"empathy training"

This article is a sanctimonious rant for all my fellow healthcare workers, but also for your entertainment. I have it very easy, and enjoy what I do for a living. There are some parts of this that do not help with employee moral, or healthcare staffing.

I recently had to take a course on “empathy.” Sounds reasonable. We as health care providers should have empathy for our patients.

As I started the course, I was asked how I would verbally respond to some questions.

At the end of the questions, I was labelled as a “prober,” meaning I was asking too many questions, instead of empathizing with the patient’s current predicament.

In order to pass the class, I first had to make a statement to the patient, similar to, “I am sorry you are having pain.”

Nothing wrong with that, but talk is cheap.

I actually care very much about your pain. So much so, that I’m going to continue to ask questions so that we can actually decrease your pain, not just wish that you weren’t in pain.

Do you want to be patronized? Or would you rather I try to help you fix the problem? My guess is probably the later, especially since we are charging you roughly $300 a session.

Here is where is gets really deep, and you might want to consider some hip waders…

I’m guessing the people who wrote this course, have never taken care of a patient. I’m guessing they’ve never…

• Cleaned poop off of an elderly patient in a nursing home. Technically, it wasn’t my job. I have many colleagues who would call the nursing assistant to do it. But it was the humane thing to do.

• Physically helped thousands of people of every single demographic background; ethnicity, economic status, sexual orientation, disability, etc.

• Exposed themselves to patients and rooms in quarantine for various communicable diseases.

• Fed a quadriplegic during your lunch time because the nursing home had one nursing assistant for 16 patients. The CNA would run in the room, feed the patient one spoonful of food, and then run to the next patient, not staying to see if there was any choking. I got “in trouble” for that. Continued anyway.

• Helped lift patients out of wheelchairs and beds, a thousand times.

And I’ve loved every minute. I would rather clean literal poop, than to have to sit and listen to corporate patronizing BS.

I’m frequently haunted by the suffering that I’ve witnessed, and have a spectrum from guilt to appreciation at how easy I have it. I’m amazed at the strength of many of the patient’s and families that I’ve met.

These experiences have given me the true sense of empathy, which is action, not words.

Hey HR, are you really empathetic?

Great! Now actually do something. Put on a pair of gloves, and give me a hand with this one.