Empathy Can Be Taught, and Patients Teach it Best

Abstract

Empathy toward patients is an essential skill for a physician to deliver the best care for any patient. Empathy also protects the physician from moral injury and decreases the chances for malpractice litigations. The current graduate medical education curriculum allows trainees to graduate without getting focused training to develop empathy as a core competency domain. The tools to measure empathy inherently lack validity. The accurate measure of the provider’s empathy comes from the patient’s perspectives of their experience and their feedback, which is rarely reaching the trainee. The hidden curriculum in residency programs gives mixed messages to trainees due to inadequate role modeling by attending physicians. This narrative style manuscript portrays a teachable moment at the bedside vividly. The teaching team together reflected upon the lack of empathy, took steps to resolve the issue. The attending demonstrated role modeling as an authentic and impactful technique to teach empathy. The conclusion includes a proposal to include the patient’s real-time feedback to trainees as an essential domain under Graduate Medical Education core competencies of professionalism and patient care.