Showing clinical empathy to patients can improve clinical outcomes, patient satisfaction with care, motivate patients to stick to their treatment plans, lower malpractice complaints, and improve the clinician’s professional satisfaction.1,2 Medical schools as well as physical therapy, occupational therapy and nursing programs all use a variety of interventions to enhance patient empathy among their students. But despite the evidence for the benefits of clinical empathy, few rehabilitation treatment facilities in the country have gathered data to assess their patients’ beliefs regarding therapist empathy.
There are a number of measures of clinical empathy, most of which were designed for physicians. However, we’d like to encourage you to consider using the Consultation and Relational Empathy (CARE) Measure in your rehabilitation practice. It was developed and researched at the Departments of General Practice in Glasgow University and Edinburgh University and it is available free of charge at http://www.caremeasure.org/.3 The authors describe it as “ a quick (only 10 questions), clear and easy to complete patient-completed questionnaire. It measures empathy in the context of the therapeutic relationship during a one-on-one consultation between a clinician and a patient.” A text version is available for download as well as a visual version. See below.
The CARE measure is quick and easy to administer. Using it demonstrates to patients that the clinician cares about the patient’s emotional experience as well as his/her physical health care needs. It also reinforces the importance of empathy to therapists themselves.
1. Buckman R1, Tulsky JA, Rodin G. Empathic responses in clinical practice: intuition or tuition? CMAJ. 2011 Mar 22;183(5):569-71. http://www.cmaj.ca/content/early/2011/01/24/cmaj.090113.full.pdf
2. Stepien KA1, Baernstein A. Educating for empathy. A review. J Gen Intern Med. 2006 May;21(5):524-30. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1484804/
3. CARE Measure http://www.caremeasure.org/index.php
