The way we receive healthcare has changed dramatically but what has not changed is our desire to feel understood and cared for. That need for empathetic care is at the heart of being human, especially during times of illness, pain and vulnerability.
PLX Academy · Personal Experience · 11 February 2022
Empathy in digital communication
Well-known doctors from the world’s leading hospitals agreed that healthcare organizations should build a robust culture of empathy and compassion in this period of accelerated digitization. While the standard ways of measuring empathy in healthcare are taken through surveys and patients rating their experience, the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the degree of isolation and loneliness patients feel and underscored the need to push empathy to a central concern on an organizational level.
This was the perspective of a panel discussion for empathy and compassion in healthcare, with moderator Adrienne Boissy, Chief experience officer of the Cleveland Clinic, with Dr. Ben Moor, an anesthesiologist at Tufts Medical Center in Boston and Helen Riess, Co-founder and CEO of Empathetic.
“We all went into this business to help people, and providers feel a disconnect between what they should have provided to the patients and what they were able to because of COVID-19. You should be your patient’s advocate even if that goes against what your organization is telling you“, Dr. Ben Moor says.
That perspective was backed up by Boissy, who said healthcare organizations have to be more bullish on empathy. “We need to be much more assertive around the idea that the relationship is paramount. And everything we do, be it digital or human processes, requires a bit of gut to say this is in service of my patients and the relationship I have with them.”
Helen Reiss pointed out how to make empathy easier and infuse it into digital tools. “We have a unique opportunity now that we can use EHRs (Electronic Health Record) to help bolster our empathic capacities. We’ve all learned that sharing computer screens engages patients in a way that makes them partners in their healthcare. There’s an unlimited opportunity to use EHRs to help healthcare workers connect in a way that shares information, and really [turn it] into what’s important to the patient”, she said.
Dr. Ben Moor noted that a lot of empathic impulses stem from the simple fact of being human and doing what you feel is the right thing to do. “We shouldn’t discount what care really is, which is being with a person who is suffering if nothing more than to just bear witness to what they’re going through,” he said.