ReviewJournal of general internal medicine2003
What is clinical empathy?
Review in Journal of general internal medicine, 2003. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to trial NCT01503853 (Discussing Costs in the Doctor-Patient Encounter), which is not on this map. Cited by 194 papers, 5 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Discussing Costs in the Doctor-Patient Encounter
Who cites it
194 citing papers in PubMed, 5 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Arts-based empathy education in healthcare: a critical systematic review of pedagogical mechanisms and evidence gaps.BMJ open · 2026Pooled it
- Teaching cognitive and affective empathy in medicine: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.Medical education online · 2025Pooled it
- A systematic review identifying effective teaching methods and their combinations for increasing empathy in physicians: pairwise and network meta-analysis.BMC medical education · 2025Pooled it
- Relationally competent attitudes and actions: a systematic review of general practice literature.Scandinavian journal of primary health care · 2025Pooled it
- Effectiveness of empathy in general practice: a systematic review.The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners · 2013Pooled it
- Zoom Improv is accessible and enhances medical student empathy.BMC medical education · 2024Trial
- Screening for parent and child ADHD in urban pediatric primary care: pilot implementation and stakeholder perspectives.BMC pediatrics · 2023Trial
- Balint groups and narrative medicine compared to a control condition in promoting students' empathy.BMC medical education · 2020Trial
- Oral hygiene compliance in orthodontic patients: a randomized controlled study on the effects of a post-treatment communication.Progress in orthodontics · 2016Trial
- Beneficial effects of hypnosis and adverse effects of empathic attention during percutaneous tumor treatment: when being nice does not suffice.Journal of vascular and interventional radiology : JVIR · 2008Trial
- Teaching empathy in Balint groups.The Libyan journal of medicine · 2026Article
- Patients' and parents' views on how digital tools enable personalized and partnered care in genetics: a qualitative study.European journal of human genetics : EJHG · 2026Article
- Professionalism and Empathy Assessment in Undergraduate Medical Students: A Systematic Review.Medical science educator · 2026Review
- Scoping Literature Review of Digital Empathy Games in Healthcare Education and Training.European journal of dental education : official journal of the Association for Dental Education in Europe · 2026Article
- Experiential learning in disaster psychiatry: a qualitative study of medical students' reflections on clinical reasoning, empathy, and professional identity.BMC medical education · 2026Article
- Empathy in AI for Health and Care Settings-Definition, Expression, and Measurement: Protocol for a Scoping Review.JMIR research protocols · 2026Article
- Exploring clinical empathy among maternal healthcare providers in Zambia: Does the heart meet the mind? Insights from a qualitative study.Journal of health psychology · 2026Article
- Dopamine, Distraction, and Disruption: Perspectives on How Technology and Generation Z Are Reshaping Medical Education.JMIR medical education · 2026Article
- Empathy-amplified social influence and gender-sensitive thresholds in doctors' adoption of internet hospitals: a mixed-methods study in China.BMC health services research · 2026Article
- Reimagining the 'Lost' narratives of advanced dementia through literature and critical fabulation.Medical humanities · 2026Article
134 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
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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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.