What is clinical empathy?

J Gen Intern Med. 2003 Aug;18(8):670-4. doi: 10.1046/j.1525-1497.2003.21017.x.

Abstract

Patients seek empathy from their physicians. Medical educators increasingly recognize this need. Yet in seeking to make empathy a reliable professional skill, doctors change the meaning of the term. Outside the field of medicine, empathy is a mode of understanding that specifically involves emotional resonance. In contrast, leading physician educators define empathy as a form of detached cognition. In contrast, this article argues that physicians' emotional attunement greatly serves the cognitive goal of understanding patients' emotions. This has important implications for teaching empathy.

Publication types

  • Review

MeSH terms

  • Emotions / ethics*
  • Empathy*
  • Ethics, Clinical
  • Humans
  • Physician-Patient Relations / ethics*