Physician empathy associated with decreased patient anxiety

When hospitalists responded to patients with empathy, those patients experienced decreases in anxiety.

Patients also rated their experiences with the hospitalist more positively, according to findings presented at the Society of Hospital Medicine Annual Meeting.

Rachel Weiss, MD, UCSF Medical Center, San Francisco, and colleagues also found that empathic responses were not associated with length of the patient encounter.

"Experts identify empathic responses to patient expressions of negative emotion — such as anxiety, sadness, and anger — as a key component of patient-centered communication, yet evidence on the impact of empathy on patient-reported outcomes in the hospital is limited," Weiss and colleagues reported in their abstract.

The researchers recorded the audio of 76 patient encounters with 27 physicians at two academic hospitals and surveyed patients about the encounters both before and after. They categorized hospitalist responses as empathic, neutral or nonempathic and evaluated patient anxiety before and after the encounter using the 60-point State Anxiety Scale. They also measured encounter length and patient ratings of the hospitalist and the encounter.

The researchers identified 190 instances of patients expressing negative emotions in the 76 encounters.

Results showed that physicians responded with empathy 32% of the time, without empathy 25% of the time and neutrally 43% of the time. An empathic response was associated with a 1.65 point decrease on the State Anxiety Scale (95% CI, 0.48-2.82).

In addition, a higher frequency of empathic responses was associated with better hospitalist and encounter ratings and a higher frequency of nonempathic responses was associated with lower ratings. Empathic responses were no associated with encounter length, the researchers noted.

"Empathic responses to patients’ expressions of negative emotion were associated with decreases in patient anxiety and higher patient ratings of the hospitalist and encounter, but not longer encounter length," Weiss and colleagues. "Given empathic communication could have a significant impact on patient experience in the hospital, reinforcement of health care providers’ use of empathy has the potential to improve patient satisfaction without sacrificing efficiency." – by Chelsea Frajerman Pardes

Disclosures: Healio Internal Medicine could not confirm relevant financial disclosures at the time of publication.

Reference:

Weiss R, et al. Hospitalist Empathy Is Associated with Decreased Patient Anxiety and Higher Ratings of Communication in Admission Encounters. Presented at: Society for Hospital Medicine Annual Meeting; March 6-9, 2016; San Diego.