Academia and Clinic

15 May 1992

What Is Empathy and Can It Be Taught?

Author: Howard Spiro, MDAuthor, Article, & Disclosure Information

Publication: Annals of Internal Medicine

Volume 116, Number 10

https://doi.org/10.7326/0003-4819-116-10-843

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.

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Information & Authors

Information

Published In

cover image Annals of Internal Medicine

Annals of Internal Medicine

Volume 116 • Number 10 • 15 May 1992

Pages: 843 - 846

History

Published in issue: 15 May 1992

Published online: 1 December 2008

Keywords

Copyright

© 1992 American College of Physicians.

Authors

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Howard Spiro, MD

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From the Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut. For the current author address, see end of text.

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Howard Spiro. What Is Empathy and Can It Be Taught?. Ann Intern Med.1992;116:843-846. doi:10.7326/0003-4819-116-10-843

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