Empathy And Communication In Health Care

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Introduction:
A healthcare professionals ability to effectively communicate is essential towards the delivery of high-quality health care and maintenance of patient satisfaction.1 Latest study has shown that an established relationship with a patient facilitates an accurate diagnosis and an ease of giving therapeutic instructions1. As such, strong communication skills are important whilst approaching a client who is experiencing a lot of pain and is distressed about a treatment. Thus, by exhibiting empathy and understanding towards a client’s situation whilst building rapport are two communication skills that health professionals will need to ensure effective care.

Building empathy and Understanding:
Empathy refers to the ability of being intellectually and emotionally aware of another person’s thoughts and feelings.6 In the case of a client’s anxiety and growing discomfort towards a medical treatment, it may be suppressed by health professional’s ability to address client’s emotions with empathetic responses. Communicating with empathy involves relating to his/her fear as a way of letting the client know that their pain/anxiety is being acknowledged. Such examples include, “Describe the pain you are having?”2 and “I can see you are anxious about your treatment”2 and “I can reassure you that your feelings are normal”2. Through this, the health professional is reinforcing that his/her feelings are normal further sustaining a progressive establishment of rapport and trust. …show more content…

This is an encouraging way of showing empathy and understanding towards their situation whilst exhibiting effective

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