Empathy in Healthcare: A Case Study on the Importance of Empathy in Athletic Training Students

For my Plan II Senior Thesis, I plan to research and analyze the role empathy plays in healthcare. I am interested in how a healthcare providers use of empathy as a tool for connecting and communication in their relationships with patients will impact overall health and a doctor’s relationship with the community through close reading and analysis. I plan to focus this research through a case study of the University of Texas’s athletic trainers, athletic training students, and their patients, i.e. the athletes. By analyzing athletic trainer’s self-rated empathy levels in interactions with their patients and students evaluated empathy levels from their preceptors, I will analyze the athletic training student’s beliefs on clinical empathy, how self-rated versus evaluated empathy relate, how empathetic interactions fair across years of experience, and how this all affects the athletes care. I hope to gain insight into the importance of empathy in the unique athletic trainer and patient relationship. Overall, I will dissect how providers use empathy when interacting with patients and how that influences a patient’s experience and path to health.