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January 2025 - Health

71% of general practitioners admit to having difficulty empathising with their patients:  A recent survey by MDDUS has revealed the extent to which general practitioners and medics are adversely impacted by continuous exposure to their patients' problems and traumas with nearly three-quarters (71%) of GPs and just under two-thirds (62%) of medics surveyed, reporting they have experienced ‘compassion fatigue (which refers to: “the emotional cost of caring for others or their emotional pain”) and this negatively affects their ability to empathise with their patients.

In addition to highlighting the emotional and physical exhaustion respondents said they experienced, the report also covers their mental health struggles and the adverse effects this can have on patient care.

The research, undertaken by the Medical and Dental Defence Union of Scotland (MDDUS), surveyed 1,855 doctors (GPs and medics) across the UK. Worryingly, nearly half of the survey respondents (44%) admitted that compassion fatigue increased their risk of providing unsafe care to patients and made patient complaints more likely. Furthermore, three-quarters (77%) of GPs and just under two-thirds (64%) of medics also reported that it made communicating and treating patients more challenging as they were too exhausted and overwhelmed from listening to patient's trauma.

When asked about their mental health and physical well-being just over a fifth (21%) of all those surveyed admitted they had thought about self-harm or suicide at least once, and 85% of GPs who took part in the survey said they’d had suicidal thoughts as a direct result of their job.

Additionally, the majority of GPs surveyed (84%) said they’d experienced verbal abuse and nearly a quarter had been physically assaulted at work. Waiting times (79%) and complaints about care (51%) were the most common reasons for abuse.

John Holden, the chief medical officer at the Medical and Dental Defence Union of Scotland (MDDUS), which undertook the survey, says: "GPs are “particularly vulnerable” to the syndrome because of their “prolonged exposure to patients’ suffering and trauma”, and their heavy workloads because the NHS is overloaded. The extent of compassion fatigue being suffered across all doctors is shocking but the impact on GPs is markedly more pronounced. Doctors being too exhausted to provide compassionate care inevitably has an impact upon patient safety”.

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