Charlotte Blease

So we tend to be more empathetic to people who are like us.

There's also actual physical constraints on the number of people we can be genuinely empathetic to, sort of in the kind of bells and whistles empathy, where we feel what they're feeling, we understand what's going on in their lives and all the rest of it.

So the key issue I'd say, Eric, is what do we mean by empathy?

Because we can't measure what we haven't first defined.

And empathy tends to mean a couple of things.

It can be that kind of catching the emotions of someone, so emotional empathy.

Now, some medical educators say, Rita Chiron is one of them, that you should feel something of what doctors should feel what patients are feeling.

But there are other kinds of empathy and there's what's called cognitive empathy.

So that is just grasping the emotional state of the patient.

And then there's no point in sort of grasping it if you're not acting in a pro-social or sympathetic way.

So it's actually behaving in a particular way.

Now,

If we assume, even if we sort of park the bias and all the limitations and the burnout that comes with empathy, actually, if you ask patients what they want from doctors, they tend not to want the emotional empathy.

I mean, I've done a small study on this.

It was an experimental setup.

It has various limitations, but there's other survey research to support this.

But again, it's very restricted because people don't often interrogate this idea of empathy in medicine.

But they don't want their doctor to be a sort of fellow tragedian in their suffering, weeping with them or feeling.

They want them to be professional.

So they want cognitive empathy, grasping what you're going through, but also showing compassion for you, behaving a particular way.