OTTAWA — Doctors who are empathetic achieve better clinical results, a new study suggests.
 
In the study, researchers from Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia linked physicians’ sympathy and compassion to the success of their treatment of patients with diabetes.
 
The study focused on 891 diabetic patients treated between 2006 and 2009 by 29 doctors at the school’s department of family and community medicine. Prior to treatment, each of the physicians underwent a standardized test called the Jefferson Scale of Empathy, developed in 2001 to measure their empathy in the context of patient care.
 
“Our results show that physicians with high empathy scores had better clinical outcomes than other physicians with lower scores,” Mohammadreza Hojat, a research professor at Jefferson Medical College, said in a release. The study is published in the March issue of Academic Medicine.
 
It found that diabetic patients in the care of physicians with higher empathy scores were better able to control their blood sugar and cholesterol levels than those with lower scores. Researchers said the results suggests that empathy in patient care contributes to higher patient satisfaction, trust and compliance, which leads to more desirable clinical outcomes.
 
“These findings, if confirmed by larger-scale research, suggest that empathy should be viewed as an integral component of a physician’s competence,” said Hojat.
 
“This study supports the recommendations of such professional organizations as the Association of American Medical Colleges and the American Board of Internal Medicine of the importance of assessing and enhancing empathetic skills in undergraduate and graduate medical education.”
 
Dr. Jeffrey Turnbull, president of the Canadian Medical Association, said that while physicians have long known the importance of empathy in care, this study provides hard evidence.
 
“Doctors have recognized that, and patients have basically told us that in different ways. But now we have evidence to support this,” he said. “It shows that amongst all that we can convey, one important component is sympathy and empathy.”
 
The study comes on the heels of findings by University of Toronto and Duke University researchers in January that suggested that doctors fail to respond to emotional cues from their patients 90 per cent of the time.
 
Dr. Gary Rodin, an oncologist at the University Health Network in Toronto, said the success of diabetes treatment can be particularly affected by a doctor’s empathy.
 
“Diabetes control involves a lot of attention to insulin dosage, exercise, diet and lifestyle. That involves collaboration between the patient and the physician, and the interaction has a big difference in outcome,” he said.
 
“Empathy and communication are tied together, and those allow a more collaborative relationship with the patient. So it’s not surprising that if you’re trying to work with a patient on better diabetes control, and establish a more collaborative relationship you’ll be working together towards the same goal.”
 
Turnbull admitted that while empathy is increasingly important in medicine, attempting to teach doctors to be empathetic is a challenge.
 
“I don’t think you can teach empathy in the traditional ways — that’s something you can only do through role-modelling and having patients help us as teachers,” he said.
 
“Patients are very good at saying things like ‘This is valuable to me,’ and ‘I felt better about things when you said it that way.'”
 
Robert Wender, one of the co-authors of the study, also pointed to the significance of the findings.
 
“Although physicians intuitively value empathy, the clinical importance of empathy has not been known. We’re now on our way to showing the power of physician empathy to impact the health of our patients,” he said in a statement.