Comments on: Does medical school destroy empathy? http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2008/11/does-medical-school-destroy-empathy.html Tue, 14 Feb 2012 21:09:00 +0000 hourly 1 By: Anonymoushttp://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2008/11/does-medical-school-destroy-empathy.html#comment-87909 Anonymous Mon, 03 Nov 2008 02:32:00 +0000 http://clients.emmense.com/kevinmd/2008/11/does-medical-school-destroy-empathy.html#comment-87909 Empathy can be powerful in the doctor patient relationship, but it hurts. Docs at the least need to be able to turn it off sometimes. Even psychiatrists. What do you call doctors who can't? Impaired. The best doctors retain the capacity for empathy, but learn to regulate it and even turn it off altogether according to the demands of the situation. Empathy can be powerful in the doctor patient relationship, but it hurts. Docs at the least need to be able to turn it off sometimes. Even psychiatrists. What do you call doctors who can’t? Impaired. The best doctors retain the capacity for empathy, but learn to regulate it and even turn it off altogether according to the demands of the situation.

]]> By: Anonymoushttp://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2008/11/does-medical-school-destroy-empathy.html#comment-87902 Anonymous Sun, 02 Nov 2008 15:37:00 +0000 http://clients.emmense.com/kevinmd/2008/11/does-medical-school-destroy-empathy.html#comment-87902 At my medical school, I felt that empathy was not rewarded, with the possible exception of psychiatry, despite administrative word-service to the contrary. The "big fields", ie surgery and internal medicine, valued empathy at zero. And other fields such as pediatrics and family practice (my chosen field) were not far behind.<br/><br/>However, I'm not so sure that this process of minimzing empathy is impracxtical; in fact, I think in some ways, it prepares doctors for future practice.<br/><br/>Today, empathy is rarer than ever, in my opinion, due to the merging of an old-fashioned paternalistic approach and the modern consumer driven/business model approach. In the "real" world, empathetic doctors are frequently crticized as inefficient and impractical. At my medical school, I felt that empathy was not rewarded, with the possible exception of psychiatry, despite administrative word-service to the contrary. The “big fields”, ie surgery and internal medicine, valued empathy at zero. And other fields such as pediatrics and family practice (my chosen field) were not far behind.

However, I’m not so sure that this process of minimzing empathy is impracxtical; in fact, I think in some ways, it prepares doctors for future practice.

Today, empathy is rarer than ever, in my opinion, due to the merging of an old-fashioned paternalistic approach and the modern consumer driven/business model approach. In the “real” world, empathetic doctors are frequently crticized as inefficient and impractical.

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