Humans have evolved over the centuries. Their behaviour and way of living have evolved over the decades. There was a time where humans didn’t even know how to communicate with each other but over the past decades, there has been a significant improvement in open and transparent communications.

Now,  communication involves the know-how to balance human emotion with words and actions. This evolution has turned the tables all around. Mostly on the professional levels, people are adopting this evolution as an important part of their life.  Being a doctor, this evolution plays an important role in dealing with patients.

What is empathy?

There is always a question which pounders in a number of minds that should a doctor be empathetic?

Empathy is a powerful way that can be used by the doctor to treat their patients on an emotional level, which has been resulted in treating the patients better than ever. It is said that “half of the medicine works with the good words of the patient’s doctor”. Empathy actually makes the patients feel better when they have the satisfaction in their minds that someone is there to listen to them on an emotional level because when a person is suffering from any physical pain or diseases, it has an effect on the mental health of the person, which can often hinder the healing process.

Empathy helps to build a better bond between the patient and the doctor. This further assists the patient to deal better with their overwhelming emotions when they are going through any physical pain or disease.

How empathy and sympathy are different from each other?

Over the past years, people have this conception of confusing and misusing the word empathy with sympathy. Empathy and sympathy are similar yet different from each other. Empathy is known as the ability to understand the emotions and the feeling of the patients, as, on the other hand, sympathy is known as an emotional resonance, which makes the doctor feel and experience the same pain on a personal level.

Being a doctor, you have to deal with a lot of patients every day. At this level of professionalism, it is not appropriate to be sympathetic to your patients. The sympathy can result in losing professionalism, as the patients do not wish to be pitied, rather they desire to have an understanding.

Sympathy, especially when unnecessary, is unmistakably wrong with regards to conveying care, as a result of the danger that it will risk the consideration of doctors’ clinical judgment and spot the consideration doctor in danger of burnout.

This is the main reason why most doctors don’t provide their medical services to their family members because of their emotional involvement with them. These emotions can be really harmful while treating patients. There are so many doctors who don’t allow their selves to treat their family members, as they are not able to handle the pain and suffering of their loved ones.

As for empathy, you cannot be emotionally involved with your patients. It is just that you must be able to understand their condition, so you can assist them proficiently. Empathy cannot be developed naturally, it takes practice and devotion, which is necessary to learn the core purpose of empathy in professional life.

There are several doctors who enrol their selves in professionalism courses for doctors, which helps them to develop better communication skills with their patients. These ethics courses for doctors are actually beneficial for the better treatment of the patients and also are beneficial for the doctors to make their professional life smoother.