Emotion Transfer, Emotion Regulation, and Empathy-Related Processes in Physician-Patient Interactions and Their Association With Physician Well-Being: A Theoretical Model

Abstract

Physicians experience many emotionally challenging situations in their professional lives, influencing their emotional state through emotion contagion or social appraisal processes. Successful emotion regulation is crucial to sustain health, enable well-being, foster resilience, and prevent burnout or compassion fatigue. Despite the alarmingly high rate of stress-related disorders in physicians, affecting not only physician well-being, but also outcomes such as physician performance, quality of care, or patient satisfaction, research on how to deal with emotionally challenging situations in physicians is lacking. Based on extant literature, the present article proposes a theoretical model depicting emotions, emotion regulation, and empathy-related processes and their relation to well-being in provider-client interactions. This model serves as a basis for future research and interventions aiming at improving physician well-being and professional functioning. As a first step, interviews with 21 psychiatrists were conducted. Results of qualitative and initial quantitative analyses provided detailed descriptions of the model's components confirming its usefulness for detecting mechanisms linking emotion regulation and well-being in psychiatrist-patient interactions. Additionally, results lend preliminary support for the validity of the model, suggesting that successful regulation of emotions (i.e., achieving a desired emotional state) elicited by cyclical transfer processes in provider-client interactions is associated with both short- and long-term well-being and resilience. Furthermore, empathy-related emotions and their regulation seem to be linked to well-being. Based on the results of the present study, a prospective longitudinal study is under preparation, which is intended to inform effective interventions targeting emotion transfer, empathy-related processes, and emotion regulation in physicians' professional lives. The model and results are also potentially applicable to other health care and social services providers.

A bidimensional measure of empathy: Empathic Experience Scale

“…In addition to a theoretical point of view, the Vicarious Experience and Intuitive Understanding components are also relevant from a clinical perspective in cases of pathology in which the exact deficits in empathy and intersubjectivity remain a topic of discussion (e.g., [88,89–94]) and constitute possible targets of intervention, for instance, in the context of stress contagion [95] and suicide prevention [96]. Consistent with the detected two-factor structure of the EES, Coll et al [18] proposed that emotional empathy might be the outcome of the two processes of Vicarious Experience and Intuitive Understanding of someone else’s emotions.…”

Care Needs and Preferences from Perspective of COVID-19 Patients: A Qualitative Study

“…The success of health care workers to establish a strong relationship with a sense of empathy with patients has been reported to have a great impact on the patients' recovery, perceived self-value, distress, satisfaction, and hope (29). Also, it has been shown that patients who feel compassionate empathy from their physicians and medical staff are more successful in overcoming acute symptoms more quickly and have strengthened immune systems (30). COVID-19 patients must endure not only severe physical conditions but also the stress of social and individual isolation due to the infectious nature of the virus, which disrupts their relationship with their family and friends and also healthcare workers.…”

Speaking with Frankenstein

“…The possibility that a patient's voice might become accessible in and through its refusal of conformity waxes when specific emotions are no longer seen as the property of either patient or physician but instead as the dynamic contents of a shared repertoire. (Weilenmann et al 2018). This commonality points to what Brennan, Teresa memorably terms the "transmission of affect," rooted in affect's deeply participatory nature, the sense in which feelings are by definition shared, arising situationally to become the common currency of those who feel them (2004,3).…”