Trust and mutual understanding between the healthcare professional and the patient can be developed by following the important features of empathy such as listening and communication. Healthcare requires that the professionals understand the considerations and emotional state of the patients. To ensure that the problems of the patients are understood the providers must convey their understanding back to the patients. Some factors of listening that relate to empathy are paraphrasing, responding with positive body language, and finally, summarizing the facts collected by the patient. The information provided by the patients would be related to their illness and the way they feel about it; emotions flow high during this period and they expect empathy for their helpless situation, which the physicians can provide by listening and communicating well.
Expressing empathy is more of providing moral support. It is vital to understand the emotional state of the patient. It is essential for the healthcare staff to attempt to imagine the experiences of the other person. Empathy is expressed through the emotions in terms of sorrow, enthusiasm, unhappiness, and agony. Empathy must be an expression and an effort to understand each other and to feel the things in the similar manner. It is also important that the healthcare professionals participate in the sensitive experiences of the patient and still do not get involved into it completely. Apart from associating the experiences of the healthcare professionals they must also link thoughts that are touching, sensory and practical.
Response to Student 1:
In the busy schedules of the healthcare professionals it is necessary for them to allocate time to the patients and listen to them. The other person should always be allowed to speak about him or herself. Pseudo empathy can be easily identified through the body language if the professional is not listening and expressing genuine heartfelt concern is mandatory in expressing empathy.
Response to Student 2:
Patients find themselves physically and mentally weak when they are ill. If the healthcare professionals provide them with harsh experience in such conditions then the patients will be more depressed. I completely agree that empathy is a basic necessity in any relationship and not only in healthcare. Empathy is different from sympathy and it is rightly understood that empathy must be non-judgmental to provide better results.
