Overcoming the limits of empathic concern: the case for availability and its application to the medical domain.
Med Health Care Philos
; 23(2): 191-203, 2020 Jun.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-31832827
ABSTRACT
Empathic concern is essential to our social lives because it motivates helping behavior. It has, however, well-known shortcomings such as its limitation in scope. Here, we highlight a further shortcoming of empathic concern it contributes little to understanding the relevant features of complex social situations (e.g. the causes of somebody's distress), and unaided by further cognitive inputs, likely fails to produce effective helping. We then elaborate on the conditions needed for an accurate assessment of others' situations the ability to pay attention and try to understand others for their own sake. We explain that when combining these abilities with the valuing aspect of empathic concern, we obtain "availability", an understudied mental state which plays a crucial role in helping motivation. We provide a detailed definition of that notion and show how availability can be trained and exercised by health professionals in order to improve their care and relationships with patients.
Key words
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Health Personnel
/
Empathy
/
Compassion Fatigue
Limits:
Humans
Language:
En
Journal:
Med Health Care Philos
Journal subject:
ETICA
Year:
2020
Document type:
Article
Affiliation country: