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Volume 5, Issue 4(Suppl) J Nurs Care
ISSN: 2167-1168 JNC, an open access journal World Nursing 2016
August 15-17, 2016
Page 25
Notes:
conferenceseries.com
6th World Nursing
and Healthcare Conference
August 15-17, 2016 London, UK
Professional empathy improves the patient experience and health outcomes while reducing costs: Evidence-based
solutions
The decline in empathy inhealthcare has reachedglobal proportions andhighlights the need for evidence-based interventions.
90% of nurses, physicians and hospital administrators endorsed the need for institutional empathy training in a recent
Schwartz Center Survey. Professional empathy is correlated with patient safety, patient satisfaction, better health outcomes,
and clinician wellbeing. Research shows that empathy for patients, declines throughout medical training with increasing
burnout in medical professionals. Implicating up to 60% of nurses in the US, patients are demanding humanistic care which is
paramount to restoring the public’s trust in the medical profession. This presentation will highlight novel empathy research that
demonstrates that empathy can be taught with sustainable behavior changes and our recent meta-analysis that demonstrated
that relationship factors improved health outcomes such as obesity, asthma, diabetes, hypertension, and pulmonary infections.
These interventions are closely tied to cost reduction. A multi-centered randomized controlled trial was conducted at a large
general hospital to determine whether novel neuroscience-based empathy training could improve clinician empathy at the level
of patient perception. The training group showed significant improvement in patient ratings of empathy (p=0.02). A brief series
of 3 training sessions significantly improved clinicians’ empathic and relational skills as rated by their patients. The training has
been translated into a web-based format for global accessibility. With patients deserving humanistic care from their healthcare
institutions, we present a solution that offers a step towards systemic changes to improving compassionate care.
Biography
Helen Riess, MD, is working as an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. She directs the Empathy and Relational Science Program at
Massachusetts General Hospital. Her research team conducts translational research utilizing the neuroscience of emotions. The effectiveness of her empathy
education approach has been demonstrated in a randomized controlled trial. She has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals and is an internationally
recognized speaker and researcher. Her Empathy TEDx talk has been viewed by over 100,000 viewers. Her empathy training curricula are implemented
internationally in healthcare. She is the Chief Scientific Officer of Empathetics, Inc., providing web-based empathy training solutions.
Helen Riess
Harvard Medical School, USA
Helen Riess, J Nurs Care 2016, 5:4(Suppl)