Craving Empathy: Studying the Sustained Impact of Empathy Training on Clinicians

Abstract

Evidence is sparse when it comes to the longitudinal impact of educational interventions on empathy among clinicians. Additionally, most available research on empathy is on medical trainee cohorts. We set out to study the impact of empathy and communication training on practicing clinicians’ self-reported empathy and whether it can be sustained over six months. An immersive curriculum was designed to teach empathy and communication skills, which entailed experiential learning with simulated encounters and didactics on the foundational elements of communication. Self-reported Jefferson Scale of Empathy (JSE) was scored before and at two points (1–4 weeks and 6 months) after the training. Overall, clinicians’ mean self-empathy scores increased following the workshop and were sustained at six months. Specifically, the perspective taking domain of the empathy scale, which relates to cognitive empathy, showed the most responsiveness to educational interventions. Our analysis shows that a structured and immersive training curriculum centered on building communication and empathy skills has the potential to positively impact clinician empathy and sustain self-reported empathy scores among practicing clinicians.

The Impact of Perspective Taking Training in Student Teachers on Unintended Empathy Components

“…All other factors remained stable. This corresponds to the few studies in which affective factors are mentioned at all: For example, Mehta et al (2021) found no improvement directly following communication training to improve empathic behavior, similar findings were described by Sands et al (2008), Shapiro et al (2004) or Evans et al (1993). When improvements in affective skills were observed, either more situation-specific measurement instruments were used (Okonofua et al, 2016;Winter et al, 2020) or the samples were so small that generalization was not possible (Sands et al, 2008).…”

Are Differences in Empathy Age-Related?

“…(1) on perspective taking indicates that PT as a cognitive skill is subject to developmental change during adolescence (Eisenberg et al, 2005;Farrell & Vaillancourt, 2020;Zahn-Waxler et al, 1992), which is the basis of many empathy trainings, among others (Bas-Sarmiento et al, 2017;Mehta et al, 2021;Paulus & Meinken, 2022b). In contrast, empathizing or engaging in fictional stories appears to be a strength of younger people, as indicated by steadily decreasing FS scores.…”

Association Between Clinician-Level Factors and Patient Outcomes in Virtual and In-Person Outpatient Treatment for Substance Use Disorders: Multilevel Analysis

“…Certain clinician characteristics and specific traits have been implicated in the formation of a therapeutic alliance between patient and provider [13]. Empathy has been recognized as a long-standing important factor in the delivery of quality care [14], an area of focus for clinician training [15,16], and a contributing factor to the formation of a strong therapeutic alliance [17]. For example, robust correlations between the Working Alliance Inventory Bond Scale and the Empathy Scale of the Relationship Inventory (measuring empathy, congruence, and positive regard) have suggested that a vital component of a strong alliance is the therapist's understanding and relating to patient experience [17].…”