My fearless leader Tim Brown shared this short film (above) via his LinkedIn and Design Thinking blogs last week and I couldn’t help but share as well. The Cleveland Clinic created the film as a way to share how top of mind empathy and patient care are as a part of their overall approach to healthcare. I walk around my life in constant wonder of what other folks are going through — it’s the reason I won’t even honk my horn unless someone is in great danger — and I thought this was an incredible way of illustrating that.
Category: patient care
While I don’t know much about diabetes, I believe that any chronic illness and the care required of it demands empathy from all involved — most importantly the primary physician. In September, the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) posted a study out of Parma, Italy which looked at nearly 21,000 diabetes patients. 242 doctors in the study were tested for empathy via a questionnaire.
Here is the really amazing part: the rate of complications for patients with highly empathic doctors was nearly 2/3 of those with less empathic doctors. “Although empathic engagement is important in patient care regardless of physicians’ specialty, it is more critical in the primary care setting, which requires long-term physician–patient encounters and continuity of care.” —Academic Medicine, September 2012
There is something nice about knowing that bedside manner matters as much as I’d always assumed. The New York Times Nicholas Bakalar did a great short piece on the study here too.
(Thanks Julie for pointing me to this study!)
Photo by Christiana Care / Creative Commons
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No time for empathy.
Another great piece by Dr. Chen in the New York Times health section — this time, about the lack of time to empathize with patients: Taking Time for Empathy