ethics in medical practice

2. Francis report :
• compassion fatigue
• overwork
• excess demand
• lack of continuity
• failure to see the patient as a fellow human being.
Existential neglect

3. 4 types
1. Affective
2. Cognitive
3. Behavioural
4. Moral

4. It is the ability to subjectively experience
and share in another’s psychological state
or feelings.
Empathy can be conceptualised as a form
of perception where people can literally
feel the emotional states of others as their
own

5. “Detached concern” - to understand the
experiences of another without evoking a
personal emotional response.
To understand another person’s feelings
and perspective from an objective stance
It is necessary here to distinguish between
self- and other-orientated perspective
taking.

6. To Act - Empathy without action is not
empathy
to communicate one’s understanding of the
situation and check its accuracy
to act on that understanding with the
patient in a helpful (therapeutic) way

7. An internal motivation of concern for the
other
A desire to act to relieve their suffering by
caring and driving acts of altruism
It is not sufficient to mimic the patterns of
speech or behaviours which appear
empathic, there must also be authentic
concern

8. An emotion caused by the realisation that
something bad has happened to another
person
Concern for the welfare of others
It can take a ‘self-orientated’ perspective -
to help the other person in order to relieve
one’s own distress

9.  Connection: involving emotional sharing with
the patient in a two-way relationship
 Clinical curiosity: to gain insight into the
patient’s concerns, feelings and distress,
giving patients a sense that they matter
 Another-orientated perspective: the doctor
tries to imagine what it is like to be the patient
and to see the world from the patient’s
perspective

10.  Self–other differentiation: this respects the patient
as an individual with dignity
 Care: acting appropriately on the understanding
gained to help the patient
 Reference : Empathy, sympathy and compassion in healthcare: Is there a problem? Is
there a difference? Does it matter? - Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine; 2016,
Vol. 109(12) 446–452