In-person clinic visits were shorter when clinicians explicitly responded to patients’ emotional expressions, according to an observational analysis published in Annals of Family Medicine.
“Physicians have traditionally been taught that expressing empathy saves time in patient encounters, but many physicians still feel that doing so may take more time,” Mary Catherine Beach, MD, MPH, a professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University, told Healio Primary Care. “I was curious to figure out what accounts for that disconnect, and to learn how our responses to patient