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What is clinical empathy?

Journal of General Internal Medicine volume 18, pages 670–674 (2003)Cite this article

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.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Health and Medical Sciences, University of California-Berkeley, 570 University Hall #1190, 94720-1190, Berkeley, CA

    Jodi Halpern MD, PhD

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  1. Jodi Halpern MD, PhD
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Correspondence to Jodi Halpern MD, PhD.

Additional information

The author thanks Oxford University Press for permission to use material from Halpern J, From Detached Concern to Empathy: Humanizing Medical Practice, Oxford University Press, 2001.

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Halpern, J. What is clinical empathy?. J GEN INTERN MED 18, 670–674 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1525-1497.2003.21017.x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1525-1497.2003.21017.x

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