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Empathy and quality of care.

TLDR
Empathy is a complex multi-dimensional concept that has moral cognitive emotive and behavioural components and studies in mental health and in nursing suggest it plays a key role.
Abstract
Empathy is a complex multi-dimensional concept that has moral cognitive emotive and behavioural components Clinical empathy involves an ability to: (a) understand the patient's situation, perspective, and feelings (and their attached meanings); (b) to communicate that understanding and check its accuracy; and (c) to act on that understanding with the patient in a helpful (therapeutic) way. Research on the effect of empathy on health outcomes in primary care is lacking, but studies in mental health and in nursing suggest it plays a key role. Empathy can be improved and successfully taught at medical school especially if it is embedded in the students actual experiences with patients. A variety of assessment and feedback techniques have also been used in general medicine psychiatry and nursing. Further work is required to determine if clinical empathy needs to be, and can be, improved in the primary care setting.

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Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI

Empathy decline and its reasons: a systematic review of studies with medical students and residents.

TL;DR: The results of the reviewed studies suggest that empathy decline during medical school and residency compromises striving toward professionalism and may threaten health care quality.
Journal ArticleDOI

The consultation and relational empathy (CARE) measure: development and preliminary validation and reliability of an empathy-based consultation process measure

TL;DR: Preliminary results support the validity and reliability of the CARE measure as a tool for measuring patients' perceptions of relational empathy in the consultation.
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Effectiveness of empathy in general practice: a systematic review

TL;DR: There is a good correlation between physician empathy and patient satisfaction and a direct positive relationship with strengthening patient enablement, and empathy lowers patients' anxiety and distress and delivers significantly better clinical outcomes.
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A cross-sectional measurement of medical student empathy.

TL;DR: Empathy scores of students in the preclinical years were higher than in the clinical years, and efforts are needed to determine whether differences in empathy scores among the classes are cohort effects or represent changes occurring in the course of medical education.
Journal ArticleDOI

Educating for empathy

TL;DR: These studies indicate that empathy may be amenable to positive change with a range of interventional strategies, and larger studies using validated measurement tools are recommended.
References
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Influence of context effects on health outcomes: a systematic review.

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TL;DR: Primary care communication patterns range from narrowly biomedical to consumerist patterns and parallel the ideal forms of patient-physician relationships described in the literature.
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The Effect of Physician Behavior on the Collection of Data

TL;DR: Doctors play an active role in regulating the quantity of information elicited at the beginning of the clinical encounter, and use closed-ended questioning to control the discourse, resulting in the premature interruption of patients.
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