• Patient Educ Couns · May 2014

    Empathy in high-tech and high-touch medicine.

    • Sandra Dehning, Eva Reiß, Daniela Krause, Sarah Gasperi, Sebastian Meyer, Sascha Dargel, Norbert Müller, and Matthias Siebeck.
    • Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich, Germany.
    • Patient Educ Couns. 2014 May 1; 95 (2): 259-64.

    ObjectiveSurgeons and psychiatrists have been described as two contrary groups, the one healing by hands and the other by words. Empathy is needed in every physician-patient relationship. We tested whether (1) surgeons and psychiatrists show different levels of cognitive and emotional empathy; (2) measurements of cognitive and emotional empathy correlate with physician-specific empathy; and (3) gender, experience, and career choices are influencing factors.Methods56 surgeons and 50 psychiatrists participated. We measured empathy with the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy (JSPE), cognitive empathy with the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test Revised (RME-R6), and emotional empathy with the Balanced Emotional Empathy Scale (BEES).ResultsMale psychiatrists scored significantly higher than that of male surgeons (118.0±9.86 vs. 107.5±13.84; p=0.0006) in the JSPE. Analytically trained psychiatrists scored significantly higher in the JSPE than that of behaviorally trained psychiatrists (p=0.024, F test, adjusted for gender). Both the RME and the BEES correlated positively with the JSPE.ConclusionHigher scores for empathy were found in male psychiatrists than in male surgeons.Practice ImplicationsFurther research is needed to learn about the effects of general medical training on empathy.Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

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