Digital Narrative Medicine » empathy

Medical students need to learn the potent medicine of empathy

Emanuela Valente — Fri, 07 Oct 2016 10:08:43 +0000

A few years ago at a large teaching hospital in Texas, a medical resident asked a nurse how to order an autopsy for a patient they were currently treating. It was a reasonable request. Autopsies help further the understanding of disease. There was just one problem: their patient, who was very much alive, was lying nearby. He’d overhead the request, and that’s how he found out he was soon going to die.

Articolo di Wolfgang Gilliar su StatNews

This story illustrates a broader crisis in medical education. Today, most schools myopically focus on turning out technicians. Through textbooks, lab experiments, and lectures, budding doctors learn the hard science of medicine. They memorize body parts, processes, and conditions, then dutifully demonstrate their knowledge in high-stake examinations.

This purely technical approach can obscure the human side of medicine and erode empathy — the ability to understand and care about what makes a patient tick. In fact, the empathy levels of medical students actually decline as they progress through school. Many become emotionally disengaged from the people they’re caring for — and that disconnect can impair care.

Forging a strong emotional connection with a patient can be just as important to the healing process as prescribing the right drugs or performing the right surgery. A 2012 study published in the journal Academic Medicine found that the rates of serious complications among diabetic patients were almost 50 percent lower among those whose doctors had high empathy levels compared to those whose doctors had low levels. Improving physician empathy has been shown to help overweight individuals with diabetes drop more weight, arthritis patients experience less joint pain, and those with high blood pressure reduce it.

A 2014 study published in the journal PLoS One examined a baker’s dozen of clinical trials in which doctors were taught empathy-building techniques, even simple ones such as making regular eye contact. Their patients fared significantly better than doctors who didn’t receive such training. continua a leggere

Etica in oncologia, arriva la Carta di Ragusa in tutti i reparti

Emanuela Valente — Thu, 23 Jul 2015 08:48:25 +0000

Condivisione delle scelte terapeutiche, empatia nella relazione medico-paziente, equità di accesso alle cure innovative e valorizzazione della ricerca clinica. Sono questi i quattro principi su cui si basa la Carta di Ragusa sull’Etica in Oncologia, la prima mai realizzata in Italia dall’Associazione Italiana di Oncologia Medica al termine delle “Giornate dell’Etica”, promosse recentemente in Sicilia. Per due giorni sull’Isola un gruppo multidisciplinare ha discusso e individuato 16 punti per migliorare l’integrazione dell’etica nell’organizzazione del sistema sanitario che nei comportamenti dei singoli professionisti. «È nostro preciso dovere occuparci di questi aspetti – afferma il prof. Carmine Pinto presidente nazionale AIOM -. Siamo molti orgogliosi di questo documento che vuole diventare anche una sorta di Carta dei Doveri per tutti gli specialisti coinvolti nella cura del cancro. In particolare, ci siamo soffermati sul delicato rapporto tra medici, pazienti e i loro familiari”. Ecco perché, si legge nel primo punto, “l’oncologo deve sempre più tenere in considerazione le esigenze della persona assistita e dei familiari. Senza dimenticare di prestare molta attenzione alle possibili differenze culturali, dato che curiamo anche molte persone di origine straniera. Sono da evitare – ed è un altro punto del Documento -, da parte di tutto il personale sanitario, atteggiamenti ostili verso la sofferenza del malato e dei caregivers. E’ fondamentale stabilire invece una proficua alleanza emotiva con loro». continua a leggere

Articolo de Il Sole 24 Ore – Sanità

Empathy Is Actually a Choice

Emanuela Valente — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 07:55:49 +0000

One death is a tragedy. One million is a statistic.

You’ve probably heard this saying before. It is thought to capture an unfortunate truth about empathy: While a single crying child or injured puppy tugs at our heartstrings, large numbers of suffering people, as in epidemics, earthquakes and genocides, do not inspire a comparable reaction.

Studies have repeatedly confirmed this. It’s a troubling finding because, as recent research has demonstrated, many of us believe that if more lives are at stake, we will — and should — feel more empathy (i.e., vicariously share others’ experiences) and do more to help.

Not only does empathy seem to fail when it is needed most, but it also appears to play favorites. Recent studies have shown that our empathy is dampened or constrained when it comes to people of different races, nationalities or creeds. These results suggest that empathy is a limited resource, like a fossil fuel, which we cannot extend indefinitely or to everyone. continua a leggere

Articolo di Daryl Cameron, Michael Inzlicht e William A. Cunninghan su The New York Times