Resumen
Diversos autores han postulado que la variable empatía, esto es, la que manifiesta el médico durante el contacto con sus pacientes, beneficia al usuario y al mismo profesional de la salud, para lo cual se suele citar la literatura internacional, lo que plantea dificultades para la generalización en virtud de que se ha señalado que el comportamiento empático se ve afectado por la nacionalidad del médico y del paciente. Por otra parte, no todos los autores consideran que la relevancia de la empatía sea sobresaliente en el contexto sanitario, o que su importancia sea una cuestión resuelta por la falta de consenso sobre cómo medir y operacionalizar esta variable. Por lo anterior, este trabajo tuvo como objetivo analizar y reportar los resultados de una revisión de la literatura nacional e internacional de artículos en los que se ha encontrado un efecto benéfico de la empatía y la relación de esta con un resultado positivo hacia el paciente o los manifestados en el mismo profesional empático; igualmente, reportar los instrumentos que se han utilizado para evaluar el constructo cuando los autores indican el hallazgo de sus beneficios. La búsqueda se limitó a los años 2014-2020, siendo las fuentes de información Pubmed, Cochrane, Scielo, Latindex y RedALyC. Se encontraron 420 artículos en total, pero solo nueve satisficieron los requisitos de búsqueda; además, se halló la referencia de siete instrumentos de medición. Por un lado, en este documento se discuten algunas implicaciones sobre la evaluación de la empatía con base en la investigación actual; por otro, se provee información relevante para aquellos profesionales interesados en los beneficios de la empatía en el contexto sanitario, así como en la evaluación del fenómeno en el personal médico.
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