|
Resident physicians' participation in a brief training programdesigned to increase empathy with their patients producedsignificant improvement in how patients perceived theirinteractions with the residents. This contrasts with severalstudies showing that empathy with patients usually drops duringmedical school and residency training. The report from a team ofMassachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers will appear in the Journal of General Internal Medicine and has been released online. "The most exciting message from this study is that empathy can betaught and, most importantly, that improved empathy can beperceived by our patients. Many medical educators have thought thatyou are either born with this trait or you aren't," says HelenRiess, MD, of the MGH Department of Psychiatry, who led the study."We are also very happy to see that participating residents likedthe training and found it interesting and helpful." Several studies have found that medical training is oftenaccompanied by a drop in empathy - the ability to understand andrespond to another person's feelings - and some have pinpointed thethird year of medical school, when students first become involvedin patient care, as the most vulnerable period. Riess notes thatpossible contributors to the decline in empathy among medicaltrainees include self-protection against their own emotionaldistress and a desensitization that results from performing manypotentially painful procedures. A lack of overt empathic behavioramong senior residents and other role models, along with theescalating demands of training on residents' time and energy, couldbe additional contributors. Recent studies have revealed the neurobiological basis of empathy -for example, showing how areas of the brain involved in theperception of pain can be activated simply by watching a loved oneexperience painful sensations. Building on this information, Riessdeveloped a protocol involving three 60-minute training sessionsthat begin with focusing on the neurobiology of emotion and go onto address recognition of facial expressions and other non-verbalemotional cues, emotional self-awareness and strategies for dealingwith challenging patients or delivering bad clinical news. Thesessions also include techniques for recognizing the impact of stress and fatigue on one's own behavior and regulating personal stress responses. The current study, which followed an earlier pilot trial, enrolled99 residents and clinical fellows in Medicine, Surgery, Anesthesia,Psychiatry, Orthop dics and Ophthalmology from MGH or theMassachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary. Half were randomly assigned toparticipate in the empathy training sessions while the otherscontinued their standard program. At the outset of the study,several of the patients seen by each study participant completed astandard assessment of their most recent interaction with thephysician. The survey -called the Consultation and RelationalEmpathy Measure -asked patients to rank how well the physician didin "making you feel at ease," "fully understanding your concerns,""showing care and compassion" and similar measures. The three training sessions, all conducted by Riess, were deliveredover four-week periods to groups of 6 to 15 residents in the samespecialty, starting within a month of the initial patient ratings.One to two months after training sessions were completed, anothergroup of patients was asked to assess their interactions with theirparticipating physicians - both those who completed the empathytraining and the control group. In addition, participatingresidents completed before-and-after tests of their knowledge ofthe neurobiology and physiology of emotion, assessments of theirability to decode facial expressions and the value they placed onempathic communication, along with self-assessment of theirempathy-related attitudes and skills. Study participants who completed the training course showedsignificant improvement in patient ratings of their empathicbehavior, while the control group showed a decline in empathyduring the study period. Training-group participants also hadsignificantly greater improvement in knowledge of the mechanismsunderlying empathy and in their ability to perceive and decodefacial expression of emotion. There were no differences between thegroups in self-reported attitudes about the importance of empathyor in improved empathy outside of patient interactions.Participants in the training course were overwhelmingly positiveabout the benefits of the course. "This is the first study to show that a neurobiologically informedtraining program results in statistically significant improvementat the level of patient perception, without necessarily increasingthe time physicians spend with patients," Riess says. "We werepleased to find this improvement could be accomplished with onlythree 60-minute training modules, something that is criticallyimportant with the time constraints faced by all training programs.Because it would be difficult to offer this training to all of ourresidency programs, we've created a web-based version to enablemedical providers and residency program directors everywhere toincorporate this training into their programs." Additional References Citations. We are high quality suppliers, our products such as China Stand Up Pouches , Foil Packaging Bags Manufacturer for oversee buyer. To know more, please visits Paper Carrier Bags.
Related Articles -
China Stand Up Pouches, Foil Packaging Bags Manufacturer,
|
