In recent years, there has been an increasing understanding of the therapeutic importance of an empathic relationship between patient and healthcare professional, be it a doctor, physiotherapist or nurse.
A recent study published by two physiotherapists in Sydney, Amanda Hall and Paulo Ferreira (“The Therapist-Patient Relationship in Physical Rehabilitation”) has shown how trust and empathy in the relationship between physiotherapist and patient plays a key role in influencing successful treatment and improving rehabilitation outcomes.
Empathy and trust also in Humanitas
Aware that the therapeutic importance of small gestures is now supported by increasingly strong scientific data, the experts and professionals of Humanitas have for some time been carrying out their activities in this direction, facilitating the care of patients by the same physiotherapist during the entire rehabilitation process.
“It is a common experience that the patient’s trust in those who treat him helps the therapeutic path – explained Marco Parente, physiotherapist of the Physiotherapy Service of Humanitas -, what not everyone knows, however, is that this “therapeutic trust” induces precise biological changes sometimes similar to those triggered in the therapeutic path”.
Recent research has shown that the meeting and the reassuring presence of the physiotherapist diminish fear and anxiety in the patient, thanks to a better production of endorphins.
Also for this reason, in Humanitas particular emphasis is given to the education of patients. Among the daily activities, for example, physiotherapists, hold an educational group in which they involve patients candidates for orthopedic surgery, illustrating the various stages of hospitalization and involving them in the treatment process.
“In fact, we now know that trusting the treatment that is administered also contributes to modifying physiological variables synergistic to the mechanisms involved in the processes of care” and “as the researchers in Sydney state, this condition attributes part of the results of the rehabilitative intervention to the physiotherapist-patient relationship”.
