[Pt2024] Free Workshop on "Empathic Engagement w/ Patients" (Sponsored by the CUSOM BH Club)

[Staffaroni, Kathleen A]

Hello everyone, The CUSOM Behavioral Health Club is hosting a FREE 3-hour workshop focused on Cultivating Empathy w/ Patients.” The workshop will be provided by Douglas, Flemons, PhD. See the workshop description and brief bio of the presenter below. This free workshop is open to all students and faculty. To register for the FREE event, please visit the link below.



Registration Link<https://forms.office.com/r/ZjXSv2vUGQ>





Free Three-Hour Workshop—Sponsored by the

CUSOM Behavioral Health Club



Scheduled for 1/14/2023, 9am-12pm, CUSOM LH 201



Workshop Title:



EMPATHIC ENGAGEMENT:

Relational Curiosity, Imagination,

Sensibility, and Communication

Douglas Flemons, Ph.D.



In their longitudinal study of students in medical school, Hojat et al. (2009) found a significant decline in empathy during students’ third year. They attributed the change to a fear of making mistakes, a demanding curriculum, time pressure, sleep loss, and a hostile environment. . . . As one student wrote, “I have felt overwhelmingly tired and unempathetic at times—It is the feeling where, upon walking into a patient’s room, I am thinking more about getting through the encounter expeditiously than about making a connection with the patient.” (p. 18)

This workshop offers a course correction, an alternative approach to managing doctor-patient relationships within the pressure-cooker of healthcare delivery.

Physicians spend their days seeing one suffering patient after another. Pressed for time, striving to accurately diagnose and treat, and wanting to keep from burning out, they may adopt an attitude of “detached concern” as a method for coping, for surviving. However, such an orientation to patients can result in doctors’ “missing important emotional cues from patients,” which “wastes time, leading to missed diagnoses, inadequate treatment adherence, and inadequate understanding of patients’ values in the face of tough medical decisions” (Halpern, 2001, p. xiv). And contrary to what you might assume, emotional detachment doesn’t protect against burnout, either (Halpern, p. 15).

The alternative to keeping patients at arm’s length is to empathically engage with them. But this doesn’t just happen (and it has nothing to do with trying to be pleasant or nice). Unlike sympathy, empathy is not something that comes to you; it is not something you have. Rather, empathy is something you must proactively and interactively create. You imaginatively project yourself inside your patients’ body-based experience, inside the realities and decisions they are feeling, facing, and enacting. As you cultivate a body-informed grasp of what it is like to be them, you communicate this developing sensibility. And, attentive to how they respond to what you offer, you finetune your understanding of what is shaping and motivating their perspective and choices.

Empathy creates a communicational connection that helps your patients to feel acknowledged and understood and helps you to deliver efficient and effective treatment.

The Presenter

Douglas Flemons was a professor of couple and family therapy for 31 years and, concurrently, a clinical professor of family medicine for 13 years at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. During this time, he directed two mental health clinics at the university and co-directed its suicide and violence prevention office. He is the co-author of a book on suicide assessment, co-editor of a book on brief approaches to sex therapy, and author of four other books and many articles and chapters. He is currently writing a book on empathy.



References

Halpern, J. (2001). From detached concern to empathy: Humanizing medical practice. Oxford University Press.

Hojat, M., Vergare, M. J., Maxwell, K., Brainard, G., Herrine, S. K., Isenberg, G. A., Veloski, J., & Gonnella, J. S. (2009). The devil is in the third year: A longitudinal study of erosion of empathy in medical school. Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior Faculty Papers, Thomas Jefferson University. Paper 37. https://jdc.jefferson.edu/phbfp/37









Jeff Krepps, PhD

Director of Behavioral Health Education & Research

Associate Professor of Behavioral Health

School of Osteopathic Medicine | Campbell University

Post Office Box 4280 | Buies Creek, North Carolina 27506

Levine Hall (Office 145) | 910-893-1741 | medicine.campbell.edu<http://medicine.campbell.edu/>



[cid:image001.png at 01D8FB3B.917F2220]<http://medicine.campbell.edu/>





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