Empathy in Medicine: Should Healthcare Providers Empathize with their Patients?

Abstract: Many have claimed that healthcare providers should show compassion towards their patients, but should they empathize with their patients? At least two reasons have been offered in support of answering this question negatively. First, the healthcare provider often needs to be detached from the patient in order to dispassionately analyze the situation. Second, the healthcare provider and the patient are different people with different perspectives. I make a distinction between two type of empathy: contagion empathy, according to which we can ‘catch’ emotions directly, and simulation empathy, according to which we imagine being in the situation of another person. I also make a further distinction within the latter form of empathy between self-oriented and other-oriented empathy, that is, between imagining being oneself in the actor’s situation and imagining being the actor in the actor’s situation. I argue that if the focus is on simulation empathy, the risk of empathy distorting a dispassionate analysis of the situation is greatly diminished. I also argue that an appreciation of the difference between self- and other-oriented empathy not only does not distort the differences between healthcare provider and patient, but can help the healthcare provider better understand the situation from the perspective of both someone who advances health-related values (the healthcare provider) and someone who has the patient’s personal values. I discuss the importance of this understanding in the context of attaining an end of the healthcare provider-patient interaction that incorporates both the patient’s medical good and the patient’s perception of the good.