Empathy has not been measured in clients’ terms or effectively taught: a review of the literature

Abstract

Empathy, the ability to communicate an understanding of a client's world, is said to be a crucial component of all helping relationships. The first part of this paper focuses on the failure of measures of empathy to reflect clients' views about the ability to offer empathy. It is argued that, if clients are able to perceive the amount of empathy in helping relationships, they are able to advise professionals about how to offer empathy. The second part of this paper examines the inconclusive research evidence that existing courses have enabled professionals to offer empathy, and the disagreement about how empathy is best taught. The literature reviewed in this paper substantiates these observations.

Developing Empathy in Nurses: An Inservice Training Program

“…The conceptualization of empathy remains incomplete, and this has led to uncertainties in teaching and measurement methods and in determining what is to be measured (Reynolds, Scott, & Jessiman, 1999;Walker & Alligood, 2001). In the literature, there are three types of empathy or communication training models (Gysels, Richardson, & Higginson, 2005;Kalisch, 1971b;Kruijver, Kerkstra, Franke, Bensing, & Wiel, 2000;Parle, Maguire, & Heaven, 1997;Wilkinson, 1999).…”

Empirical research on empathy in medicine—A critical review

“…Empirical studies of empathy have been reviewed in various publications (see e.g. [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]). However, after reading publications in which empirical research on medical students' or physicians' empathy has been presented or discussed, my impression was that important methodological assumptions, ideals, and trends did not receive adequate attention.…”

Evaluation of empathy measurement tools in nursing: systematic review

“…This reflects the wide recognition that empathy is a fundamental component of the nurse-patient relationship and of quality nursing care (Reynolds et al 1999, Alligood 2005. However, if levels of empathy demonstrated by nurses are to be used as a measure of quality care, it is essential that the measurement tools applied are robust and methodologically rigorous.…”