2-019 Too late for therapy
Oops, a non-empathetic therapist (/ psychologist?). Shouldn’t empathy be one of the basic competencies to have in that line of work?
Human doctors
Apart from a certified psychiatrist, therapists are usually no medical doctors. Still, I would like to focus on doctors. These days it’s not enough to have a lot of medical knowledge in order to be a good doctor, you need several other abilities. A frame-work that is often used to help medical students develop into competent doctors is the CanMED framework. It is a framework that identifies and describes the abilities physicians require to effectively meet the health care needs of the people they serve. These abilities are grouped thematically under seven roles; medical expert (of course), communicator, collaborator, leader, health advocate, scholar and professional.
It’s good to see that there is a lot of attention in medical school (at least over here in the Netherlands, I don’t know that much about the other countries), but we are not there yet. I still meet MDs that should not be around people in my personal opinion, but they are getting less and less prevalent.
What is your experience with the empathy of doctors?
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I think you may mean “empathetic” — she is definitely “emphatic,” and that’s not a good thing, lol!
Ow haha. In Dutch “empathetic” is “empatisch”, so that explains it. I once read a book explaining how the Dutch go around the world insulting the English because some of the direct (erroneous) direct translations of Dutch into English some of us use, are really insulting (an example is the fact that in Dutch we sometimes use the word “hoor!” at the end of a sentence, to bring a little more power to the message of that sentence. You can imagine what happens when we use this word at the end of a sentence out of reflex 😆
I’m not looking for a doctor to be empathetic actually. I just wants him to give me the right treatment. If he is well, well that’s a bonus. Just a bonus.
Now this episode therapist is using unconventional way to treat her patients LOL.
I’m still amazed by your happy wall… Makes me smile because I have no idea what to do with the same bricks you use here LOL
You might be surprised how important empathy really will be to you when you encounter a doctor that has zero empathy… I hope you never find out though.
I’m actually quite surprised that I found a use for these. I once bought a bunch of them out of a pick-a-brick-wall in a Lego-store somewhere and afterwards had no idea of what to do with them 🙄 .
In Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Blink, he discusses a study in which doctors were recorded talking to patients. Then, the high and low tones were stripped out of the audio so that the people doing the evaluating could not actually make out what was being said. The evaluators were asked to rate the empathy of the doctors based on tone of voice and other nonverbal audio cues. Those rated least empathetic were also those who were most often sued for malpractice, while those rated most empathetic were the least often sued — even when they had admitted to mistakes which were absolutely malpractice (the researchers had this information on each of the doctors). The result of the study? We are most likely to believe we are getting good care from a doctor we like and feel a connection to, and we are most likely to be dissatisfied with our care from a doctor we don’t like.
Interesting post by both of you guys! Empathy won’t treat you (I’m talking human mechanic here) in some case, in some it will prove to be crucial. From my recent experience (sprained ankle) a doctor would have talk with me while treating me, while another one will make me work on active rehab… All I care was feeling better with my ankle. Now that was no big deal… LOL
Thanks! Part of what I do is teach medical students about medical communication with their patients. I didn’t know about this study, but it is in line with what I teach/ believe. I’ll need to read that book sometime.