They include if the doctor made the patient feel at ease, let the patient tell their story, really listened, showed interest in the patient as a person, fully understood the patient’s concerns, showed care and compassion, was positive, explained things clearly, helped the patient to take control, made a plan of action with the patient. There are many barriers to demonstrating the elements of the CARE scale in a pharmacy setting. Environmental barriers could include counters in a community pharmacy or having to work away from patients in an institutional pharmacy. There are a variety of personal barriers that could affect the demonstration of empathy. There could also be time barriers, with the barrier being a lack of time. There could be administrative barriers, in which management does not allow time for proper counseling or patient …show more content…
The more empathetic and understanding the pharmacist is, the more compliant the patient will be and the better the patient’s outcome will be. Also, the more empathetic the pharmacist is, the more the patient will trust the pharmacist and the better the pharmacist-patient relationship will be. For example, the study done with effects on the common cold showed that patients who rated their physician as having perfect empathy had better immune responses, less severe colds, and shorter cold duration. If I visited a pharmacy with a severe cold and a prescription for cough medicine, I would assign a CARE score of 44 to the average pharmacist. I used to work at Fred’s Pharmacy in Water Valley, and I based my chosen CARE score on how the pharmacists I worked with treated their patients. They were excellent at listening to the patients, treating patients as unique individuals, being positive, explaining things clearly to patients, understanding patients’ concerns, and being caring and compassionate. Based on my ratings for each CARE component, I arrived at a score of