Empathy in the Physician-Patient Relationship: How Physicians Define, Develop, and Demonstrate Emotional Work in Clinical Practice

Utrankar, Amol

Empathy in the Physician-Patient Relationship: How Physicians Define, Develop, and Demonstrate Emotional Work in Clinical Practice

dc.contributor.author	Utrankar, Amol	en_US
dc.date.accessioned	2013-04-03T19:43:17Z	en_US
dc.date.available	2013-04-03T19:43:17Z	en_US
dc.date.issued	2013	en_US
dc.description	2nd prize winner of the Friends of Fondren Library Undergraduate Research Awards, 2013.	en_US
dc.description.abstract	In recent years, much research has been focused on the role of empathy in the patientphysician relationship. Empathy has been shown to improve patient communication, trust, and clinical outcomes. Driven by this evidence, the physician-patient interaction has shifted in recent decades from a relationship that once discouraged empathy to one that now requires it as a fundamental element of the physician scope of practice. The majority of this research examines correlates of empathetic behavior, longitudinal changes in patient-centeredness scores, or behavioral coding of physician-patient relationships, leaving knowledge gaps in questions of meaning or process surrounding clinical empathy. This study attempts to link the quantitative aspects of medical research on empathy with the sociological concept of emotion labor. Semistructured narrative interviews will be conducted with emergency medicine physicians and residents at two Level I trauma centers at academic medical centers. As an outcome, this study aspires to understand how physicians conceptualize empathy, consider its role within their broader scope of responsibilities, and experience changes in empathy over time. These findings will provide an explanatory theoretical framework of empathy in the medical setting to strengthen future evaluations and interventions.	en_US
dc.identifier.citation	Utrankar, Amol. "Empathy in the Physician-Patient Relationship: How Physicians Define, Develop, and Demonstrate Emotional Work in Clinical Practice." (2013) Rice University: <a href="https://hdl.handle.net/1911/70918">https://hdl.handle.net/1911/70918</a>.	en_US
dc.identifier.uri	https://hdl.handle.net/1911/70918	en_US
dc.language.iso	eng	en_US
dc.publisher	Rice University	en_US
dc.rights	This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.	en_US
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/	en_US
dc.title	Empathy in the Physician-Patient Relationship: How Physicians Define, Develop, and Demonstrate Emotional Work in Clinical Practice	en_US
dc.type.dcmi	Text	en_US
dc.type.genre	Research paper	en_US