COMING INTO BEING AN EMPATHIC DOCTOR: MODERN VIEWS AND CHALLENGES
Authors: Kolisnyk I.A. , Pankevych A.I. , Hohol A.M. 
Published: December 2022

Medical reformation process based on a human-centered approach requires universities to train healthcare professionals who are able to update knowledge and skills quickly, to adapt to new conditions, and be highly qualified and competitive specialists. The development of qualities that ensure communication with patients such as empathy is still of great importance.

Empathy is an essential component in the professional activity of doctors of all specialties, therefore the fostering of empathy in students must be considered as inseparable component of future doctors’ training, a precondition for the successful independent practice.

The article describes the concept of empathy, its types and components, considers the methods of forming empathy and analyzes some of them. Special attention is focused on the importance of developing empathy in the professional activity of doctors of all specialties.

Empathy in a clinical context is the doctor's ability to understand the emotions of patients that can contribute to more thorough history taking and making more accurate diagnosis and as a consequence an effective personalized treatment plan. Clinical empathy includes the following components: 1 – the ability to understand the patients’ condition, their feelings (emotions); 2 – the ability to make a rapport with patients in order to understand their mental state, emotions, and check the accuracy of this understanding; 3 – the ability to act in a certain therapeutic way (taking into account the understanding of the patient's mental state).

According to many researchers, empathy is a genetically determined property, strengthened or weakened by an individual's life experience that depends on certain individual personality traits, but scientists have proven that empathy can be fostered.

According to the literature, a decline in the level of empathy is usually observed in the third year of medical training, when students begin clinical classes that require contact with patients. The researchers associate this decline with the deflation of the ideal image of a doctor and his / her professional role, which young people had when beginning their medical studies. The decrease in empathy after passing their first clinical classes can also be understood as a kind of protection mechanism in case of getting into various difficult and serious life-threatening situations. Other authors claim that there is no noticeable change in the level of empathy. Such ambiguous results arise can be explained by the fact that researchers use various evaluation methods and once again emphasize the relevance of these processes in modern clinical practice.

Involvement of students in coming in contact with patients, and namely, during survey, examination and treatment; discussion of clinical cases with analysis of applied examination methods, treatment plan and prognosis helps to form and develop empathy, teaches communication with patients, which are quite important qualities of a doctor.

When fostering empathy in students, one should not forget that during work the doctor encounters some stressful situations that are associated with the suffering of patients, and therefore, along with empathy, the doctor must possess stress resistance in order not to succumb to psychological deformation, emotional exhaustion and professional burnout, which in turn can negatively affect the quality of diagnosis and the effectiveness of patient treatment. It is worth noting that the achievements of modern medicine in the field of anesthesiological support, surgical intervention technologies, and patient care enable to harmonize this border between empathy and psychological deformation.

Thus, during the professional training of doctors, educators and clinicians should pay special attention not only to the students’ acquisition of practical skills, but also to the development of empathy, the formation of stress resistance, the improvement of interpersonal communication both with colleagues and patients, and the development of skills, related to empathy in a broad sense as these aspects are one of the paramount tasks of medical education programs based on the biopsychosocial model of health.