Empathy in patient-clinician interactions when using telecommunication: A rapid review of the evidence

[en] Objectives: The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the replacement of many face-to-face healthcare consultations with telephone consultations. Little is known about the extent to which empathy can be expressed in telephone consultations. Our objective is to review evidence related to empathy in telephone consultations including clinical outcomes, and patient/practitioner experiences. Methods : Searches of Medline/Ovid and PsycINFO/Ovid were undertaken. Titles and abstract screening, data extraction, and risk of bias were undertaken by two reviewers. Discrepancies were resolved in discussion with additional reviewers. Included studies were specific to tele-communications with empirical data on empathy related to patient outcomes/views, published (in English), 2010–2021. Studies that did not mention empathy explicitly were excluded. Results: Our search yielded 740 individual records and 8 studies (527 patients, 20 practitioners) met inclusion criteria: Some barriers to expression of empathy were noted, but no major obstacles were reported. However, data was sparse and most studies had a high risk of bias. Conclusion: Empathy in telephone consultations is possible, (though the loss of non-verbal cues and touch can present barriers) however the research does not yet identify how. Innovation: It is possible to establish and display empathy in telephone consultations, but future research needs to identify how this can be optimized.

Disciplines :

Treatment & clinical psychology

Author, co-author :

Budd, Georgina

Griffiths, Dan

Howick, Jeremy

Vennik, Jane

Bishop, Felicity L.

Durieux, Nancy ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Unités de recherche interfacultaires > Research Unit for a life-Course perspective on Health and Education (RUCHE)

Everitt, Hazel A.

Language :

English

Title :

Empathy in patient-clinician interactions when using telecommunication: A rapid review of the evidence

Publication date :

December 2022

Journal title :

PEC Innovation

eISSN :

2772-6282

Publisher :

Elsevier BV

Volume :

Pages :

100065

Peer reviewed :

Peer reviewed

Additional URL :

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2772628222000504?via%3Dihub

Funders :

NIHR - National Institute for Health Research [GB]

Funding number :

National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) School for Primary Care Research grant (project number 389)

Available on ORBi :

since 19 August 2022

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