Empathy in a physician may go a long way in patients

Does having an empathetic provider make you healthier? A new study suggests that there may be some truth to that. Scientists asked a small group of patients with type 2 diabetes to rate how empathetic they felt their providers were. Although about 20% of the participants either experienced some kind of cardiac event in the year of follow-up or died, those who gave their doctors medium to high empathy scores were less likely to experience an adverse event — although this finding was not statistically significant. Patients who gave their doctors good empathy scores were also less likely to have died in the follow-up period. Although these findings only represent associations, more research is needed to understand what about the doctors’ empathy translates to better outcomes in the patients, the researchers suggest.