Abstract
Fostering empathy in future health-care providers through service-learning is emerging as central to public health promotion. Patients fare better when their caregivers have higher relationship-centered characteristics such as the ones measured by the Jefferson Scale of Empathy. Unfortunately, these characteristics often deteriorate during health-care professional training. Nevertheless, growing literature documents how we can promote empathy, and other patient-centered characteristics, throughout health-care professional students’ undergraduate education. As for proven treatment plans, we believe we should also use evidence-based guidelines to foster relationship-centered characteristics in our students when training them to practice as part of an interdisciplinary health-care team.
Highlights
Empathy fosters public health in numerous ways
Higher empathy is associated with greater support for vaccination and other health precautions [1]
We should use available evidence to foster empathy in health-care professional students as we do for other aspects of their training
Summary
Empathy fosters public health in numerous ways. For example, higher empathy is associated with greater support for vaccination and other health precautions [1]. In the case of child abuse, increasing empathy may promote public health at multiple levels [2]. Heightened empathy in health-care professionals may help them report suspicions of abuse instead of suppressing them. We should use available evidence to foster empathy in health-care professional students as we do for other aspects of their training. Trusting relationships with patients and health-care team members promote patient satisfaction, foster adherence with treatment plans, and minimize malpractice claims [4, 5]. In our opinion, such trust requires empathy and compassion for each patient’s unique life experiences. We consider methods used in selected studies for increasing empathy and related, relationshipcentered, characteristics, and we present an evidence-based model for incorporation of these approaches into health sciences education programs throughout training
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