Evaluation Of A Good Bedside Manner

The care that I will give my patient will also involve being empathic. This will enhance the development of the therapeutic relationship that will finally improve the outcomes. Compassion and empathy will make my patients more forthcoming with their symptoms. This yields accurate diagnosis. It also improves care given to patients. The interaction that takes place during this process affects the patient's recovery process. I also intend to cultivate a culture of trust between me and my patients. It has to be there for me to realize effective therapeutic relationship that leads to job satisfaction.

The importance of empathy in any helping profession, medical or social, cannot be overstated. The workers that exemplified it in their practice did the best that they could with their limited resources.

Defined by a physician’s understanding of their patient’s perspective, physician empathy enhances a patient’s perception of being helped, improves patient feelings of empowerment, and increases patient perceptions of a social support network. (source 4) Studies have shown that when physicians are running low on empathy, patients take significantly longer to recover from illnesses and become less likely to follow treatment recommendations, suggesting an inverse relationship between the prevalence of burnout and measures of patient satisfaction with medical care. (source 5) Decreased feelings of empathy and a diminished relationship between the doctor and the patient has also been proven to lead to patient neglect in which healthcare staff fail to maintain the standards of optimal patient care. Such findings highlight the importance of burnout to leaders of the medical field and to administrators that have responsibility for the workplace environment. (source

George Loewenstein explains hot-cold empathy gaps in his article Hot-Cold Empathy Gaps in Medical Decision-Making:

patients' clinical outcomes was confirmed, suggesting that physicians' empathy is an important factor associated with clinical competence and patient outcomes ." The z test was used as a statistical tool in this study as well. Differences in the proportions of patients with good and poor control test results for physicians receiving high or low empathy scores were examined by using the test for proportions.

In Chapter 5, The Author discuss the role of pervasive role of confirmation and empathy in health care. Empathy is considered as an important part of the emotional intelligence which is defined as the ability to understand and manage emotions of yourself and people around you. Empathy helps to build trust and hope in patient -provder relationship. Empathy or "capability of emotional knowing" is a part of behavioral attribute that contribute to quality of social interaction. Author has informed about the Jafferson Scale of Physician Emapathy (JSPE), which is used to evaluate empathy in healthcare providers.

Empathy is a vital ingredient of supportive relationships. A lot of scholars argued that empathy furnishes health care professionals with the capacity to improve patient’s health ,thus it must be taught to make them more responsive to patient’s health [ Journal article: Developing Empathy in Nursing students:A cohort longhitudinal study page 1]

An expectation of an osteopathic physician is to express empathy for all patients, regardless of ethnicity, socioeconomic status, or beliefs. As a student volunteer, I traveled to underserved communities in the Dominican Republic and Panama where I learned that medicine has the power​ to unify people, build bridges, and communicate and collaborate across cultures. Though I had challenged my own sense of reality before, walking in the shoes of patients, many of whom lived in impoverished conditions, gave me to opportunity to understand just how different two lives can be. I was able to differentiate between up-close empathy and distant sympathy. Despite a language barrier, I examined and diagnosed at least twenty patients each day, conceptualizing the different steps a physician must take when interacting with a patient. I am now involved in a student-run clinic that provides a multitude of healthcare services to a rural,

Empathy provides the nurse with the perspective that is necessary to consider the most appropriate actions and interventions significant to a patient’s individual experience (Boggs. 2011, p.107). Failure of the nurse to empathize with a patient can result in a strained therapeutic relationship as a result of providing inadequate emotional support and client education (Boggs. 2011, p.107). In providing empathetic care it is important to mentally picture the client’s situation and perform self-checks, thereby assessing for personal bias and stereotypes (Arnold. 2011 p. 84). Additionally, there are multiple barriers to providing empathetic care, which include lack of time, lack of trust, lack of privacy, and lack of support, amongst others (Boggs. 2011, p.115).

Another crucial interpersonal skill which assumes a critical part in a radiographer- patient relationship is empathy. Eunson (2012) describes empathy as the emotional appreciation of another’s feelings. Not to be confused as sympathy, but empathetic people might squeeze ones hand in times of trouble, or offer kind words when one is grieving. According to research, empathy is ‘to recognise others' emotions, the reason for these emotions, and to have the capacity to take part in the emotional journey of a single person without directly be coming apart of it’ (Casselden, 1988). Needless to say,

The purpose of this paper is to identify and define what bedside manner is, how influences it physicians and identify areas of communication with the patient. The notion of bedside manner necessitates analysis and investigates good bedside manner. One study showed that patients value good bedside manner and comunication skills more than clinical competence. In addition to patient satisfaction with care, good bedside manner has also been responcible in improving overall health condition. “The relevance of the physician’s behavior in medical care has been said to be of greater importance to patients than in other service professions” (Boehm, F. 2008). These new born facts have been related to the fact that the patients must reveal

Although Charon and Garden both believe that medical students and doctors lose their empathy they both give different possible reasons for this lost. Charon explains how the competitive environment of teaching hospitals, the threat of malpractice litigation, and time and money pressures, all lead to the erosion of doctors’ empathy leaving them to practice a “rigid, suspicious medicine”. Similar stressors erode at the empathy of medical students. Conversely, Garden seems to attribute the lack of empathy due to medical students embodying a false image of themselves. Garden echoes Physician Howar Spiro “that medical students begin their training with a ‘cargo of empathy’ that is then displaced when ‘we teach them to see themselves as experts, to fix what is damaged, and to ‘rule out’ disease in their field’” (552). Garden attributes the lost of empathy to the social-dynamics, and power-struggle that emerges between medical students and their superiors which pans out into their relationships with their patients

Bedside manner is by definition, the manner that a physician assumes toward a patient. (Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary, n.d.) However, it is hard to strictly fix it into one set definition. It encompasses so many different aspects of personal human behavior, including things like attitude, kindness, sensitivity, and compassion. Good bedside manner is the foundation to building a healthy relationship between the patient and the physician. It sets the standard on communication between the two parties. Poor bedside manner or failure to properly establish appropriate bedside manner may result in patients becoming distant, apprehensive, or untrusting of the physician. Bedside manner is not strictly for the benefit of the patient. (Missouri College, 2013) A large part of conveying good bedside manner is for the healthcare professional to be sure that they are able to completely understand the patient. This goes hand in hand with favorable doctor-patient communication skills. It is crucial to maintain good bedside manner, not only to keep therapeutics moving forward smoothly, but also to aid in the healing process. In certain studies, it is reported that more patients prefer a doctor with a personality reflecting good bedside skills to one that might just be better at accurately diagnosing a patient. This conclusion is alarming in the fact that more people hold more importance on simply feeling human, than being properly diagnosed. (Danny Gordon, 2014)

There has been research done to discover how patients perceive the empathy expressed by their health care providers

One of my favorite questions to ask is, “No, really – how are you?” For my close friends, the follow-up is no surprise, but others are often taken aback. Perhaps it’s not surprising that we become hesitant, even uncomfortable when someone genuinely wants to know how we’re doing, with the ever-increasing pace of modern life. But I have found that society often underestimates the power of taking a genuine interest in the well-being of others. This is especially true when it comes to medicine, where compassion and empathy play vital roles in patient care.