"How much empathy should doctors have?" c/o BBC Radio 4 'All In The Mind'

In ongoing reading and writing, I'm developing examples of care situations and contexts that extend across the domains of Hodges' model, candidates include:

1. Eating Disorder
2. Sense-Making in light of information disorder
3. Public Understanding of Science
4. Empathy and Rapport in healthcare disciplines

#4 has loomed large for quite a while. The contrast between being humanistic and mechanistic: warmth, engaged, attending, person-centred  and subjective; set apart from being objective, logical, cold, precise, mechanical, efficient, and accurate. These terms and more also indicate the scope (vertical and horizontal) of Hodges' model. In my nurse training, I remember that first intramuscular injection, and how my mentor - supervisor explained how, as a prescribed treatment - remember the patient needs it. The 'political' dimensions of this - informed consent, capacity, personal - professional ethics, mental health, and mental health act, add obvious complexity and critique to this example. 

 

In #4 I've the more general medical example of the surgeon and empathy. Then, this past week 'All In the Mind' devoted an informative feature on the topic (available for 12 months):

"A good bedside manner is a wanted quality in healthcare professionals. But as is performing procedures that can be painful or uncomfortable. As medical students train to become doctors, they can experience changes in their levels of empathy; the ability to resonate with how others feel. Learning long lists of diagnoses and pathologies, the human body starts to resemble more of a machine. But how detrimental is this? Claudia Hammond asks Jeremy Howick, director of the Stoneygate Centre for empathic healthcare at the University of Leicester, who is training healthcare professionals to express more patient empathy to improve health outcomes and reduce burnout. Lasana Harris, professor of social neuroscience at UCL, describes how too much empathy might be a cause of burnout, and medics should toggle empathy on and off depending on context. Medical students from the University of Bristol express how they feel empathy should come into their future roles. "

'Welcome to the QUAD' includes many previous posts on empathy, rapport.

Below, I have mapped key concepts and programme content to Hodges' model:

INDIVIDUAL
|
INTERPERSONAL    :     SCIENCES              
HUMANISTIC --------------------------------------  MECHANISTIC
SOCIOLOGY :   POLITICAL
|
GROUP

Empathy (regulation) and Rapport Therapeutic alliance Risk of burnout Emotional curiosity	Research - BioMedical Model [machine] First injection - 'invasive' procedure . . . Doing Surgery - cutting a person Body posture - Sitting down with person - patient
Social Neuroscience Language, presence Pre-op contact with nurses Restore 'humanity' Reassure	Lived experience - Staying in hospital a night. 'Being a patient?' Accountability - Responsibility Time and Resources to do the job. [PJ]