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Savannah Campbell's avatar

I am not sure you can teach empathy, although it can be cultivated. What most people don’t realize is that most US medical students are “taught” empathy. Most, if not all, medical students in the US have undergone some form of an Objective Structured Clinical Exam (OSCE). These are are standardized scenarios with a standardized patient that are often 15-20 minute long encounters where you are graded on a checklist. One checklist item is empathy where you get points for canned lines such as “I am sorry you feel this way” or “that sounds difficult”. Family Medicine residencies use something called Balint Group to also try and encourage empathy by working through the doctor patient relationship. So many doctors have had some form of empathy training, but still struggle. It is possible (and highly likely in my opinion) that the training is subpar, but I also believe it is not something you can teach well. Our admission system selects for high achieving students straight out of college and it is often times hard for them to relate to patients with diverse experiences when their entire life experience is medical education.

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Cristina Vitetta's avatar

Your rhetoric here is skirting round the theme without solving anything...Cultivating issues is a form of teaching.

So the admission system fails the student by not teaching 'humanity' and perhaps humility and in the long run fails the patient emotionally.

The movie "The Doctor" shows how empathy is cultivated (learned).

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Savannah Campbell's avatar

I agree on both accounts. I was not attempting to solve anything, merely pointing out the challenges the system has created and how the current system is not designed to teach or cultivate empathy (which I also agree is a form of teaching) in a meaningful way, as someone who has been through it. The admissions process is also not designed to teach humanity, I am pointing out that life challenges are one way to naturally teach (and cultivate) empathy and the admissions process makes it harder for “non traditional” students to be accepted. One solution, then, would be to change admissions in a way that encourages students with life experiences to apply and decreases roadblocks to admissions. Not only would they potentially have had more experiences to cultivate this empathy, but could also share their experiences with classmates who may not have had them.

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Cristina Vitetta's avatar

So we agree there needs to be a change, either in admissions or first year.

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