Background: Physician–patient empathy is inextricably linked with outcomes of patients. The purpose of this study was to test whether anxiety, self-efficacy, and sleep quality played intermediary roles in relationships between patients’ perceptions of physician–patient relational empathy and an inflammation marker in Crohn’s disease patients.
Methods: The study included 187 patients. At admission (T1) and 3 months after admission (T2), anxiety, self-efficacy, sleep, and the inflammatory marker IL6 of patients were tested and compared. Patients’ perceptions of physician–patient relational empathy (CARE scale) was measured at T2. Correlations among patients’ anxiety, self-efficacy, sleep quality, IL6, and CARE scores were explored by Pearson’s correlation analysis and a structural equation model.
Results: Compared with T1, patients showed higher self-efficacy and sleep quality and lower anxiety and IL6 at T2. Patients’ perceptions of physician–patient relational empathy were negatively related to anxiety and IL6 and connected to self-efficacy and sleep quality positively. Patients’ anxiety, self-efficacy, and sleep quality played intermediary roles incorrelations between empathy and IL6.
Conclusion: In correlations of patients’ perceptions of physician–patient relational empathy and IL6 in patients with Crohn’s disease, patients’ anxiety, self-efficacy, and sleep quality acted as intermediary effects. Therefore, medical staff should empathize with patients.
Keywords: empathy, Crohn’s disease, physician–patient communication, mental health