New one-question scale could transform how empathy is measured
Dr Amber Bennett-Weston
A single question can reliably measure how much empathy a patient experiences from their healthcare professional, according to a new University of Leicester study.
Empathy is not simply about making patients feel better about their care. Evidence suggests that empathic healthcare can improve patient outcomes and safety and reduce healthcare costs, while failures to listen to patients can contribute to patient-safety incidents.
But to improve empathy, healthcare organisations need to measure it properly. Without reliable measurement, it is difficult to identify where care is falling short or establish whether attempts to improve it actually work.
Researchers from the Stoneygate Centre for Empathic Healthcare at Leicester Medical School have developed the Rapid Assessment of Therapeutic Empathy (RATE) scale to address this problem. Their findings have just been published in PLOS One.Existing empathy questionnaires can contain more than 15 questions, making routine measurement difficult in busy healthcare settings.
RATE asks just one question which can be answered in under two minutes: “In healthcare, empathy means that healthcare workers listen carefully to you, understand your situation and feelings, are kind and caring, help you, and respect your views and choices. Think about the last time you saw a healthcare worker. How good were they at doing these things?”
Patients answer using either a five-point pictorial scale or words ranging from poor to excellent.
The patient version was developed with patients, healthcare professionals, students, carers and empathy experts, and tested with 521 patients internationally and across NHS services in the East Midlands.
Patients' responses to RATE closely matched their answers to an established 10-question empathy questionnaire, suggesting that one carefully designed question can provide a scientifically robust measure of patient-perceived empathy. The scale also performed consistently across different patient groups and healthcare professionals.
Dr Amber Bennett-Weston from the Stoneygate Centre for Empathic Healthcare, said: “Empathy matters because it can affect the quality and safety of healthcare. But if we want to improve it, we first need to measure it properly.
“Many existing questionnaires are simply too long for routine use. RATE takes less than two minutes and asks one question, while retaining scientific rigour. That could make measuring empathy routinely feasible.”
The researchers say RATE could help healthcare organisations identify where patients experience less empathic care, evaluate improvements, provide feedback to healthcare professionals and trainees, and assess whether empathy training works.
RATE is designed ultimately to provide a common approach to measuring empathy from the perspectives of patients, healthcare professionals, students and observers. The team will next test these additional versions and its use across different languages, cultures and patient groups.