How is “empathy” changing the pharma industry forever?
Lessons from COVID
By Raül Rubio — Senior Business Innovation Consultant en A Piece of Pie
Although quite a buzzword, empathy is the skill of the future. It means understanding the needs of employees and customers, putting yourself in their shoes, and spending time with them. For any company, in any sector, these are fundamentals to grow together with the people that you are building products and services for. However, empathy goes beyond listening and observing.
What does empathy really entail? What does it mean for the pharma industry in their pathway to a more patient-centric model?
Empathy can be defined in many ways, and it is commonly used inter-changeably with compassion, emotional intelligence, or sympathy. For Berkeley professor Jodi Halpern, what makes empathy distinctive is that it implies understanding why someone is thinking or feeling the way they do, not just what he or she does. This is its most distinguishable factor from those other types of affective sharing (i.e. sympathy or compassion). What is the implication of this perspective for pharma? Solving deeper problems.
High-risk patients or lonely patients?
“The beginning of the pandemic, I will always remember. I thought I was going to die alone. I imagined they would find me cold in bed” (Maria, 78)
COVID has taught us that loneliness is also a public health issue; it is another pandemic running parallel to the present one. In several studies we have conducted at A Piece of Pie, we found that anxiety issues have worsened by the lack of socialization and social support. Maria is a 78 years old, asthmatic widow of 7 years. She had a daughter who died young and her closest family is an older sister with Alzheimer living in a nursing home with nephews who visit her regularly. However, during the confinement this was reduced to one visit per week to bring her food and to talk for a few minutes.
Maria recalls having difficulties breathing and believed she would die of COVID alone in her house. Despite her symptoms, she avoided going to the hospital because of her growing fear. She kept having anxiety attacks as the media portrayed her as a high-risk patient and became obsessed with the thought of having twice the risk of being infected and three times more likely to die. How do we practice empathy in Maria’s case?
Patient hot lines to avoid uncertainty and loneliness. One of Maria’s worsening condition, beyond the fear of dying was the fear of dying alone. Being at a point of having no one accompanying her, no one to freely talk to or share her fears with. Many times, the role of caretakers is to make patients feel more grounded and to make sure they do not get lost in their fears and paranoia.
In this case, practicing empathy is to see Maria as a patient prone to avoid help and support.
Nurses: to care and to be taken care of
Empathy involves understanding the medical system in a holistic manner. It means understanding interdependent nature of the actors within the healthcare ecosystem. To fully grasp who bears the weight and strains as well as when it is heaviest and how they go about their task. COVID is also teaching us that nurses have become the lifeboats of primary care, having to respond quickly to new medical set ups and display management and organizational skills on top of their usual tasks. Very often they also bear the weight of going beyond their duties to hold a hand or talk to patients and family members.
Empathy is about understanding the moral conundrums for these actors; the kind of values that inform their decision-making process.
Jose, a participant of another study we conducted in Spain, told us that the nurse working with his primary care doctor called him both in the first and second waves of COVID simply to check how he was doing. Jose explained to us that both times he became deeply emotional about it. It is evident that nurses play a key role in ensuring that patients feel supported, and as key players medical journeys must also consider their needs. How is empathy practiced in the nurse’s case?
Organizational/management skills training and emotional support programmes. As with the case of the patient, Maria, exposure to repeated and disturbing images in the media of overworked and understaffed medical units are also psychologically distressing for doctors and nurses. Empathy is built by providing nurses with the resources and the skills ensuring these caretakers are also provided for, so that they can continue caring for others.
Here empathy entails understanding the emotional drainage nurses undergo in periods of intensive strains and getting ahead of their needs to ensure they do not put a strain in their personal lives.
In the world of health care, the focus on patient centricity has been a key element for some years, from the directions of hospitals, to conferences or messages from the industry. While we do not know when or how the end of COVID will look, empathy will be the means of motivating people to solve a problem instead of running away from it.
Empathy is the way to ensure you are moving in the right direction.
References:
Garfin D.R., Silver R.C., Holman E.A. The novel coronavirus (COVID-2019) outbreak: amplification of public health consequences by media exposure. Health Psychology. 2020 doi: 10.1037/hea0000875.
Halpern, Jodi 2001 From Detached Concern to Empathy: Humanizing Medical Practice. New York: Oxford University Press.
