Communication and empathy as precursors to burnout among human service workers

Satisfaction with the outpatient encounter: A comparison of patients' and physicians' views

“…Physicians' perception of their ability to be communicatively responsive in caring for their patients in general was measured by the Communicative Responsiveness Scale. 28 The scale consists of 4 items, and responses were given on a 5-point Likert scale. The scale's Cronbach's α coefficient in this study was 0.70.…”

Braving Human Suffering: Death Education and its Relationship to Empathy and Mindfulness

“…The significant increases in cognitive and affective empathy overall may also benefit students when they encounter clients experiencing traumatic death in practice by allowing for greater attunement and sensitivity. Simultaneously, the stabilization of emotion contagion may be protective against vicarious trauma and burnout (Miller et al, 1988;Omdahl & O'Donnell, 1999). Ideally, this would improve providers' ability to meet the needs of grieving and traumatized clients while maintaining their own sense of balance.…”

“…High levels of emotion contagion may place providers at risk for burnout and emotional exhaustion. Thus, it may be beneficial to increase other aspects of empathy while keeping emotion contagion low, since this is the facet of affective empathy most closely linked to adverse outcomes (Miller et al, 1988;Omdahl & O'Donnell, 1999).…”

“…For instance, medical students showed an increase in empathy after an eight-session course about literature portraying doctors and patients (Shapiro, Morrison, & Boker, 2004), and some studies aimed at increasing mindfulness also report increases in overall empathy (Birnie, Speca, & Carlson, 2010;Krasner et al, 2009;Shapiro et al, 1998), pointing to a relationship between these two traits. However, when instruments use subscales, not all subscales of empathy are found to increase (e.g., Birnie et al, 2010;Krasner et al, 2009) and some facets, specifically emotion contagion, in which an individual experiences the Social Work Education 5 emotions of another, may place providers at risk of emotional exhaustion and burnout (Miller, Stiff, & Ellis, 1988;Omdahl & O'Donnell, 1999).…”

La Evaluación del Estrés Traumático Secundario: Estudio Comparado en Bomberos y Paramédicos de los Servicios de Emergencia de Guadalajara, México

“…Otro término complementario, el contagio emocional (Miller, Stiff & Ellis, 1988), ha sido definido como un proceso afectivo en el cual "un individuo que observa el sufrimiento en otro, experimenta paralelamente las mismas respuestas emocionales a las emociones reales o esperadas de aquella otra persona".…”