Physician empathy equals positive outcomes

Through a landmark study, a research team has been able to quantify a relationship between physicians' empathy and their patients' positive clinical outcomes, suggesting that a physician's empathy is an important factor associated with clinical competence. The study is available in the March 2011 issue of Academic Medicine.

Participants in this study were 891 diabetic patients, treated between July 2006 and June 2009, by 29 physicians. Researchers used the Jefferson Scale of Empathy (JSE) -- developed in 2001 as an instrument to measure empathy in the context of medical education and patient care. This validated instrument relies on the definition of empathy in the context of patient care as a predominately cognitive attribute that involves an understanding and an intention to help.

To measure how a physician's empathy impacted a diabetic patient's treatment, the researchers used hemoglobin A1c test results to measure the adequacy of blood glucose control according to national standards. They also analyzed the patients' LDL cholesterol level. They believed that there would be a direct association between a higher physician JSE score and a better control of patients' hemoglobin A1c and LDL cholesterol levels. A1c and LDL tests were marked as following: good control, poor control and moderate control.

The likelihood of good control was significantly greater in patients of physicians with high empathy scores than in the patients of physicians with low scores. Conversely, the likelihood of poor control was significantly lower in the patients of physicians with high empathy scores than it was in patients of physicians with low scores. The same can be said for the LDL cholesterol portion of the analysis.

This data points to the conclusion that empathic engagement in patient care can contribute to patient satisfaction, trust, and compliance which lead to more desirable clinical outcomes. For those in primary care medicine who have devoted their working lives to developing empathic relationships with patients, research findings of improved patient outcomes among the more empathic physicians is gratifying.