Empath

I received an email from a reader who plans on a career in surgery; she asked about empathy, or lack thereof, and how it affects a surgeon. It's an interesting question, and it plays in both directions. Other than situational intensity, I think it's the same for all docs.

Conventional wisdom has it that doctors must retain "professional distance" from their patients. To allow oneself to cross the line (where ever it might lie) and become too close (what ever that might mean) is to risk letting one's judgment become clouded when difficult decisions must be made. The argument is not without merit; to the extent that physicians must be dispassionate in their thought-process, I fully agree. But I think the calculations that are made necessarily include some knowledge of who the patient is. And, as I've said more than once, I think it's part of a doctor's job to instill confidence and trust in her/his patients, because I think it helps them to deal with their illness and recovery. In part, that requires the ability, at some level, to see inside their heads: empathy, in other words. Looked at that way, it's part of the job.

At minimum, I'd say, it ought to be possible even for the most aloof doctor to imagine how he or she would like his or her, say, parents to be treated by a phellow physician. For those who lack it naturally, empathy, one would think, ought to be acquirable, teachable, emphasized as a needed tool in a doctor's bag of tricks. Relating to patients from a place lower than a high horse; treating with respect and kindness; these are as necessary, in my view, as any other skill a doctor needs. It comes from empathy. If you don't have it, fake it.

The flip-side is the question of physicians' personal well-being: if you empathize with all your patients, do you risk bearing too much of a burden? Does it lead to burnout? Is that "professional distance" necessary for one's own survival -- forget about the patients.' As I see it, that is in fact the higher concern. Paradoxically, empathy needs pairing with the ability to compartmentalize, to relate one-on-one and leave it behind when you walk away. As if that's actually possible.

Somewhere above the middle on the list of factors in my own burnout is the sharing of pain with my patients. As my practice grew to include more and more patients with breast cancer, as one very large example, so did the proportion of patients that came to me with it every day. And as the years went by the average age seemed steadily to lower. More and more frequent it was that I found myself in my office, face to face with a young woman and her family, little kids, my words bouncing off that terrified mask, ineffectual, trying to balance hope and honesty. Each one was a little more painful than the one before; each time my chest felt tighter, my desire grew stronger to tell my nurse never to schedule another such patient. Worse, I had to fight harder and harder to resist the urge -- hollering from within my own burning brain -- to paint a rosier picture than the situation called for. Just to avoid the tears and the terror. (If empathy can be learned, I'm not sure it can be unlearned.) I think I never yielded. But the whispered temptation was among the voices telling me it was time...

It's easy to sympathize with doctors -- and stereotypically, anyway, it's more likely to be surgeons -- who purposefully remain above it, who relate to their patients in a perfectly matter-of-fact manner, or worse. And yet looking back on my career it's the times I've been thanked for kindness, have been told the time I took was appreciated, of which I'm most proud. Beyond telling myself I was good with the mechanics -- which I do, rightly or not -- it's the sense that I cared deeply that I think made me who I was as a surgeon. And without doubt, it's also a large part of what shortened my career. Had I cared less I might well still be at it.

So here's the answer I should have given the young woman: I haven't a clue!