The Value of Teaching Empathy

See this thought provoking article from Forbes, Teaching Empathy: The Ancient Way is Now Cutting Edge,  on the importance of teaching empathy and emotional intelligence skills.Though the focus in on teaching children, the points made in this article apply to any educational setting.

Obama Makes Empathic Appeal for Empathy in Israel

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See the blog from CNN for an excellent article on President Obama's empathic appeal for empathy for Palestinians.
CNN empathy-president-gives-an-empathy-speech

Watch this Wonderful Video: "Empathy: The Human Connection to Patient Care"

Empathy is an essential element of quality health care. This video (Empathy: The Human Connection to Patient Care) simply, and beautifully, illustrates the value of seeking to understand others' experience. Listening, noticing, exploring and responding helps us to build healing connections with patients, family members and  caregivers. Empathy also helps those of us who are privileged to work in health care settings to know and support each other.

The video was published on YouTube on February 27, 2013 with the following information:

Patient care is more than just healing -- it's building a connection that encompasses mind, body and soul.

If you could stand in someone else's shoes . . . hear what they hear. See what they see. Feel what they feel. Would you treat them differently?

CEO Toby Cosgrove, MD, shared this video, titled "Empathy," with the Cleveland Clinic staff during his 2012 State of the Clinic address on Feb. 27, 2013.

 

The Empowered Patient - Shared Decision Making: Should I Have a Stem Cell Transplant?

In my The Empowered Patient column in the January 15th issue of  MPNforum, I provide some thoughts about the difficult decision that people with myelofibrosis face regarding having a hematopoietic stem cell transplant. See: The Empowered Patient - Stem Cell Transplant

It's Not Too Late to Make New Year's Resolutions

Just because it is already January 10th doesn't mean it is too late for New Year's Resolutions. See the link below to my Empowered Patient columnin the MPNforum for some ideas about how to make your New Year healthier.
http://mpnforum.com/michael-dec-17/

New Look for 2013

For the New Year, I changed the template for EmpathyWorks. I think it is a cleaner and more readable look. Let me know what you think.

Happy New Year!

Michael

New Research Suggests Empathy and Analytic Thinking are Mutually Exclusive

Recent research utilizing functional MRI suggests that the circuits of the brain that are activated during analytic tasks are actually inhibited when people are engaged in social tasks,  and vice versa.

So, for example, when people are engaged in tasks that stimulate the centers of the brain associated with analytic problem solving, pathways activated during tasks that evoke empathic understanding are inhibited. The results, published online in the neuroimaging journal, NeuroImage, in October, 2012, were  summarized in an artilce that appeared on Medical News Today  - http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/252241.php

These interesting findings shed light on the neural processes invovled in analytic and social tasks and suggest that empathic thinking and analytic thinking may be mutually exclusive. No wonder it is hard for us to consider the experience and feelings of others when we are deeply engaged in analytic problem solving. This also may explain why many health care providers miss opportunities to respond to patients' emotions when they are "conducting a history" and engaging in diagnostic reasoning and treatment planning.

From a healthcare professional training perspective, these research findings suggest that clinicians need to learn how to compensate for the inhibition of the social circuitry that occurs when they enage in analytic tasks. Helping clinicians to actively "tune in" to patients' emotional state may help "turn down" their analytic thinking and allow them to respond more effectively to patients' psychosocial needs.