Researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital found a training program may help increase resident physicians' empathy with patients and improve patients' perceptions of their providers.
Previous studies have found that medical training is often accompanied by a drop in empathy. Possible contributors to the decline in empathy among medical trainees include self-protection against their own emotional distress, desensitization from performing many potentially painful procedures, lack of overt empathic behavior among senior residents and other role models and escalating training demands on residents.
Researchers developed a protocol involving three 60-minute training sessions that focus on the neurobiology of emotion. The sessions also include the following:
• Recognition of facial expressions and other non-verbal emotional cues
• Emotional self-awareness
• Strategies for dealing with challenging patients or delivering bad clinical news
• Techniques for recognizing the impact of stress and fatigue on one's own behavior and regulating personal stress responses
The sessions were piloted with nearly 50 residents and clinical fellows in medicine, surgery, anesthesia, psychiatry, orthopedics and ophthalmology from MGH or the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary. Another cohort of study subjects underwent the usually standard program.
Study participants who completed the training course showed significant improvement in patient ratings of their empathic behavior, while the control group showed a decline in empathy during the study period. Training-group participants also had significantly greater improvement in knowledge of the mechanisms underlying empathy and in their ability to perceive and decode facial expression of emotion. There were no differences between the groups in self-reported attitudes about the importance of empathy or in improved empathy outside of patient interactions. Participants in the training course were overwhelmingly positive about the benefits of the course.
Previous studies have found that medical training is often accompanied by a drop in empathy. Possible contributors to the decline in empathy among medical trainees include self-protection against their own emotional distress, desensitization from performing many potentially painful procedures, lack of overt empathic behavior among senior residents and other role models and escalating training demands on residents.
Researchers developed a protocol involving three 60-minute training sessions that focus on the neurobiology of emotion. The sessions also include the following:
• Recognition of facial expressions and other non-verbal emotional cues
• Emotional self-awareness
• Strategies for dealing with challenging patients or delivering bad clinical news
• Techniques for recognizing the impact of stress and fatigue on one's own behavior and regulating personal stress responses
The sessions were piloted with nearly 50 residents and clinical fellows in medicine, surgery, anesthesia, psychiatry, orthopedics and ophthalmology from MGH or the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary. Another cohort of study subjects underwent the usually standard program.
Study participants who completed the training course showed significant improvement in patient ratings of their empathic behavior, while the control group showed a decline in empathy during the study period. Training-group participants also had significantly greater improvement in knowledge of the mechanisms underlying empathy and in their ability to perceive and decode facial expression of emotion. There were no differences between the groups in self-reported attitudes about the importance of empathy or in improved empathy outside of patient interactions. Participants in the training course were overwhelmingly positive about the benefits of the course.
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