Why Is Empathy Important In Pharmacy
Empathy is the “ability to imagine oneself in another’s place and to understand the other’s feelings, desires, ideas, and actions” from The Encyclopedia Britannica. In today’s healthcare system, many healthcare providers such as pharmacists have forgotten the importance of empathy on the pharmacist-patient relationship. Often times pharmacists just talk to patients and not with patients, in this sales driven world time is everything. Big chain pharmacies such as Walgreens, and CVS are more concerned about making as much money as possible and push their pharmacists to do more and more scripts each day. This forces the pharmacist to worry more about filling scripts then about patient counseling simply because they do not have time to do so. In
…show more content…
With time barriers since companies are concerned more with sales and number of scripts than patient counseling, pharmacists in today’s pharmacies just do not have the time to spend with each patient to show understanding and empathy. This is the biggest barrier because often times pharmacists just do not have the time to spend with patients, which can lead to lower CARE values and lower patient compliance. With the environmental barriers, in most community pharmacies there are nowhere where the pharmacist can form an alliance with the patient and spend time with them. Often times pharmacists have to stay behind the pharmacy counter and talk to patients which can make the patient feel less confident to really open up to the pharmacist.
The CARE scale stands for the Consultation and Relational Empathy scale and it was developed to measure the level of empathy perceived by the patient and a perfect score is a 50. For most pharmacists I would give them a CARE score of 20 because often with pharmacists not having enough time to really spend with a patient, they cannot really listen to patients, fully explain things clearly to the patient, and letting the patient tell their story. Pharmacists for the most part do an excellent job of being positive and showing care and compassion from my experiences from being in a
With time barriers since companies are concerned more with sales and number of scripts than patient counseling, pharmacists in today’s pharmacies just do not have the time to spend with each patient to show understanding and empathy. This is the biggest barrier because often times pharmacists just do not have the time to spend with patients, which can lead to lower CARE values and lower patient compliance. With the environmental barriers, in most community pharmacies there are nowhere where the pharmacist can form an alliance with the patient and spend time with them. Often times pharmacists have to stay behind the pharmacy counter and talk to patients which can make the patient feel less confident to really open up to the pharmacist.
The CARE scale stands for the Consultation and Relational Empathy scale and it was developed to measure the level of empathy perceived by the patient and a perfect score is a 50. For most pharmacists I would give them a CARE score of 20 because often with pharmacists not having enough time to really spend with a patient, they cannot really listen to patients, fully explain things clearly to the patient, and letting the patient tell their story. Pharmacists for the most part do an excellent job of being positive and showing care and compassion from my experiences from being in a