Home / Books / What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine

What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine

Book by Danielle Ofri · 15 quotes · Medicine, Empathy, Grief

Browse quotes from What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine.

Book detail: What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine is presented as a focused source page for quotations connected with this book, collection, transcript, or source record.

Browse quotes from What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine.

The quotes below use the same card format as the rest of the site, including topics, source notes, copy actions, image creation, and sharing controls.

Filter quotes by topic

All Medicine Empathy Grief Apology Burnout Death And Dying Doctors Education Hard Work Hospital Learning Life Loss Mourning Patient Care

What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine Quotes

“Empathy requires being attuned to the patient's perspective and understanding how the illness is woven into this particular persons' life. Last--and this is where doctors often stumble--empathy requires being able to communicate all of this to the patient.”

Empathy Medicine

Book:What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine

Source: What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine

“In general, empathy is easier the more we can identify with someone. When we can genuinely envision ourselves in a situation, it's possible to intuit what that person's suffering might feel like.”

Empathy Medicine

Book:What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine

Source: What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine

“Empathy--the ability to identify with someone else's suffering--is certainly a prerequisite for a genuine apology.”

Empathy Medicine Apology

Book:What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine

Source: What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine

“Thus, whatever the medical student has been taught, and even genuinely believes, about the ideals of medicine, the primacy of empathy, the value of the doctor-patient relationship--all of this is swamped once he or she steps into the wards. [...] It's no wonder that empathy gets trounced in the actual world of clinical medicine; everything that empathy requires seems to detract from daily survival.”

Empathy Medicine

Book:What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine

Source: What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine

“Fear is a primal emotion in medicine. Every doctor can tell you of times when she or he was terrified; most can list more episodes than you might wish to hear. [...] It may be sublimated at times, it may wax and wane, but the fear of harming your patients never departs; it is inextricably linked to the practice of medicine.”

Empathy Medicine

Book:What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine

Source: What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine

“But I realized that not only did I need to keep tuning my skills as a doctor, I also had to figure out a way to live with the uncertainty of medicine and its attendant anxiety.”

Empathy Medicine

Book:What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine

Source: What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine

“Burnout also leads to a large swath of physicians who aren't as empathetic toward their patients as they could be.”

Empathy Medicine Burnout

Book:What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine

Source: What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine

“But while the patient does bear some responsibility, I believe that the onus falls more heavily on the doctor to be attuned to the factors--cultural, ethnic, or just personal style--that influence how patients present their symptoms.”

Empathy Medicine

Book:What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine

Source: What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine

“What these older physicians exhibited is termed clinical curiosity. They stroke to understand their patients in order to elucidate the underlying medical conditions. This thoroughness, patience, and dogged curiosity may have been ingrained in them because they trained at a time when they were no rapid CTs or MRIs. But even now, when these diagnostic tools are at their fingertips, these physicians maintain this approach to patients, one that serves to appreciate the dignity and uniqueness of each patient and his or her illness.”

Empathy Medicine Patient Care

Book:What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine

Source: What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine

“Grief ate at these doctors, distracting them from both their families and their patients. Many reported withdrawing from emotional involvement with their patients and that their patients had noticed they weren't fully present.”

Grief Empathy Medicine Death And Dying

Book:What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine

Source: What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine

“How the sadness is handled by the physician has a powerful impact on the medical care received by the patients. If the grief is relentlessly suppressed--as in Eva's experience during residency--the result can be a numb physician who is unable to invest in a new patient. This lack of investment can lead to rote medical care--impersonal at best, shoddy at worst. At the other end of the spectrum is the doctor who is inundated with grief and can't function because of the overwhelming sorrow. Burnout is significant in both these cases, and that erodes the quality of medical care.”

Loss Grief Empathy Medicine Mourning

Book:What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine

Source: What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine

“It can be rough going to maintain both composure and empathy in these situations, but a doctor's failure to do that is probably the number one reason why patients feel dissatisfied with their physicians and end up doctor-shopping endlessly.”

Empathy Medicine

Book:What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine

Source: What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine

“Hospital life--with its byzantine array of moving parts layered atop the unpredictable rhythms of illness--is a permanent state of flux.”

Empathy Medicine Hospital

Book:What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine

Source: What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine

“Suddenly, I was plunged back into an avid learning environment, starting at the bottom and working my way painstakingly up the mountain. The thrill of learning and accomplishing stimulated me so much that the work was pleasurable.”

Education Learning Hard Work Medicine

Book:What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine

Source: What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine

“Grief is an aspect of love, a reflection of the ability to connect. As the heart can grow bigger to allow more love, it can also do so for grief. I don't want any more of my patients to die, but I know that they will. And although I don't want more grief in my life, I know that the connections that permit grief to occur are the connections that keep us -- doctors and patients -- alive.”

Life Grief Doctors Medicine

Book:What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine

Source: What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine