Digital Hospital’s doctors trained in empathy, 70% of patients return for more advice. Digital Hospital(care.dh.health) has provided over 1,000,000 digital doctor consultations over calls, chat and video consultation – and believes quality healthcare can only be provided through trust, empathy and dedication from the doctors. Digital Hospital has trained their team of 120+ doctors (both MBBS and specialists) to ensure that every interaction with a patient includes these 3 pillars of communication – placing empathy at the heart of their healthcare advice.
To ensure the best possible care, Digital Hospital not only recruits all their doctors through a very strict recruitment process with multiple steps but after the finalization of the recruitment, doctors go through constant internal evaluation and training, to maintain the standard of quality healthcare. Special training with an emphasis on compassionate doctor-patient communication is conducted where patient feedback is also incorporated to further improve their doctor-patient communication process. All medical consultations are recorded, and Doctors’ performance on empathy, warmth and good communication is tracked – and continuous feedback given. In the last two months, Digital Hospital doctors have:
- Provided 50,000 online medical consultations (for 10 BDT and under), to help reduce patient - Earned recommendation on the digital doctor service from 79% of patients to their family and friends’, thanks to the warm support provided
- Seen 70% of patients being those who have returned to use the service a second time
Dr.Khaled Hasan, Head of Clinical Operations of DH said, " We understand the importance of empathy/compassion in doctor-patient communication and how it can have a significant positive impact on the health outcome of the patient. Therefore, we try with utmost sincerity to ensure that every interaction with our doctors is a compassionate one. We believe, this way we will be able to provide superior healthcare services to everyone."
Compassion or empathy, regarded to be the backbone of the doctor-patient relationship, has a direct positive impact on the overall health outcome of the patient. According to a study titled, ‘Effectiveness of Empathy in General Practice: A Systematic Review’, published in the British Journal of General Practice, empathy from the doctor lowers the patients' anxiety and distress level and delivers significantly better diagnostic and clinical outcomes, and more patient enablement. This is because the patient then automatically feels comfortable enough to share more social and psychological concern with the doctors besides the regular medical history and is also more likely to adhere to the doctor's advice which results in more accurate diagnosis through better communication between the doctor and patient and lastly improved clinical outcome.
As per the analysis, patients with diabetes had their glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA1c) and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) tested and the results were significantly better in the cases of the patients with compassionate doctors. The same results were also seen in cases of patients with the common cold where the cold was less severe and lasted for shorter periods for patients with compassionate doctors. Over 900 other studies demonstrated that an empathetic doctor can help patients have better odds of surviving cancer, preventing second heart attacks, or recover from a stroke.