Empathy As An Outcome?
A new study showed that “Empathic responses to patients’ expressions of negative emotion were associated with decreases in patient anxiety and higher patient ratings of the hospitalist and encounter.” Well, there you have it. So, they have proven that empathy is good to have. No kidding. Here is the interesting part. If empathy decreases anxiety (an empathic response was associated with a 1.65 point decrease on the State Anxiety Scale (95% CI, 0.48-2.82) then shouldn’t we be grading doctors on this? And shouldn’t we be giving bonuses to those that are the most empathetic? Yes, that sounds ridiculous but this is the type of moronic methodology that administrators love to use.
“Sorry, doctor, the cameras in the room showed you to be to aloof”, says the adminibot.
“But I was trying to click all the buttons you wanted in the chart”, responds the doctor.
“Not good enough. You need to look empathetic when staring at the computer. You will lose 2% of your salary this year”.
So, if we start paying attention to the patient, how’s the poor computer going to feel?
Tom, you left out the oldest profession – prostitution. The ability to feign intimate interest in another person is certainly a performance measure in prostitution. Published reports on prostitution mention that sexual contact is not always what is sought by the ‘john,’ but simply a human connection.
Interestingly, Abraham Flexner, he of the Flexner Report that revolutionized American Medical Education, turned his next inquiry to Prostitution In Europe ( https://books.google.com/books/about/Prostitution_in_Europe.html?id=tScKAAAAIAAJ ). From recollection, he spent a number of years in Europe away from Mrs. Flexner, studying the subject. After having read the initial few chapters, I am awestruck by Flexner’s ability to make sex paralytically boring.
Genuine empathy – genuine mirroring of affect with a sense of closeness – is a matter of deepest individuality and humanity. It is no surprise that the “pimps” of modern medicine have also discovered the ability to feign empathy in their “stable.”
I suggest that genuine empathy coupled with professional expertise are not performance measures of medicine – they ARE medicine, from which all else derives. And these performance measure have been driven from the field of today’s medicine.
Soon, we will replace human intimacy with on-line pornography, not only literally but metaphorically. We will have a “medicine” that stimulates but does not heal.
Prostitution is more honest than medicine, a straight up transparent exchange. Now if a prostitution insurance industry develops, followed by some claiming a “right” to sexual gratification, leading to the development of federal programs to pay for sex workers for the elderly (and then for the poor, supposedly at the state level)…costs will skyrocket, hookers’ incomes will fall, and shortages will follow. As for quality…I don’t want to think about it. I suppose the high-dollar, experienced escorts could be replaced in underserved areas by replacements from weekend courses, if the outcomes were usually similar for mostbcommon client requests.
Actually empathy is simply the ability to tap into and understand the emotions of others. It can be used for good or evil. Con artists, philanderers and evil dictators are all empathic. So what physicians need to do is be emphatic toward there employers and give them what they want by whatever means possible.