John Launer: The art of paying attention

I’m not sure that I’ve ever been an exceptionally compassionate or empathetic doctor, and it would be for patients to say, rather than me. Possibly they’d have a range of views, depending on whether we got on well or my treatment made them better. Altogether, I’m a bit suspicious of training and publications that describe how to develop empathy and compassion (sometimes subtly implying saintliness in their authors), so in my own teaching I generally try to avoid tackling these topics head on.There are other qualities I prefer to focus on. Rita Charon, a New York physician and a pioneer in the field of narrative medicine, emphasises three qualities that she believes we should promote in medicine: attention, representation, and affiliation.1 She describes attention as “the most pivotal skill with which to endow a health professional who wants to be a healer.” By representation she means the capacity to give…
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