Exposure to serial audiovisual narratives increases empathy via vicarious interactions

Vicarious audiovisual learning in perfusion education.

Perfusion technology is a mechanical and visual science traditionally taught with didactic instruction combined with clinical experience. It is difficult to provide perfusion students the opportunity to experience difficult clinical situations, set up complex perfusion equipment, or observe corrective measures taken during catastrophic events because of patient safety concerns. Although high fi...

Your Flaws Are My Pain: Linking Empathy To Vicarious Embarrassment

People vicariously experience embarrassment when observing others' public pratfalls or etiquette violations. In two consecutive studies we investigated the subjective experience and the neural correlates of vicarious embarrassment for others in a broad range of situations. We demonstrated, first, that vicarious embarrassment was experienced regardless of whether the observed protagonist acted a...

Emotions, narratives and empathy in clinical communication

Patients sometimes report that doctors consider them a set of symptoms rather than a person. A recent article by a patient in a major Norwegian newspaper had the title ‘I am not a knee cap’. The author had suffered a knee injury, but felt that he was treated by doctors merely as a knee cap rather than as a human being. This feeling is hardly unique. In a focus group study a few years ago patien...

Personal illness narratives: using reflective writing to teach empathy.

Reflective writing is one established method for teaching medical students empathetic interactions with patients. Most such exercises rely on students' reflecting upon clinical experiences. To effectively elicit, interpret, and translate the patient's story, however, a reflective practitioner must also be self-aware, personally and professionally. Race, gender, and other embodied sources of ide...

Vicarious Exposure to Trauma and Growth in Therapists: The Moderating Effects of Sense of Coherence, Organisational Support and Empathy