Empathy in the Veterinary Profession.

Is your vet empathetic toward your horse? Is she empathetic toward you? Empathy is the ability to share someone else’s feelings or understand what they’re going through from their perspective. It can be a helpful trait for doctors so that they see their patients as fellow humans with complex emotional lives rather than just a list of conditions and symptoms to be treated. Although their patients aren’t human, veterinarians can have empathy for the animals they treat, too. But a veterinary practice is about more than just treating animals; the owners of the animals being treated are part of the equation, and their concerns and perspective must be considered, too. Researchers in Italy wanted to know more about empathy in veterinarians and how it varies based on a vet’s gender and length of service. In a study published online in the Journal of Veterinary Behavior this month, researchers studied 107 veterinarians using the Animal Empathy Scale and the Empathy Quotient to assess the vets’ level of empathy toward their animal patients and human clients, respectively. The Empathy Quotient is a 60-item questionnaire designed to measure a participant’s ability to understand and feel appropriate emotion in response to someone else’s emotions. The Animal Empathy Scale is a questionnaire that was developed for a 2000 study on the links between empathy with animals and with humans and has been used in similar studies since. The researchers discovered a link between gender and empathy toward animals. Overall, female vets showed more empathy toward animals than male vets did. There was no apparent link between length of service and empathy toward animals. In other words, the amount of time a person had spent working in the veterinary profession didn’t reduce or increase their level of empathy toward their animal patients. There was, however, a change in empathy toward human clients over time. The longer a veterinarian had worked in the profession, the higher their empathy level toward people. Although the researchers don’t speculate on why, it’s easy to imagine that anyone entering the profession does so with an existing love of animals, and that doesn’t change. But over years of working with human clients, their understanding of pet owners’ feelings could certainly have an impact on their ability to empathize. The veterinarians observed for the study worked mostly with cats and dogs, but there could be similar trends for equine vets, especially those whose clients are primarily owners of recreational and companion horses. A high level of empathy isn’t necessarily an advantage in the veterinary profession in all cases. The career is one with a high rate of burnout, and it’s possible that being highly emotionally connected to one’s patients could increase that. The researchers conclude by pointing out that their study is one of the first to look at vets’ empathy toward animals and people, and that more research would be necessary to evaluate "the role of empathy in the quality of care, pet-owners’ satisfaction and vets’ well-being.” more