What is Clinical Empathy?

Overview

Journal J Gen Intern Med

Publisher Springer

Specialty General Medicine

Date 2003 Aug 13

PMID 12911651

Citations 166

Authors

Jodi Halpern

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

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.

Citing Articles

The impact of affective and cognitive empathy on stress in medical students.

Maximiano-Barreto M, Bueno J, Bueno M, Wercelens V, Ydy J, Abrahim R Psicol Reflex Crit. 2025; 38(1):4.

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Feasibility of a Cinematic-Virtual Reality Program Educating Health Professional Students About the Complexity of Geriatric Care: Pilot Pre-Post Study.

Beverly E, Miller S, Love M, Love C JMIR Aging. 2025; 8:e64633.

PMID: 39937111 PMC: 11837415. DOI: 10.2196/64633.

Pilot training for clinical research professionals in using empathy to recognize and respond to implicit bias in research recruitment and retention.

Adams J, Gonzalez C, Gillespie C, Holahan J, Minsky M, Datta S J Clin Transl Sci. 2025; 8(1):e209.

PMID: 39790470 PMC: 11713438. DOI: 10.1017/cts.2024.618.

Medical students' understanding of clinical empathy - a qualitative exploratory interview study.

Pohontsch N, Stark A, Scherer M BMC Med Educ. 2024; 24(1):1422.

PMID: 39639269 PMC: 11619624. DOI: 10.1186/s12909-024-06428-5.

Changing behavior and promoting clinical empathy through a patient experience curriculum for health profession students.

Nelson S, Germann C, Yudkowsky R, Pare B, Wendell L, Blackie M AEM Educ Train. 2024; 8(6):e11048.

PMID: 39600911 PMC: 11586136. DOI: 10.1002/aet2.11048.

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