Medical Progress and Empathy
Some state that with evidence based medicine, increasing technical knowledge, technical procedures and technical possibilities the empathy has vanished from the patient doctor interaction or at least was minimized. Medicine has moved from the humanities towards science.
Is another transformation taking place. Is medicine again moving towards the humanities, is empathy again an important feature for a physician? Is the focus on technique shifting towards empathy during medical education? Or are doctors loosing empathy after medical education because they have to become clerks and mechanics due to increasing bureaucracy. Why not have a rehab facility business, the rehab experts, they consult on how to do it.
Is empathy rehabilitated in the medical curricula? More questions than answers. Moreover, empathy is still a confusing term and I’m still not convinced you can learn empathy. What do you think?
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May 16, 2011 @ 11:01 am
My feeling is that empathy is a vital part of developing a therapeutic relationship with the patient which in turn I see as a fundamental part of the process. I think that this can be lost sometimes within the technological advance and demands but can always be integrated at each point of the pathway. Alongside this is the environment and context of the treatment, in my case as a physiotherapist albeit one with a very modern approach that embraces the aforementioned in a biopsychosocial framework.
May 16, 2011 @ 10:39 pm
I believe we are seeing a move towards more holistic care because doctors and scientists realize that empathy and dedication goes beyond caring only for the physical and pathological component. In the past, some doctors have been doing disservice to their patients by treating diseases rather than people.
May 17, 2011 @ 12:31 pm
Empathy is a must. Without it, doctors are like robots. Empathy can help a doctor in diagnosing too. Not everything is pure black and white.