To be or not to be empathic: the combined role of empathic concern and perspective taking in understanding burnout in general practice

BMC Family Practice

Research Article

Serge Sultan¹  Martin Lamothe²  Franck Zenasni³  Emilie Boujut³ 

[1] Department of Psychology, University of Montreal, Succursale Centre- ville, PO Box 6128, H3C 3J7, Montreal, QC, Canada;Department of Pediatrics, University of Montreal, Montreal, QC, Canada;Sainte-Justine UHC, Montreal, QC, Canada;Department of Psychology, University of Montreal, Succursale Centre- ville, PO Box 6128, H3C 3J7, Montreal, QC, Canada;Sainte-Justine UHC, Montreal, QC, Canada;Institute of Psychology, Paris Descartes University, Paris, France;

关键词: Empathy;    Sympathy;    Empathic concern;    Perspective taking;    Burnout;    Physicians;    General practice;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2296-15-15

 received in 2013-09-03, accepted in 2013-12-16,  发布年份 2014

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundGeneral practice is stressful and burnout is common among family physicians. A growing body of evidence suggests that the way physicians relate to their patients could be linked to burnout. The goal of this study was to examine how patterns of empathy explained physicians’ burnout.MethodsWe surveyed 294 French general practitioners (response rate 39%), measured burnout, empathic concern (EC) and perspective taking (PT) using self-reported questionnaires, and modeled burnout levels and frequencies with EC, PT and their interaction in linear and logistic regression analyses.ResultsMultivariate linear models for burnout prediction were associated with lower PT (β = −0.21, p < 0.001) and lower EC (β = −0.17, p < 0.05). Interestingly, the interaction (EC x PT) also predicted burnout levels (β = 0.11, p < 0.05). The investigation of interactions revealed that high scores on PT predicted lower levels of burnout independent from EC (odd ratios (OR) 0.37; 95% confidence interval (95% CI) 0.21–0.65 p < 0.001), and high scores on both EC and PT were protective against burnout: OR 0.31; 95% CI 0.15–0.63, p < 0.001).ConclusionsDeficits in PT alone might be a risk factor for burnout, whereas higher PT and EC might be protective. Educators should take into account how the various components of empathy are potentially associated with emotional outcomes in physicians.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Lamothe et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.