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- Title
What is empathy and can it be taught?
- Authors
Spiro, H
- 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.
- Publication
Annals of internal medicine, 1992, Vol 116, Issue 10, p843
- ISSN
0003-4819
- Publication type
Journal Article
- DOI
10.7326/0003-4819-116-10-843