If you’re a physician struggling with how to employ empathetic listening with your patients, then this post is for you. Years ago, Helen Riess, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, worked in conjunction with the Massachusetts General Hospital and developed an acronym to help physicians increase their empathetic listening skills. Below, I will outline each of the key points of this “empathy” acronym and explain how you can apply them to your interactions with patients.
The acronym goes as follows:
- E – eye contact
- M – muscles of facial expression
- P – posture
- A – affect
- T – tone of voice
- H – hearing the whole person
- Y – your response
Eye Contact
Eye contact is the first signal that one person has been noticed by another. Prioritizing consistent eye contact with your patients during the first few minutes of your encounters with them can help them feel seen and can even improve effective communication.
If remembering to maintain eye contact is difficult for you, try focusing long enough on your patients’ eyes to notice their eye colors and always make sure that you are positioned face to face when speaking with them. In a world where masks have become the norm even outside of the medical field, being intentional with eye contact is even more important than ever.
Muscles of Facial Expression
Overall, facial expressions provide clues to emotion. As humans, we often automatically mimic other people’s expressions without even realizing it to show that we understand and can relate to what they are sharing. By being able to identify your patients’ feelings and mirror them–generally through distinctive facial muscle patterns–you can help communicate empathy and convey that you are listening thoughtfully.
Posture
Similar to how facial muscles can express empathy, the posture you have can be a powerful conveyor of connection. Positioning your body away from your patients can make you seem closed off or even disinterested. However, sitting squarely with an open posture and leaning toward your patients can help you come across as relaxed and eager to listen. It’s also much easier to maintain eye contact with your patients when you are seated on the same level as them and are facing them directly.
Affect
Affect is a scientific word for a broad range of feelings that people experience. Learning how to identify what your patients are feeling can help you better understand their behaviors and the true message behind their words. When you make an active effort to name these feelings, you show your patients that you comprehend what they are sharing with you which helps communicate empathy as well.
Tone of Voice
A large portion of our communication relies on tone of voice. The way we speak to others communicates empathy. As a physician, using a soothing tone and matching the volume of your patients can be a way to make them feel heard and show them that you discern how they are feeling emotionally.
Hearing the Whole Person
Too often in healthcare, preconceptions, distractions, and stress keep physicians from truly listening to their patients. However, empathetic listening requires asking intentional questions that can help your patients express what is really going on. Recognizing the entire context of your patients’ lives can help you better understand what they are trying to communicate deep down.
Your Response
Finally, how you respond to your patients is probably the most significant but also most difficult aspect of empathetic listening. Whether or not you are aware of it, humans tend to synch up emotionally with others and how well you do it with them plays a role in how much you understand and like them.
When formatting a response to your patients, you should ask yourself, “how would I be feeling if I were in their situation?” The answer to this question should then inform how you can relate to their personal experiences and how you can demonstrate that they are understood.
While your patients are speaking with you, using continuers like “uh huh, Oh?” or “then what happened?” can help show that you are listening and that you really do care. And summarizing what you have heard by saying something along the lines of “You feel _______ because ___________.” helps show your patients that you have a solid understanding of what they have shared and are feeling.
Final Thoughts: Demonstrating Empathy
There are multiple different elements that go into empathetic listening and Helen Riess’ “empathy” acronym can be a tool to help you remember each of them. When practiced and employed enough, empathetic listening should eventually become something that’s natural to incorporate in all your interactions with patients. If you are looking for more practical tools to help you develop this skill, check out my post on exercises for empathetic listening: [>>blog post].
