What Is Empathy and Can It Be Taught?
Creator
Spiro, Howard
Bibliographic Citation
Annals of Internal Medicine. 1992 May 15; 116(10): 843-846.
Abstract
Empathy is the "almost magical" emotion that persons or objects arouse in us as projections of our feelings. Empathy requires passion, more so than does equanimity, so long cherished by physicians. Medical students lose some of their empathy as they learn science and detachment, and hospital residents lose the remainder in the weariness of overwork and in the isolation of the intensive care units that modern hospitals have become. Conversations about experiences, discussions of patients and their human stories, more leisure and unstructured contemplation of the humanities help physicians to cherish empathy and to retain their passion. Physicians need rhetoric as much as knowledge, and they need stories as much as journals if they are to be more empathetic than computers.
Date
1992-05-15Subject
Biomedical Technologies; Communication; Computers; Cultural Pluralism; Education; Empathy; Hospitals; Humanism; Humanities; Intensive Care Units; Internship and Residency; Knowledge; Literature; Medical Education; Medical Students; Medicine; Patients; Physicians; Professional Patient Relationship; Rhetoric; Residency; Science; Social Interaction; Students;
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What Is Empathy and Can It Be Taught?
Spiro, Howard (1992-05-15)Empathy is the "almost magical" emotion that persons or objects arouse in us as projections of our feelings. Empathy requires passion, more so than does equanimity, so long cherished by physicians. Medical students lose some ...