Exploring Empathy; Re-Framing how we Connect with Others During Clinical Ethics Consultations
Friday, October 13, 2023
8:00 AM – 9:15 AM ET
Location: Falkland (Fourth Floor)
Understanding families’, stakeholders’, and team members’ perspectives, values, and motivations is crucial to the clinical ethics consultation process. Empathy is listed as basic skill within ASBH’s core competencies and is an integral part of connecting with others. Throughout professional training, one is taught empathy by imagining what it is like to be in the families' or patients' shoes. However, this classic teaching is built on a tenuous premise as we can never imagine what it’s truly like to be someone else because in our imaginings, we are imagining how we as ourselves would feel if we were they, rather than their experience of themselves. By employing the classic definition of empathy, one runs the risk of assuming racial, socioeconomic, and gender identities that are not one’s own which may create a further divide. There is also the possibility that in shouldering someone else’s burden/role as if it were one’s own, it may seem like a relatively greater one. If the imagined burden is too great it runs the risk of contributing to inaction, impaired decision making, or burnout. In this session we will reframe how to think about empathy by exploring various working definitions of sympathy, empathy, and compassion. Through case-based discussion, we will highlight how to have empathy in the moment and how to focus on emotions while acknowledging salient identities. Through re-framing how we view/use empathy, we aim to promote enhanced connections with patients and team members, further common understanding, and achieve shared goals while mitigating burnout.