Text

theses

Within the medical setting, surgery has the potential to have traumatic implications on the psychological functioning of patients. One way to combat these traumatic effects is to improve the training doctors receive on how to provide empathic care. Unfortunately, research has shown an observable decline of empathy amongst physicians in training, as well as missed opportunities for demonstrating empathy among practicing physicians (Plant, Barone, Serwint, & Butani, 2015). The purpose of this study was to obtain a measurement of current levels of empathy amidst General Surgery Residents at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, utilizing the Jefferson Scale of Empathy. This study also sought to acquire an understanding of prior empathy training by assessing the frequency in which empathy was being modeled, as well as how effective residents found the training to be. This data was then used to inform the development of a curriculum aimed at enhancing the usage of patient-focused empathy amongst the residents. Data analysis included scoring the Jefferson Scale of Empathy according to its manual. This revealed all but two residents fell in the average range of empathy for their sample. Further data analysis included utilizing descriptive statistics to identify the frequency in which empathy was modeled, and for assessing the effectiveness of prior training. Residents rated the frequency in which they observed physicians demonstrating empathy as either sometimes (12 respondents) or often (13 respondents). In regards to previous trainings, a majority of the residents felt like prior trainings were only “slightly” helpful. Following the data analysis, a period of integration occurred in which the data collected was fused with a common factors approach that emphasized hope, empathy, language, loyalty, permission, partnership, and planning to develop a training curriculum. The focus of the proposed training curriculum is to create an opportunity to teach patient focused empathy and to ultimately improve patient care. Along with the proposed curriculum, suggestions for future research included here call for evaluating the impact of the training through pre- and post-test evaluations. Limitations to this current study include the lower than anticipated sample size, the Jefferson Scale of Empathy’s lack of standardized scoring guidelines, and a limited amount of qualitative data obtained.

ETD_8144

Psy.D.

Includes bibliographical references

by Ramona Ross

doi:10.7282/T3571G24

ETD doctoral

The author owns the copyright to this work.