Relational empathy and holistic care among spinal cord injury individuals.
What is it about?
The work is based on empathy and holistic care which is an attitude that comes under Patient-centred care (PCC). PCC approach recognizes the patient’ as a whole person, which means rather than only focusing on disease and its management, a healthcare professional should give priority to the overall situation of the patient. Healthcare practitioners should pay attention more comprehensively to his/her patient’s needs and challenges. However, a positive patient-provider relationship is paramount for obtaining the best outcome from treatment.
Why is it important?
Given the lack of literature about the delivery of patient-centred approach in individuals with SCI (especially in developing countries), no validated tool/scale/questionnaire is available in Hindi which can be used in the Indian population to gather data on empathy and holistic care provided by the healthcare professional during their consultation. Consultation and relational empathy (CARE) measure is a validated tool that is based on the comprehensive definition of Empathy, holistic care and patient-centred care. This measure helps find out the patients’ perspective toward his/her consultation with healthcare providers irrespective of their social class/socio-economic status. Therefore, the present work was accomplished with the objective to translate and cross-culturally adapt the CARE measure scale to Hindi. Also, to determine its content validity and reliability so that further research can be done on the Hindi-speaking Spinal Cord Injury population.