EMS: 3 Ways to Become a Better Empathetic Caregiver

Anyone can be sympathetic, but being empathetic isn’t as natural, and developing an empathetic attitude as an EMS provider takes time.

 

Empathy is an essential skill for EMS providers to foster. It helps such individuals to interact with a patient who is suffering from pain or crisis. It allows EMS providers to communicate more clearly and compassionately with their patient by “getting on the same wavelength.”

 

By nature, some providers are more empathetic than others are. The latter can fail to communicate compassionately with patients, largely because of differences culturally and/or socially.

 

Self-awareness, personality, mood, health and physiology all affect empathy. Understanding these and how to navigate them helps to enhance one’s ability to provide empathetic care.

 

Three key strategies to help you to navigate these influences are self-awareness, respect and appreciation of patients’ needs.

 

By acknowledging self-awareness and emotional self-control, EMS providers are better able to transform their patient treatment and care into a more empathetic experience. The more that a person understands and manages individual feelings, the better equipped that individual is to express and monitor them, to foster empathy and to discern appropriate behavior. This not only helps EMS providers to cope with personal stress, anger and depression but also to make them more resilient and empowered in their caregiving role.

 

Self-awareness is identifying one’s feelings, emotions, thoughts, strengths and weaknesses. Emotional regulation is the ability to control one’s emotions, feelings and reactions in the face of stress. 

 

To work on self-awareness and emotional regulation:

 

Attentive listening indicates mindfulness of what other people talk about, the relevant things that those people are interested in and their engagement. Consideration of the speech and tone of voice of other people also is important.

 

To demonstrate and provide an empathetic approach, listen to patients’ information considerately. This can be achieved by:

 

Ways to get across to a patient that you’re listening actively and attentively include:

 

An empathetic EMS caregiver must respect and appreciate patients. Respect and appreciation are the fundamental ethical values that reinforce empathy in EMS care.

 

Appreciating each patient’s unique needs is particularly important. It fosters a deeper understanding and compassion, which enhances care. Empathy helps in effective communications, rapport-building and compassionate care when treating those who are in need and in distress. It also helps EMS providers themselves to mitigate stress and burnout that can result from continually experiencing high emotional loads. Hence, EMS providers must possess and improve empathy to become better caregivers and to maintain self-well-being.