“Empathy--the ability to identify with someone else's suffering--is certainly a prerequisite for a genuine apology.”
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.”
Source: What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine
“Empathy heals shame; sympathy exacerbates shame. We don't want people to feel sorry for us; we want people to be with us.”
Source: Men, Women, and Worthiness: The Experience of Shame and the Power of Being Enough
“He who has little problems, shows little love. He who has overcome huge problems, has giant love. Because he understands what it means and won’t have others suffer like he did.”
“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.”
Source: What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine
“It might feel, at least to some of us, that our opinions about issues such as abortion and the death penalty are the products of careful deliberation and that our specific moral acts, such as deciding to give to charity or visit a friend in the hospital—or for that matter, deciding to shoplift or shout a racist insult out
of a car window—are grounded in conscious decision-making. But this is said to be mistaken. As Jonathan Haidt argues, we are not judges; we are lawyers, making up explanations after the deeds have been done. Reason is impotent. "We celebrate rationality," agrees de Waal, "but when push comes to shove we assign it little weight.”
Source: Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion
“Until you truly let go, until you truly form humility, can you find empathy and in that empathy you find contact and in that contact you find out who you truly are, and who the people are around you.”
Source: Before They Pass Away
“Certain actions bring harm, other more wizened actions bring harmony.”
Source: The Eden Fruitarian Guidebook
“If we could understand and love the infinity of agonies which languish around us, all the lives which are hidden deaths, we should require as many hearts as there are suffering beings.”
Source: A short history of decay
“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.”
Source: What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine