Empathy: Clinical, Cognitive, and Behavioral Empathy… Are They Not The Same Thing? – March 9, 2022

In Sessions 1 and 2 we covered self-awareness and feedback as two conditions for empathic communication. Both processes are vital to cognitive empathy (aka perspective-taking) that is akin to clinical empathy. Hojat (2016) defined clinical empathy as “as a predominantly cognitive (rather than an affective or emotional) attribute that involves an understanding (rather than feeling) of experiences, concerns, and perspectives of the patient, combined with a capacity to communicate this understanding, and an intention to help”.  This presentation will focus on perspective-taking as a means of changing our thinking, feeling, and behaving.

Learning Objectives

Objectives for this session:

• Delineate the dimensions of empathy
• Describe the salience of cognitive empathy (aka perspective-taking) to communication competence
• Demonstrate the steps in perspective-taking
• Identify barriers to engage in perspective-taking
• Engage in a ‘baseline’ practice exercise – how good are you at perspective-taking?

Session 3 of 4

Fourth session date: March 23, 1 – 2:30 PM register here

Facilitators: Michelle Lobchuk, RN, PhD

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