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Empathy, Compassion, and the Goals of Medicine

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Whole Person Care

Abstract

The way empathy and compassion are currently thought about and taught in medical education is the wrong answer to the right question. This chapter begins by outlining the reasons why this is so and then suggests an alternative way that is congruent with whole person care. The question of how to educate health care providers (HCPs) so that they are empathic and compassionate in the care of the sick is a good one and is synonymous with this book’s focus on care of the whole person that includes the personal suffering that accompanies illness.

Director, Pediatric Palliative Care Program, The Montreal Children’s Hospital, Associate Professor of Pediatrics, McGill University, 2300 Tupper Street, Montreal, QC H3H 1P3, Canada

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Correspondence to Stephen Liben .

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© 2011 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

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Liben, S. (2011). Empathy, Compassion, and the Goals of Medicine. In: Hutchinson, T. (eds) Whole Person Care. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9440-0_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9440-0_6

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4419-9439-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4419-9440-0

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