Articles: empathy.
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Empathic connection with one's patients is essential to genetic counselor clinical practice. However, repeatedly engaging with distressed patients may cause compassion fatigue, a phenomenon characterized as feeling overwhelmed by experiencing patients' suffering. In order to extend findings of an initial qualitative study, we surveyed 222 genetic counselors about their compassion fatigue and factors that predict its occurrence. ⋯ Respondents at higher risk of compassion fatigue were more likely to report being burned out, using self-criticism and giving up to manage stress, experiencing a greater variety of distressing clinical events, having larger patient caseloads, relying on religion as a coping strategy, having no children, and seeking support to manage stress. Respondents also provided critical incidents regarding their compassion fatigue and themes in these incidents are described. Practice and research recommendations are provided.
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Empathy is important in patient-physician communication and is associated with improved patient satisfaction and adherence to physicians' recommendations. ⋯ Physicians rarely responded empathically to the concerns raised by patients with lung cancer, and empathic responses that did occur were more frequently in the last third of the encounter. Our results may provide a typologic approach to help physicians recognize empathic opportunities and with further development may aid in improving physicians' communication skills.
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Multicenter Study
Empathy and life support decisions in intensive care units.
Although experts advocate that physicians should express empathy to support family members faced with difficult end-of-life decisions for incapacitated patients, it is unknown whether and how this occurs in practice. ⋯ Physicians vary considerably in the extent to which they express empathy to surrogates during deliberations about life support, with no empathic statements in one-third of conferences. There is an association between more empathic statements and higher family satisfaction with communication.
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To report how patient viewpoints on caring inform curriculum development for teaching sessions on delivering bad news, making the transition to palliative care, and communicating about a medical error. ⋯ Teaching caring attitudes with challenging communication tasks requires that learners appreciate and value not only caring behaviors but also learn the process by which they must adjust and titrate their actions to meet patient needs.
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In communicating with patients, especially patients receiving palliative care, empathy plays an important role. Little research has as yet been conducted into the development of the empathetic capacity of nursing students at various educational levels. An instrument that may be suitable for such research is the Staff-Patient Interaction Response Scale for Palliative Care Nursing (SPIRS-PCN). ⋯ The homogeneity (Cronbach's alpha = .80) and interrater reliability (.74) of the instrument were adequate. We conclude that validity of the SPIRS-PCN was partially supported, whereas reliability was demonstrated. The instrument is feasible in educational situations; we recommend further research into the instrument's validity, especially in the progression of students' scores during the study program.