"Dan, a 71-year-old retired pilot, was recuperating at home after experiencing an ischemic stroke. Depressed and living alone, he described feeling comforted by the health care team that visited his home during his rehabilitation. With tear-filled eyes, Dan shared, "Susan (his nurse) sat and listened to my stories and feelings like she deeply cared. I swear she healed me as much, if not more, than the medications." Dan's experience reveals the power of empathy in healing."
"I have worked with a wide range of health care professionals-from hospitals and ER physicians to alternative healing practitioners and therapists-on their trauma, burnout, and compassion fatigue. The reverberating effects of burnout impact one's mental and physical health, families, colleagues, workplaces, and the greater society in need of their services. To say, "Toughen up, buttercup," is really not the solution to broader systemic influences that seek more from people while giving less."
Three distinct empathy types appear in caregiving: cognitive empathy recognizes others' emotions without experiencing them; compassion empathy combines concern with action and helps protect against burnout; contagion empathy merges others' emotions and increases burnout risk while reducing long-term helping. Empathic listening and care can improve recovery and provide greater meaning and manageability for people in rehabilitation. Burnout reverberates through mental and physical health, families, workplaces, colleagues, and societal capacity to receive care. Simple exhortations to 'toughen up' fail to address systemic pressures that demand more while providing less, highlighting the need to understand empathy styles.
Read at Psychology Today
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]