A consideration on empathy required for healthcare professionals

Abstract

Healthcare professionals are exposed to various feelings expressed by patients and their families, and they are required to adequately respond to them. As a result, healthcare professionals have the potential to suffer from a variety of negative psychological responses, which have been described in such terms as burnout, compassion fatigue, and secondary traumatic stress. To avoid such adverse effects, in the past, a professional attitude known as “detached concern,” which means maintaining an emotional distance from the patient while retaining cognitive empathy for them, was recommended. On the other hand, recent studies have reported that healthcare professionals’ emotional empathy leads to better treatment outcomes in addition to the enhancement of patient-healthcare provider relationships and their sense of satisfaction. While these findings promote educational interventions that could be used to cultivate healthcare providers’ empathy, it should not be forgetten to include countermeasures against negative psychological responses from which the providers could suffer. This report provides some ideas about current problems and future issues on clinical empathy after reviewing previous findings related to this subject.