergraduate students, but also the subject of the lifelong and continuous education of professionals.

Effect of Anxiety on Empathy: An Observational Study Among Nurses

“…An important result obtained in this study is the high level of anxiety that has been detected: 6.38 points while the mean measure in Spanish population is 5.5 points [34]. This result is in accordance with other research showing that the prevalence of anxiety in nurses is higher than in the whole population, indicating that registered staff nurses as a collective come under different kinds of pressure related with their clinical activity [27,29,31] that finally predispose to mildly alterations like anxiety [22,40,41]. These findings coincide with our second research hypothesis in which staff nurses are a collective with a high values of personal traits related with anxiety management.…”

“…These data suggest that staff nurses are affable, cooperative and that enjoys the company of others and receptive to other points of view and opinions, characteristics that have a very specific bearing on the role of nurses over the patients' care [44]. This result is according to previous studies which have identify nurses as empathic people [16,31]. These findings coincide with our first research hypothesis in which staff nurses are a collective with a high personal traits related with empathy.…”

“…Therefore, organization policies need to promote not only management and leadership competencies among nurses but also specific training skills to deal, understand, and perceive signs and symptoms of anxiety, having in mind that anxiety is associated with burnout in the work environment [40,56]. Similarly, the development and implementation of continuous and personal development educational methods to reinforcement empathy, like role-play or simulation games, are also essential as a basic competence among nurses [31]. The implementation of these policies helps to ensure the best physical and psychological conditions for nurses, facilitating the well-being of nurses inside and outside the work environment.…”

“…On the one side, nurses in the oncology and palliative care units would certainly view their patients with compassion, and the anxiety would be expressed as caring for pain and comfort needs, while in the emergency department, anxiety relates to workload, timing, and priorities [30]. Several authors believe that the majority of the stressors prevalent among nursing professionals have to do with external factors, such as lack of suitable working logistics, time pressure, lack of appropriate clinical training, or organizational difficulties [27,[29][30][31].…”

<p>Male Nurses’ Dealing with Tensions and Conflicts with Patients and Physicians: A Theoretically Framed Analysis</p>

“…Perspective-taking was the empathy capability and previous studies portrayed empathy as a feminine virtue. 31 This study showed that being empathetic can be a masculine feature. Recent studies also revealed patients' satisfaction with male nurses' being empathetic.…”