Relational Empathy, Holistic Care, and Quality of Life in Persons With Spinal Cord Injuries

INTRODUCTION: High-quality health systems are built on the concept of patient-centered approach, which includes holistic care and empathy. With time, this has progressively been recognized as a valuable paradigm for better health outcomes, particularly in chronic diseases. OBJECTIVES: The study aims to determine the patients' perception during their consultation and to assess the relationship between Consultation and Relational Empathy measure with demographic/injury variables and quality of life. METHODS: The present cross-sectional study was conducted among 226 individuals with spinal cord injuries. Data were collected via structured questionnaire, World Health Organization-Quality of life BREF, and Consultation and Relational Empathy measure. Independent t test is used to compare World Health Organization-Quality of life BREF domains with two groups of Consultation and Relational Empathy measure. Logistic regression was used to determine the significant factors of Consultation and Relational Empathy measure. RESULTS: In the logistic regression analysis, it was observed that higher quality of life score has significantly higher odds of getting higher Consultation and Relational Empathy score with a remarkable odds ratio (odds ratio = 1.0264, 95% confidence interval = 1.0121-1.0261, P = 0.0001, 0.0472, 0.0001). CONCLUSIONS: The quality of life of the present population is closely associated with greater perceptions of holistic care and empathy in the therapeutic patient-provider relationship. Lack of coordination, poor quality of life, and limited communication between patient and provider may arise when the latter focuses only on treating disease rather than treating a patient as a "whole person."