Blog Glob: "Doctors fail empathy test in 90% of cases"

Excerpt:

Doctors are routinely missing or ignoring moments that beg for empathy and need more training in responding to human emotions, an article in Canada's leading medical journal says.

Researchers from the University of Toronto and Duke University in Durham, N.C., say studies suggest doctors fail up to 90% of the time to respond to emotional cues from their patients.

...

Dr. Buckman, an oncologist at Princess Margaret Hospital and the University of Toronto's faculty

of medicine who lectures regularly on doctor-patient communication, says that when doctors respond with empathy, patients have less anxiety and depression. They're more likely to comply with treatment and less likely to lodge malpractice complaints.

But training around communication and empathy has lagged behind education in other areas.

Click to read the rest of "Doctors fail empathy test in 90% of cases" (National Post).

Comments

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I totally agree with you. That doctors have not feelings. And they have not basic ideas that how to communicate with our patient. Patient really wants some sympathy and this one is really the great medicine when it gives by the doctor.