ArticleMedicine, health care, and philosophy2023
Empathy is not so perfect! -For a descriptive and wide conception of empathy.
Article in Medicine, health care, and philosophy, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed.
- The risk of empty empathy talk and challenges of automated empathy in healthcare communication.NPJ digital medicine · 2026Review
- Clinical decision fatigue as a reversible state in the continuum of professional exhaustion.Frontiers in health services · 2026Article
- Assessment of the Level and Determinants of Empathy in Moroccan Medical Students: A Cross-Sectional Study.Journal of advances in medical education & professionalism · 2026Article
- Empathy levels among health sciences professors in Latin America: distribution, classification and gender differences.BMC medical education · 2025Article
- Exploring how surgeons employ empathy in clinical practice: a qualitative study.BMC medical education · 2025Article
- The role of the ethics expert in Spanish legislation on euthanasia and mental health.Monash bioethics review · 2025Review
- Learning environment as a predictor for medical students' empathy: a multicenter cross-sectional study from 12 medical schools in China.BMC psychology · 2025Article
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
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Abstract
Physician empathy is considered essential for good clinical care. Empirical evidence shows that it correlates with better patient satisfaction, compliance, and clinical outcomes. These data have nevertheless been criticized because of a lack of consistency and reliability. In this paper, we claim that these issues partly stem from the widespread idealization of empathy: we mistakenly assume that physician empathy always contributes to good care. This has prevented us from agreeing on a definition of empathy, from understanding the effects of its different components and from exploring its limits. This is problematic because physicians' ignorance of the risks of empathy and of strategies to manage them can impact their work and wellbeing negatively. To address this problem, we explore the effects of the potential components of empathy and argue that it should be conceived as a purely descriptive and wide term. We end by discussing implications for medical education.
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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.