Teaching Empathy In Health Care

As a member of the medical profession, it is painful to see a progressive decline in empathy and conscientiousness in recent years among healthcare providers especially among new doctors. Medicine is a service career and what the patients need are compassionate, conscientious and caring doctors who will be role models for all other health care providers. The noble dictum of service above self  seems to have been replaced by the new order of self first before others.  This is the major motivation why I have been teaching Medical Ethics for the last 9 years.

Virtues Of A Healthcare Professional

Virtues are defined as positive traits of character to think and act in ways that are good. It is to do what is morally right. I will not attempt to discuss the concept or philosophy of virtues as a whole, that is not my area of expertise.  But I have been in the health care industry  and teaching profession long enough to know that the character of a person is not given much weight in the evaluation process for entrance to medical or nursing schools, nor is it given much focus in the teaching curriculum.  This lack of emphasis is in my opinion, a big oversight on the part of medical/nursing schools and residency programs.