Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
25
result(s) for
"Riess, Helen"
Sort by:
The empathy effect : seven neuroscience-based keys for transforming the way we live, love, work, and connect across differences
\"A neuroscience-based view that argues not only that empathy is necessary for our personal happiness and planetary survival, but its essential components, how to gain them, and how to use them in any circumstance\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
The Science of Empathy
Empathy plays a critical interpersonal and societal role, enabling sharing of experiences, needs, and desires between individuals and providing an emotional bridge that promotes pro-social behavior. This capacity requires an exquisite interplay of neural networks and enables us to perceive the emotions of others, resonate with them emotionally and cognitively, to take in the perspective of others, and to distinguish between our own and others’ emotions. Studies show empathy declines during medical training. Without targeted interventions, uncompassionate care and treatment devoid of empathy, results in patients who are dissatisfied. They are then much less likely to follow through with treatment recommendations, resulting in poorer health outcomes and damaged trust in health providers. Cognitive empathy must play a role when a lack of emotional empathy exists because of racial, ethnic, religious, or physical differences. Healthcare settings are no exception to conscious and unconscious biases, and there is no place for discrimination or unequal care afforded to patients who differ from the majority culture or the majority culture of healthcare providers. Much work lies ahead to make healthcare equitable for givers and receivers of healthcare from all cultures. Self- and other-empathy leads to replenishment and renewal of a vital human capacity. If we are to move in the direction of a more empathic society and a more compassionate world, it is clear that working to enhance our native capacities to empathize is critical to strengthening individual, community, national, and international bonds.
Journal Article
The Influence of the Patient-Clinician Relationship on Healthcare Outcomes: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials
To determine whether the patient-clinician relationship has a beneficial effect on either objective or validated subjective healthcare outcomes.
Systematic review and meta-analysis.
Electronic databases EMBASE and MEDLINE and the reference sections of previous reviews.
Included studies were randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in adult patients in which the patient-clinician relationship was systematically manipulated and healthcare outcomes were either objective (e.g., blood pressure) or validated subjective measures (e.g., pain scores). Studies were excluded if the encounter was a routine physical, or a mental health or substance abuse visit; if the outcome was an intermediate outcome such as patient satisfaction or adherence to treatment; if the patient-clinician relationship was manipulated solely by intervening with patients; or if the duration of the clinical encounter was unequal across conditions.
Thirteen RCTs met eligibility criteria. Observed effect sizes for the individual studies ranged from d = -.23 to .66. Using a random-effects model, the estimate of the overall effect size was small (d = .11), but statistically significant (p = .02).
This systematic review and meta-analysis of RCTs suggests that the patient-clinician relationship has a small, but statistically significant effect on healthcare outcomes. Given that relatively few RCTs met our eligibility criteria, and that the majority of these trials were not specifically designed to test the effect of the patient-clinician relationship on healthcare outcomes, we conclude with a call for more research on this important topic.
Journal Article
Empathy Training for Resident Physicians: A Randomized Controlled Trial of a Neuroscience-Informed Curriculum
Background
Physician empathy is an essential attribute of the patient–physician relationship and is associated with better outcomes, greater patient safety and fewer malpractice claims.
Objective
We tested whether an innovative empathy training protocol grounded in neuroscience could improve physician empathy as rated by patients.
Design
Randomized controlled trial.
Intervention
We randomly assigned residents and fellows from surgery, medicine, anesthesiology, psychiatry, ophthalmology, and orthopedics (N = 99, 52% female, mean age 30.6 ± 3.6) to receive standard post-graduate medical education or education augmented with three 60-minute empathy training modules.
Main Measure
Patient ratings of physician empathy were assessed within one-month pre-training and between 1–2 months post-training with the use of the Consultation and Relational Empathy (CARE) measure. Each physician was rated by multiple patients (pre-mean = 4.6 ± 3.1; post-mean 4.9 ± 2.5), who were blinded to physician randomization. The primary outcome was change score on the patient-rated CARE.
Key Results
The empathy training group showed greater changes in patient-rated CARE scores than the control (difference 2.2; P = 0.04). Trained physicians also showed greater changes in knowledge of the neurobiology of empathy (difference 1.8; P < 0.001) and in ability to decode facial expressions of emotion (difference 1.9; P < 0.001).
