Dear All,
Empathy is rampant in healthcare setting and fairly on educational setting.
How true is this? And what does empathy mean to you as a professional?
Thank you for your decent reply.
Best regards.
Mariam
@Mariam;
I think Empathy might not simply sentimental but powerful in treatment.
What is powerful is, resonance between patient and therapist. Without which, our relationship can not exist and intractable mental illness can not be helped nor cured. So I think Existential analysis by Prof. Frankl became popular. All existence is made of vibration with fine matter, as well as fundamental particle.
Kaz
Dear Kazuo Oie,
True enough - empathy cannot be the sign of weaknesses, rather a reinforcement of one sentiment into helping the patient be cured and stronger cohesively. This boosted the therapists/physicians and patient relationship into a symbiotic and meaningful one. The end result is that the former feel great and the patient feels satisfied to follow the given regiment readily.
Thank you and best regards.
Mariam
Dear Mohan,
Thank you for your kind feedback.
Counsellors, doctors, lecturers in both healthcare and educational setting need to understand the situation and the person without confirmation bias first before proceeding with the treatment.
Indeed this does not come from apathy or sympathy but understanding the "distressed client" comment/complaint in order to effectively churn the right protocol to utilise.
Best regards.
Mariam
Dear Kazuo Oie,
Your pointers are encouraging enough for me to add some suggestions.
The honour is mine.
Thank you and best regards.
Mariam
The original question was "what does empathy mean to you as a professional?" I'm not sure why the question is being posed since there are formal definitions of the terms "empathy," "compassion," "sympathy," and "altruism." I think that what is critically important is whether a health professional is empathetic with his/her patients, i.e., can understand what they are feeling and experiencing, and whether the health professional can deliver compassionate care.
There is a large literature on various aspects of these subjects including some neurobiologic studies. It has been demonstrated that we are more likely to be empathetic towards persons who are similar to us vs. ones who are different. This is an important issue for health professionals to recognize consciously since we do have to provide good care to all who might be our patients.
There also is a literature on measuring/assessing empathy and on various methods of enhancing empathy in health professionals. I'm attaching one such publication, but it is only one.
Empathy is an intuition of the inner world of other people that emerges in the time of the mutual attendance. It is more than just a rational insight of existential problems, because the perfect empathy also involves mood and emotions. It can therefore be used to assist or manipulate the others.
When professors are promoted to managerial positions, they have a different meaning of empathy. They start doing things which they never liked in the first place when they were lecturing.
So does empathy change? or empathy turns to apathy.
any feedback?
See this recent New York Times opinion piece on the subject:
"Healing is replaced with treating, caring is supplanted by managing, and the art of listening is taken over by technological procedures.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/24/opinion/sunday/doctors-revolt-bernard-lown.html
Also Bernard Lown's 1999 book entitled 'The Lost Art of Healing: Practicing Compassion in Medicine' https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/104026/the-lost-art-of-healing-by-bernard-lown-md/9780345425973/
(Dr. Bernard Lown (1921 - ) is a world-renowned pioneer in cardiology.)
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