Relational empathy, holistic care and quality of life in persons with spinal cord injuries: A cross-sectional study.

Abstract

High-quality health systems are built on the concept of patient-centred approach which includes holistic care and empathy. With time, this has progressively been recognized as a valuable paradigm for better health outcomes, particularly in chronic diseases. The study aims to determine the patient's perception during his/her consultation and to assess the relationship between CARE measure with demographic/injury variables and Quality of Life. The present cross-sectional study was conducted among 226 SCI individuals. Data was collected via structured questionnaire, WHOQOL-BREF, and CARE measure. Independent t- test is used to compare WHOQOL-BREF domains with two groups of CARE measure. Logistic regression was used to determine the significant factors of CARE measure. In the logistic regression analysis, it was observed that higher quality of life score has significantly higher odds of getting higher CARE score with a remarkable odds ratio(O.R 1.0264, 1.0121,1.0261,95% C.I,P-value = 0.0001,0.0472, 0.0001). The quality of life of the present population is closely associated with greater perceptions of holistic care and empathy in the therapeutic patient-provider relationship. Lack of coordination, poor quality of life and limited communication between patient and provider may arise when the latter focuses only on treating disease rather than treating a patient as a "Whole person".