Always struggling with healthcare crisis in Telugu states. The way society views doctors will have a significant impact on how the patient-doctor interaction develops in the future.
Most of us have found ourselves in the waiting room or reception of a hospital while waiting for a consultation with the doctors during and after the recent Covid outbreak. Each of us may have received a variety of answers concerning ourselves or our loved ones from the physicians or nurses, which could have caused us to feel nervous just before receiving the news, anxious, or just stressed out.
Did you not wish that someone had been there to support you through the ordeal and the frequently life-altering medical decisions? Wouldn’t the circumstance you found yourself in at the hospital have been a little bit more pleasant if someone could just put themselves in your shoes for a short while before speaking with empathy? On the other hand, did you feel misunderstood, unappreciated, or burned out as a healthcare professional and wished that someone could have understood you and the struggles you were going through?
Can Patient And Provider Are Treated With Empathy?
Alfred Adler, a well-known Austrian psychologist, once said that empathy is “seeing with another’s eyes, hearing with another’s ears, and experiencing with another’s heart.” We all need to receive and give empathy to those around us given the ongoing conflict and the frenetic pace of modern life.
Society suffers as a result of our overall lack of empathy. In the healthcare industry, things are similar. The patients, their families, and the medical staff all agree that their lives would be improved if there was a little more empathy from “the other side.”
Consider the case of a Non-Resident Indian (NRI) whose father was recently confined to the ICU of a major corporate hospital in Delhi and who was unable to get a fair response from the facility regarding his father’s status. He had to go hundreds of miles in a hurry merely to find out whether his father would live or die.
Another example is a senior couple whose little kid was unexpectedly admitted to the hospital at midnight and required to have an emergency heart operation. They were not only ignorant of their son’s condition, but they were also irate with the hospital staff for their rude and condescending treatment of them. Even the bravest people get the chills when they hear news like this. There are countless such cases like this in hospitals around the nation.
Almost 80% of Indian doctors, according to a recent poll conducted in April 2022 by the Indian Medical Association (IMA), are stressed out about their jobs.
Several recent studies support the idea that doctors commit suicide at a higher rate than the overall population. Lack of sleep, excessive workload, anxiety about being persecuted by irate patients or their relatives, fear of being violently attacked, and patient underappreciation are among the typical causes of this. This study suggests that, albeit covertly, doctors are also experiencing empathy issues.
An example of this is the suicide of a female doctor who was publicly harassed and who feared violence against her family. She made this explicit in her suicide note, which was written last year. How can doctors perform their duties with commitment and sincerity if they are continually criticised and judged, even when they are innocent?
How the Epidemic Revealed the Nurses’ Crackdown?
In both of the Covid pandemic’s two waves, nurses in India have taken the largest hits. A prominent hospital chain’s nursing director said that the majority of the nurses on her staff were young women between the ages of 22 and 30.
They preferred to resign rather than put their lives in danger or deal with patient relatives’ persecution. The nurses who worked during the pandemic experienced social exclusion as well because they were thought to be carriers of the deadly disease.
Thus, we find ourselves at a crossroads where, on the one hand, patients and their families generally feel cheated, mistreated, or uncared for by their medical carers while, on the other hand, healthcare professionals are experiencing increasing burnout which is having a negative impact on their mental health as well as their ability to treat their patients, significantly compounding the problem. Finding original solutions to this puzzle is therefore a key concern.
During the Covid epidemic, almost all major hospitals devised mandatory psychological support/counseling sessions for their personnel to reduce workplace stress. In order to improve relationships between patient families and hospital employees, numerous employee and patient engagement activities were arranged at various hospitals.
Patient coordinators’ importance was emphasised. In order to allay the concerns of the patient’s relatives, emphasis was placed on sharing thorough updates regarding the patient’s status. In order for medical personnel to work without fear, the government has also developed rules to stop violence against them.
Kindness is essential for efficient treatment and care
In all honesty, these steps alone are insufficient to close the empathy gap that exists in India’s healthcare system today. In order to increase the patient’s satisfaction with the therapeutic process, it is important to establish an empathic relationship between health professionals and patients. This will strengthen their cooperation in developing a treatment plan and a custom intervention.
Furthermore, studies have shown that a happy and satisfied patient in turn, results in a satisfied healthcare provider as well. Empathy is a skill which can be taught. Hence, importance should be given towards fostering empathy among medical students during their medical education.
Healthcare workers also require assistance from the public and the media to depict them accurately and as admirable role models. The way society views doctors will have a significant impact on how the patient-doctor interaction develops in the future. In conclusion, empathy in the healthcare industry is a complex construct where all parties involved must truly build trust among themselves and comprehend one other’s points of view. #hydnews #hydkhabar #hydlive
