Abstract:
Compassion is a fundamental aspect of healthcare that is required by physicians and is expected from patients. However, medical professionals often fail to consistently deliver compassionate care despite it having a range of benefits to patients. Currently, while there is a wide range of theoretical assumptions, there is a lack of empirical work into investigating the differential predictors of physician compassion in medical settings. More specifically, the current study investigates the impact of physician anxiety, and the possible moderating role the person-centered perspective on compassionate responding. 88 medical students, aged 18-36, recruited from the University Of Auckland's School Of Medicine completed baseline questionnaires which assessed a range of trait characteristics including their tendency to respond in a socially desirable manner. In an experimental 2 (anxiety vs no anxiety) by 2 (person-centered perspective vs biomedical perspective) design, participants were gender block randomised to one of the four groups. Then, participants attended a 50-60 minute long laboratory session during which they made ratings of liking, caring, and willingness to help hypothetical patients. Finally, the session was concluded with a behavioural test of compassionate waiting behaviour for a (fictitious) patient. The current study found the main effect of physician anxiety reducing behavioural measure of compassion, but no difference in the self-report measures. Against the hypothesis, the person-centered perspective manipulation did not moderate the negative effects of anxiety on compassionate responding. However, there was a main effect in which participants who were randomised to the person-centered perspective (in contrast with the biomedical perspective) responded more highly in both self-report and behavioural indices of compassion. The present study is the first to experimentally investigate the role of anxiety on compassion responding in medicine and extends previous work by establishing physician anxiety as a predictor of compassionate responding in medicine. Anxiety most likely interrupts compassionate responding by shifting physicians' attention away from the patient, which can result in non-compassionate behaviours like avoidance. In contrast, physicians viewing patients as people most likely increases compassion via attentional shifts towards the patient and the willingness to offer up more of their time. Findings provide experimental evidence that medical trainees and physicians should receive adequate training to deal with something so prevailing, and that adopting a perspective of patients as people may help restore compassion in medical settings..