Defining Empathy
Empathy is deeply valuing other people for their humanity and developing understanding of what others are feeling through shared experience. To be truly empathetic, you have to raise your awareness of the emotions and needs of those around you and put yourself into their shoes.
Colleague-to-Colleague Empathy
Empathy goes beyond the caregiver-to-patient relationship. Colleague-to-colleague empathy is crucial. Empathy among colleagues requires recognizing the commonalities that transcend the uniqueness of our departments and roles. When people come to work, they bring their own highs and lows of life with them. Empathetic colleagues coming in touch with those highs and lows are needed. Challenges in day-to-day life in general are part of everyone’s life. You do not need to meddle in people’s personal lives in order to be empathetic.
Identify with Shared Experiences
Identifying with any shared feelings due to similar experiences in that situation prepares us to extend compassion, caring, and kindness to them. Empathy requires retaining sensitivity to people’s humanity. It is very easy to become desensitized to people and their day-to-day struggles. Still, by choosing to value people and reach out to them on a human level, we create an environment of empathy, where patients and colleagues feel valued and can thrive.
Focus on Others
Keeping our personal radar trained on others’ feelings allows colleagues to enjoy the highs of celebrating happy events in their colleagues’ lives and shortens our reaction time when a tragedy occurs. Caring behavior demonstrates empathy.
