Improving Empathy in the Care of Pain Patients

Abstract

Empathy is associated with countless benefits in clinical interactions, yet it is not always optimal in health care providers. Social neuroscience offers a window onto the cerebral processes underlying the complex relationships between the multiple components of empathy, patient care, and the caregiver's well-being. Neuroimaging studies have revealed patterns of empathy-related neural responses that shed some light on the mechanisms that could partially explain the phenomena of empathy decline and pain underestimation in health care providers. Such information, complementary to behavioral research findings, may help develop new means of improving empathy in health care, as long as interpretation of neuroimaging data remains grounded. Additionally, research on empathy in this context has largely focused on how clinicians' empathy may affect patient outcomes, but the relationship between empathy and well-being in health care providers is often neglected. The quest to optimize empathy in patient–clinician interactions must take into account the welfare of both members of this dyad.

Keywords:

• cognition
• emotion
• empathy
• neuroscience
• neuroimaging
• pain

Funding

The authors acknowledge the financial support of the Fonds de recherche du Québec Santé (salary award to PLJ: number 29157) and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (grant to PLJ: number 123209; scholarship to M-PBT). The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Notes

1. A distinction between the aMCC and the dACC has not been established clearly in this field. To avoid confusion in this review, we use the label aMCC/dACC to refer to a general area dorsal to the peri-genual/rostral ACC and rostral to the middle of the midcingulate.