Empathy and medical school

Is it the “hardening” of medical students or the “smartening” of medical students that is taking place?

What a stupid concept. Medical school opens up hitherto inexperienced students to the reality of medicine and of people. Skepticism is part of that experience. Presuming to measure something like empathy–which is as ridiculous as measuring happiness–pretends to provide the gloss of empiricism to what is really subjective guessing. What exactly are you pretending to “score”? Is one of my units of empathy the same as another’s? And just what is the significance of comparing persons trained to critically listen, observe and think about other persons with people not so trained?

I have to believe the intensity of medical school does cause most students to change their views on other people, but treating “empathy” as if it were something you could measure in the first place and then presuming to make judgments–I think intentionally negative ones–is wasting time. But it is probably good for a social psychology dissertation anyway.

Have you been sick much? I can assure you that there are situations in which the empathy of your doctor can be very important to you.

Which brings up the point that I don’t think that doctors need to all be cut from the same cloth. Empathy is a barrier to performance for a doctor who must be focused on his technique or the data he is gathering while he is in the process of inflicting pain on someone. He needs the capacity to objectify the person so as not to be emotionally distracted.

Empathy is an essential tool for a psychiatrist or any doctor who is trying to get data from an uncommunicative, frightened or depressed person who isn’t going to open up until they feel safe.

It is not realistic to expect that everyone is going to have the capacity to turn it off and on at command and so people will, in part, self-select specialties according to those that best match their basic temperament.