Importance Of Professional Empathy

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In this paper, they cited Reiss 2010 abou the term empathy. Empathy is an “affective ‘feeling with’”, which is the suffering of a patient and “a cognitive ability to take the perspective of or ‘to put oneself in the shoes of the patient’”. Empathy has eluded a fear upon the physicians for if they were to develop a bond with a patient they will lose their objective and/or experience ‘sympathetic distress’, a term they cited from Halpern 2001. Empathy is the liability of a burnout; those who do not wish to continue to help others due to the fear of feeling a patient’s pain and sorrow. Halpern argued that rather than learning to be ‘detached concerned’, professional empathy should be in place.
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I agree with their statements for in order to inflict less damage on either the patient or doctor; there are gaps that need to be taken into account. Teaching a student about empathy does not automatically allow the student to feel empathy towards anyone. If learned, how can they teach these students what their limit is when getting close to a patient before they start to feel what may lead to their burnout. What happens if that patient may be someone they have loved, someone they know, someone they might feel a connection to. Will the doctors just have to distance themselves from work but when faced outside in the real world, will they get a rush of emotions that may cause a greater emotional and psychological impact. “Empathy can be facilitated, interrupted and blocked, but cannot be forced to occur, and that when it occurs, we find ourselves experiencing it, rather than directly causing it to happen” (Ekman & Krasner 2016). Empathy cannot be taught, empathy cannot be controlled, it just happens involuntarily. Setting up barriers can be easier for some and harder for others, the form of a barrier can be different for each which may lead to them falling at some point in time. How will we know who to help when setting up

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