Part of being a good medical practitioner is treating his or her patients with understanding and compassion.
A doctor’s empathy can improve the care of their patients especially diabetics.
Patients whose doctors had high empathy scores were more likely to have good control of their blood sugar and low LDL cholesterol levels than patients whose doctors had low empathy scores.
In a study that includes 891 diabetic patients treated between July 2006 and June 2009 by 29 doctors at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia.
The researchers assessed the doctors’ level of empathy for patients.
The results indicate that empathy on the part of doctors can contribute to patient satisfaction, trust and compliance with therapy.
