Patients seeking care are fragile. They are occupied with concerns and may be worried, especially if they are admitted to hospitals. In the context of this environment, a partnership between patients and their care providers is vital. Patients must be at the center of all we do because it is their health, wellbeing, and healthcare decisions, not ours. The days of a patriarchal medical model of healthcare is long gone. Our role today as healthcare providers is one of educator, advisor, and advocate. To be effective in these tasks, we must have empathic capability.
What does it mean to be genuinely empathic? Empathy is our social radar and is part of our emotional intelligence. It is an ability to sense what others feel without them saying so. Rarely does someone tell you in words how they feel? Their communication about their feelings is often in their tone of voice, facial expressions, and other non-verbal cues. This is particularly true when caring for our patients who may not have another way to communicate. The degree to which we can take on the pace, posture, and facial expression of another person we occupy their emotional space; we begin to experience emotional attunement. When this happens, you are experiencing empathy. Your ability to sense others, however, is not just understanding how to interpret behaviors you observe. Your ability to empathize begins with self-awareness of your feelings. This awareness is a prerequisite for empathy. People with this awareness know which emotions they are feeling and the links between them and what they say and do.
Although empathy is a new buzzword in the business world, there is likely no industry where empathy matters more than in healthcare. Empathy is the channel through which we can understand our employees and our patients. Being empathic puts the patient or consumer at the center. It creates a community where people trust and take care of each other, and that caring environment supports a patient-centric culture. Healthcare leaders must make it an imperative strategic initiative to become empathetic in terms of company culture, employee engagement, and overall messaging to provide superior patient experiences. For our front-line employees to effectively and genuinely demonstrate empathy, they too must feel cared for and supported in an empathic organization. This is the foundation of a patient-centric culture, and as healthcare leaders, this must be our mandate.
Empathy is an enabling human emotional skill that can be learned and leads to successful relationship building. It is essential to provide positive patient experiences that patients and caregivers alike know. The organization understands what the experience is like through their eyes, journey, and goals. If an organization is empathic compliance, outcomes, financial results, and reputation will be enhanced.
Organizations must ensure that their employees have the skill of empathy through their hiring processes and training and development programs. According to Latib (January 8, 2019), empathy is fundamentally crucial for employee engagement and retention, and that HR talent developers are the foundation for organizational empathy.
The consequence of not being an empathic organization is that employees and patients have choice and will move quickly to another organization if they do not experience empathic interactions. In a 2019 State of Workplace Empathy by the Businessolver found that the importance of visibility of empathy as a core workplace value continues to grow each year. It also found that empathy is now increasingly valued by leadership and must be in the fabric of an organization’s culture.
As healthcare leaders, we must understand that empathy is essential to delivering an outstanding patient experience. It is also vital in building a patient-centric culture.
References:
Businessolver-2019-workplace-empathy-study-insights–ebook.Pdf.
Latib, Mohamed. January 8, 2019. “Empathy is the most critical soft skill and has been for at least a century”. Blog.
