Health Empathy Map: Creation of an Instrument for Empathy Development

José Maria Peixoto,Eliane Perlatto Moura

doi:10.1590/1981-5271v44.1-20190151.ing

José Maria Peixoto, Eliane Perlatto Moura

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1590/1981-5271v44.1-20190151.ing

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Abstract

Abstract: Introduction: Empathy is a multidimensional construct that requires the ability to perceive and understand the others’ perspectives, as well as feel their emotional state. It is an intellectual skill to be learned and represents one of the domains of emotional intelligence. The aim of this study was to create an instrument for the teaching and practice of empathy skills in medical education scenarios, called the “Health Empathy Map” (HEM). Method: This is a qualitative and descriptive study, aimed at developing the Health Empathy Map. The study had 3 phases: (1) Adaptation of the empathy map for medical education scenarios (2) Adequacy of the instrument content performed by teachers from the Outpatient Clinic of José do Rosário Vellano University, during teacher training (3) Assessment of content and feasibility of the instrument, first performed using the focal group technique and then by third-year medical students during outpatient clinic practice and in the tutorial group. Results: The adequacy of the instrument for medical education teaching scenarios was based on conceptual aspects of empathy: perspective-taking, emotional sharing and empathetic concern, as well as suggestions from the outpatient clinic teachers, focal group participants and medical students. All suggestions were debated and accepted, after a consensus that indicated advances and improvements of the instrument, in order to allow its use by students in health learning scenarios. Conclusion: The final version of the HEM was considered by participants of different phases of the study, as an educational instrument with great instructional potential, in terms of stimulating the development of empathy, with a broad use in medical education scenarios.

Highlights

Empathy is a multidimensional construct that requires the ability to perceive and understand the others’ perspectives, as well as feel their emotional state
Each one of these components is associated with moral cognition, which comprises three processes: “emotional sharing”, which is a spontaneous mechanism that occurs through observation and does not depend on the analysis, and another process is the “empathetic concern”, which is the motivation to care for vulnerable individuals
Phase 1: Adaptation of the Empathy Map for use in health education settings Based on theoretical aspects related to empathy, obtained from literature review and the analysis of the Empathy Map (EM), developed by the XPLANE visual thinking company[21], an instrument adapted for teaching and practicing empathy skills in outpatient teaching and tutorial group was developed, called the “Health Empathy Map” (HEM)

Summary

Introduction

Empathy is a multidimensional construct that requires the ability to perceive and understand the others’ perspectives, as well as feel their emotional state. Results: The adequacy of the instrument for medical education teaching scenarios was based on conceptual aspects of empathy: perspective-taking, emotional sharing and empathetic concern, as well as suggestions from the outpatient clinic teachers, focal group participants and medical students. The “perspective-taking” component, associated with competence and social reasoning, which is the capacity to put yourself in someone else’s place and imagine what they are thinking or feeling, which is vital for social interactions, as it allows us to understand and predict behaviors. These components of empathy are dissociable, as they use different neural networks[7]. As there is a cognitive side to empathy, it is possible to teach it during the medical training period[17]

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