| Author | : Howard Marget Spiro |
| File Size | : 42,7 Mb |
| Publisher | : Yale University Press |
| Language | : English |
| Release Date | : 01 January 1993 |
| ISBN | : 0300066708 |
| Pages | : 230 pages |
Empathy and the Practice of Medicine by Howard Marget Spiro Book PDF Summary
The book - which includes essays by physicians, philosophers, and a nurse - is divided into three parts: one deals with how empathy is weakened or lost during the course of medical education and suggests how to remedy this; another describes the historical and philosophical origins of empathy and provides arguments for and against it; and a third section offers compelling accounts of how physicians' empathy for their patients has affected their own lives and the lives of those in their care. We hear, for example, from a physician working in a hospice who relates the ways that the staff try to listen and respond to the needs of the dying; a scientist who interviews candidates for medical school and tells how qualities of empathy are undervalued by selection committees; a nurse who considers what nursing can teach physicians about empathy; another physician who ponders whether the desire to be empathic can hinder the detachment necessary for objective care; and several contributors who show how literature and art can help physicians to develop empathy.
