Empathy in general practice: its meaning for patients and doctors

Over the past 15 years, empathy has been the subject of an exponential increase in the number of publications describing or attempting to explain its role in clinical practice. Why is this? Empathy is one of those concepts that is intuitively understood — at least until you try to explicitly define it. A doctor’s ability to establish an empathic understanding of their patient’s situation is considered essential to the development of a therapeutic relationship. This relationship is vitally important to practising medicine effectively. Empathy is therefore something worth trying to understand. One of the things that has occurred during the last two decades is the development of multiple validated tools that are used to ‘measure’ empathy. The paper by Hermans et al , in this issue of the journal,1 joins the list of reports that use a scoring tool to quantify empathy in an attempt to understand what it means. We live in an age that privileges a focus on technical, statistically underpinned, evidence-based medicine in the training of new doctors. The core role of the therapeutic relationship in this practice of medicine is de-emphasised. Guidelines are followed, which require calculating scores to determine the ‘best’ treatment for the patient. However, knowing the latest clinical guideline and best practice is not enough to practise effectively as a doctor. A therapeutic relationship with the patient must be formed. This humanises the practice of medicine for both the patient and the doctor. Experienced general …