The photo attached is an empty road. Unfortunately this is a place that some people have to call home. There are thousands of South Africans who are homeless and who live on the streets. These people may enter hospitals and they get treated by the appropriate health care professionals. However, walking into a ward full of patients you do not know the personal stories behind each patient. As a health professional you have interaction with these patients and in most of the cases you get to know more about the patient through the subjective assessment and interactions during treatment. I treated a patient who was very open to me about her life and shared many personal stories about being homeless, how she lives and how she got into the situation she was in. Listening to this patient’s stories I couldn’t help but empathise with her and try to begin to imagine how she must feel by being homeless, cold, lonely and scared while living on the street.

While treating this patient I found myself empathising with her more than any of the other patient’s due to her circumstances. The patient always complained about having cold feet and she had no socks because someone had stolen them and she could not afford new socks. For me having socks to keep your feet warm is a basic necessity.  Meeting someone who’s only “want” is a pair of socks had a profound effect on me. Something I take for granted every day is someone’s biggest “want”. Again I found myself empathising with this patient who had no family, was homeless and longed for a basic need. I bought this patient a pair of socks during the time I was treating her.

Reflecting back on this action, I questioned whether I crossed the patient physio professional line by getting to know the patient’s personal background, empathising with the patient’s stories and resulting in buying her a gift in the form of a pair of socks. The motive behind the socks was a human instinct of wanting to help someone who is in need. When looking at a physio patient relationship, ethically I am reflecting whether it was correct to empathise with the patient to the point of wanting to help them outside the scope of physiotherapy. By doing small things for patients such as explained above, this means not every patient is getting the same level of treatment. Treatment has now gone beyond physiotherapy scope and depending on the patient, their openness with you about their personal information and your level of empathy, the treatment is no longer of equal standard for everyone.

It is proven that showing empathy towards patients improves the patient’s experience and interaction with the health professional. However empathy should be an intellectual rather than an emotional form of knowing (Halpern, 2003). Therefore making a distinction between understanding the patient’s situation and feelings while treating the patient holistically versus getting emotionally too involved is important. Communication plays a vital role in integrating empathy into management and improving the patient’s experience (Halpern, 2003). Going forward I will evaluate each patient situation and ensure I create a good patient physio relationship, integrating empathy as best as possible, however not getting too emotionally attached by focusing on treatment and the patient’s goals including the ICF components. I will concentrate on identifying the patient’s emotion/social circumstances, identify the source of the emotion and react appropriately showing that I have made a link between these two points (Buckman, 2002).

Despite the patient’s background every patient deserves the same level of treatment and care and empathy can improve the patient’s experience. However, there are barriers such as time, environment and communication that can make it challenging to involve empathy (Hope-stone & Mills. 2013). Despite this every patient has their own social story and as a health professional you will come across many different stories which may touch your heart. Empathy in treatment is important but appropriate management within physiotherapy scope should be maintained to ensure each patient is treated equally regardless of their social backgrounds.

References

Buckman, R. (2002). Communications and emotions Skills and effort are key. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1124207/

Halpern, J. (2003). What is Clinical Empathy?. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1494899/

Hope-stone, L. Mills, B. (2013). Developing empathy to improve patient care: a pilot study of cancer nurses. Retrieved from https://www.magonlinelibrary.com/doi/abs/10.12968/ijpn.2001.7.3.8913