Conclusions
A brief intervention grounded in the neurobiology of empathy significantly improved physician empathy as rated by patients, suggesting that the quality of care in medicine could be improved by integrating the neuroscience of empathy into medical education.
Journal Article
Empathic nonverbal behavior increases ratings of both warmth and competence in a medical context
In medicine, it is critical that clinicians demonstrate both empathy (perceived as warmth) and competence. Perceptions of these qualities are often intuitive and are based on nonverbal behavior. Emphasizing both warmth and competence may prove problematic, however, because there is evidence that they are inversely related in other settings. We hypothesize that perceptions of physician competence will instead be positively correlated with perceptions of physician warmth and empathy, potentially due to changing conceptions of the physician's role. We test this hypothesis in an analog medical context using a large online sample, manipulating physician nonverbal behaviors suggested to communicate empathy (e.g. eye contact) and competence (the physician's white coat). Participants rated physicians displaying empathic nonverbal behavior as more empathic, warm, and more competent than physicians displaying unempathic nonverbal behavior, adjusting for mood. We found no warmth/competence tradeoff and, additionally, no significant effects of the white coat. Further, compared with male participants, female participants perceived physicians displaying unempathic nonverbal behavior as less empathic. Given the significant consequences of clinician empathy, it is important for clinicians to learn how nonverbal behavior contributes to perceptions of warmth, and use it as another tool to improve their patients' emotional and physical health.
Journal Article
Empathy can be taught and learned with evidence-based education
Empathy is a reigning topic in healthcare because of its relationship to the aims of medical practice: improved health outcomes1 adherence to treatment recommendations, improved quality of care and improved patient and provider experience.2 At the same time, empathy reduces clinician burnout by providing meaningful connection with patients and alignment with the purpose of the medical profession: to reduce suffering and enhance well-being3 while also reducing the risk of medical errors and malpractice claims.4
Journal Article
Physician Burnout: Coaching a Way Out
ABSTRACT
Twenty-five to sixty percent of physicians report burnout across all specialties. Changes in the healthcare environment have created marked and growing external pressures. In addition, physicians are predisposed to burnout due to internal traits such as compulsiveness, guilt, and self-denial, and a medical culture that emphasizes perfectionism, denial of personal vulnerability, and delayed gratification. Professional coaching, long utilized in the business world, provides a results-oriented and stigma-free method to address burnout, primarily by increasing one’s internal locus of control. Coaching enhances self-awareness, drawing on individual strengths, questioning self-defeating thoughts and beliefs, examining new perspectives, and aligning personal values with professional duties. Coaching utilizes established techniques to increase one’s sense of accomplishment, purpose, and engagement, all critical in ameliorating burnout. Coaching presumes that the client already possesses strengths and skills to handle life’s challenges, but is not accessing them maximally. Although an evidence base is not yet established, the theoretical basis of coaching’s efficacy derives from the fields of positive psychology, mindfulness, and self-determination theory. Using a case example, this article demonstrates the potential of professional coaching to address physician burnout.
Journal Article
Institutional Resilience: The Foundation for Individual Resilience, Especially During COVID-19
In the protracted healthcare crisis that the COVID-19 pandemic has become, healthcare professional wellness and resilience are a national concern. Physicians, nurses and medical staff have been profoundly negatively affected due to the inability of institutions to prepare for this pandemic. Institutional fixed point standards such as Eudaemonics, Inherent Value, and Amplifying Assumptions are essential to make it possible to steer an organizational course during a crisis. Fixed point standards must be embedded in hospitals and systems so they are positioned to do the most good. Employees must feel safe, valued and cared for always, so they can be resilient when crises strike. The best way to do that is by viewing the healthcare professionals through the lens of empathy. Institutional values of safety, access to accurate and caring information, human connection, and emphasis on mental health, are hallmarks of resilient organizations and will result in resilient individuals.
Journal Article
Empathy across cultures – one size does not fit all: from the ego-logical to the eco-logical of relational empathy
Empathy is extolled in Western healthcare and medical education as an exemplary quality to cultivate in trainees and providers. Yet it remains an elusive and inadequately understood attribute. It posits a “one size fits all” unidimensional attribute applicable across contexts with scant attention given to its multifaceted dimensions in intercultural contexts. In this article, we uncloak the shortcomings of this conventional empathy in intercultural settings, and instead propound an expanded “relational empathy”.
Journal Article