ArticleBMJ open2018
Empathy, burn-out and the use of gut feeling: a cross-sectional survey of Danish general practitioners.
Article in BMJ open, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
19 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Pooled it
- Burnout among general practitioners, a systematic quantitative review of the literature on determinants of burnout and their ecological value.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Pooled it
- Burnout prevalence among European physicians: a systematic review and meta-analysis.International archives of occupational and environmental health · 2022Pooled it
- Pooled it
- When Medicine Gets Irritating: Interactional and Structural Triggers of Uncertainty in Family Medicine Residency Training.Journal of evaluation in clinical practice · 2026Article
- Article
- Physicians' appraisal of parental concerns: a qualitative assessment.The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners · 2025Article
- Clinical decision fatigue: a systematic and scoping review with meta-synthesis.Family medicine and community health · 2025Article
- Pharmacists' empathy after a postgraduate course in narrative medicine: an observational study.International journal of clinical pharmacy · 2025Observational
- Artificial intelligence: revolutionizing cardiology with large language models.European heart journal · 2024Article
- Burnout and resilience at work among health professionals serving in tertiary hospitals, in Ethiopia.Frontiers in public health · 2023Article
- Investigating the links between diagnostic uncertainty, emotional exhaustion, and turnover intention in General Practitioners working in the United Kingdom.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2022Article
- Empathy as a silent art-A doctor´s daily balancing act: A qualitative study of senior doctors' experiences of empathy.PloS one · 2022Article
- [Risk of Burnout syndrome in medical professionals in Córdoba City, Argentina]Revista de la Facultad de Ciencias Medicas (Cordoba, Argentina) · 2021Observational
- A Study on Work Intensity, Work-Life Balance, and Burnout among Korean Neurosurgeons after the Enactment of the Special Act on Korean Medical Residents.Journal of Korean Neurosurgical Society · 2021Article
- Positioning work related stress - GPs' reasoning about using the WSQ combined with feedback at consultation.BMC family practice · 2020Article
- GPs' perspectives of the patient encounter - in the context of standardized cancer patient pathways.Scandinavian journal of primary health care · 2020Article
- Cross-sectional study of the association between empathy and burnout and drug prescribing quality in primary care.Primary health care research & development · 2019Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectiveResearch has suggested that physicians' gut feelings are associated with parents' concerns for the well-being of their children. Gut feeling is particularly important in diagnosis of serious low-incidence diseases in primary care. Therefore, the aim of this study was to examine whether empathy, that is, the ability to understand what another person is experiencing, relates to general practitioners' (GPs) use of gut feelings. Since empathy is associated with burn-out, we also examined whether the hypothesised influence of empathy on gut feeling use is dependent on level of burn-out.
designCross-sectional questionnaire survey. Participants completed the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy and The Maslach Burnout Inventory.
settingPrimary care.
participants588 active GPs in Central Denmark Region (response rate=70%). PRIMARY OUTCOME MEASURES: Self-reported use of gut feelings in clinical practice.
resultsGPs who scored in the highest quartile of the empathy scale had fourfold the odds of increased use of gut feelings compared with GPs in the lowest empathy quartile (OR 3.99, 95% CI 2.51 to 6.34) when adjusting for the influence of possible confounders. Burn-out was not statistically significantly associated with use of gut feelings (OR 1.29, 95% CI 0.90 to 1.83), and no significant interaction effects between empathy and burn-out were revealed.
conclusionsPhysician empathy, but not burn-out, was strongly associated with use of gut feelings in primary care. As preliminary results suggest that gut feelings have diagnostic value, these findings highlight the importance of incorporating empathy and interpersonal skills into medical training to increase sensitivity to patient concern and thereby increase the use and reliability of gut feeling.
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