Finding the equilibrium of empathy

Life as a junior doctor can be overwhelming. Each day brings a wave of fresh information to contend with, from assimilating new medical knowledge to learning the mundanities of the job, such as the endless door codes and how to tackle technology in the hospital. It’s easy, amid all this, to forget that your place of work is one where many people are experiencing their worst moments.For new doctors, who are often in their early 20s, most of their experiences of responding to the feelings and vulnerabilities that illness exposes us to will have been in an artificially simulated scenario during medical school. Universities rightly place emphasis on compassionate communication, and students are repeatedly asked to show how they would deal with “the angry patient” or “the upset patient.” They are even given acronyms to remember how to break bad news. Facing these experiences in real life is, however, a…
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