Your Doctor Doesn’t Care About You
- Farah Abdelhak
- 1 day ago
- 5 min read
An older woman is lying down in a hospital bed in an empty room. She had recently suffered from a stroke and had lost her ability to walk and speak properly. Her tongue feels like a slab of meat inside her mouth. Her voice and her limbs are still alive but unreachable. She is a stranger inside this hospital, and now inside her own body. Her children haven’t visited her. Instead, they sent flowers and cards, which she could barely read with the tremors in her hands. Then, a man in a white coat walks in with her chart. Without looking up from the clipboard, he tells her that her stroke was caused by coronary artery disease. She should start taking medications like Warfarin or Apixaban or Dabigatran. She should maintain a heavy Vitamin-K diet and attend weekly physical and speech therapy to regain her lost motor control. She should find someone to take care of her 24/7, even though she hasn’t seen her children in months, and hiring a caretaker is beyond her budget. Without expecting a response, he gives a quick nod and walks out of the room, leaving her to her enforced silence.
This scenario isn’t uncommon. In fact, this detached concern for patients has become a growing epidemic among healthcare professionals. Sickness in any form disempowers a person both physically and mentally. They lose autonomy to whatever extent, and in severe cases, a loss of identity. In the field of medicine, they are nothing more than biochemical processes that must be analyzed and treated. Many medical professionals fail to look beyond this objectification of the ill body, leading to what is called an empathy crisis in healthcare. Is this the doctor’s fault? It may appear so, but in reality, multiple systemic factors along the journey to becoming a doctor and within the actual job contribute to this decline in compassion. An overlooked tool, clinical empathy must be regained and reinforced, both personally and systemically, through education and professional reform.
Clinical empathy is defined as the ability to understand and respond to patients’ thoughts and emotions (Guidi & Traversa, 2021). Empathy can be expressed through eye contact, a genuine interest in the patient, and a dedication to their well-being beyond their symptoms. It serves many purposes in healthcare, contributing to positive patient experiences and, consequently, to higher staff satisfaction and better financial performance. For example, documents show that 50% of treatments are not taken as recommended. However, higher empathy from healthcare professionals has increased the likelihood of patients following treatment recommendations (Nembhard et al., 2022). Higher empathy helps patients better understand their treatment options instead of blindly following a list of unpronounceable medications. This understanding encourages active participation in decision-making and increases adherence to more patient-centered treatment plans (Guidi & Traversa, 2021). Moreover, a study of Mayo Clinic medical residents found that the tendency to make more mistakes was associated with lower levels of empathy (Razi et al., 2023). This suggests that empathy enables physicians to maintain emotional regulation and insight, thereby reducing the risk of clinical errors. This benefit not only yields better clinical outcomes and patient satisfaction but also reduces treatment costs and the duration of hospital stays (Razi et al., 2023). Conversely, a decline in empathy is largely associated with negative patient experiences and poorer clinical outcomes.
Instillation of medicine as an objective and detached practice begins in medical education. Medical school and other training overemphasize the scientific process of health and underrepresent the subjective human element. Countless studies have observed high levels of distress, mental health issues, and burnout among medical students and residents (Razi et al., 2023). Reasons for this include medical training, which requires long working hours in consistently high-pressure environments. Medical school, especially the third year, exposes students to the suffering and death of patients. Mistreatment of students also adds distress, from humiliation to discrimination and harassment (Razi et al., 2023). Besides patient interaction, students must simultaneously handle high workloads, resulting in decreased sleep and free time. With limited free time, the demanding profession reduces contact with peers, friends, and family (Razi et al., 2023). This lack of proper support, alongside constant exposure to depressing and high-stress situations, impairs physical and mental well-being. This emotional exhaustion and physical fatigue lead to an overall decrease in empathetic ability and desensitization to patient distress.
Beyond medical training, the impact of heavy workload and burnout on a physician isn’t any different. On average, professional expectations require most physicians to meet with 18-30 patients a day. Allocating 10-20 minutes per appointment, physicians must take histories, exams, as well as formulate diagnoses and prescribe treatments. In addition to meetings, forms, authorizations, labs, and calls, the mean time required for primary care physicians to provide guideline-recommended care totaled 26.7 hours a day (Dabom, 2025). Despite this impossible number, doctors feel obliged to meet these systemic standards for fear of professional and financial risk. Many physicians carry hundreds of thousands of dollars in student debt. In a system that prioritizes eliminating disease over treating the person, they may feel unable to provide holistic care without jeopardizing their limited financial and professional stability.
Many solutions can be adopted at both systematic and non-systematic levels to promote empathy among healthcare professionals. First, medical schools should integrate empathy and mindfulness training in curricula (Razi et al., 2023). They should learn how to practice active listening, avoid judgment, and show understanding while providing reassurance. This requires providers to adopt cultural awareness and habits of self-reflection. For example, Columbia University offers a course called Narrative Medicine, which teaches physicians the necessity of assessing a patient’s socioeconomic situation when treating them. Similarly, Stanford University has a Standardized Patients Program for medical students that assesses students' sociocultural awareness and empathy through simulated clinical interactions (Razi et al., 2023). In terms of more interactive coursework, an intervention study had professors from the drama/theatre department work with 14 residents to see whether they could learn empathy using theatre techniques (Elayyan et al., 2018). Over the course of four months, they evaluated the interactions between the professionals and their patients in clinical settings. The intervention group showed a significant improvement in attention, listening, nonverbal communication, and overall respect (Elayyan et al., 2018). In this study, residents received help by imitating the emotional skills of professionals. In a similar manner, workplaces must strive to establish proper role modeling. Role modeling is one of the best ways to teach how to interact with patients empathetically (Elayyan et al., 2018). A work environment that promotes high levels of empathy as a priority rather than a corner to cut is expected to raise professionals who practice with compassion.
Ultimately, empathy requires internal balance. Despite its benefits, excessive empathy can lead to “compassion fatigue,” in which prolonged emotional sensitivity results in burnout and reduced effectiveness (Francis, 2015). When the boundary between a patient’s emotions and a provider’s own feelings blurs, empathy can negatively affect the healthcare professional's well-being. To remain effective, providers must learn to distinguish their patients’ experiences from their own so that they can understand and share emotions without losing awareness that those emotions are not personally theirs (Francis, 2015). Overall, these strategies sustainably strengthen empathy, leading to improved patient satisfaction, better health outcomes, and greater professional well-being among healthcare providers.
References
Dabom, C. C. D. M. F. (2025, December 28). How Modern Healthcare Is Breaking the Doctor–patient Relationship. Psychology Today.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-other-side-of-the-white-coat/202512/why it-feels-like-doctors-dont-care-even-when-they-do
Elayyan, M., Rankin, J., & Chaarani, M. (2018). Factors Affecting Empathetic Patient Care Behavior Among Medical Doctors and Nurses: An Integrative Literature Review. Eastern Mediterranean Health Journal, 24(03), 311–318.
Francis, G. (2015, December 25). Why Physicians Need ‘Right Compassion.’ The New York Times.
Guidi, C., & Traversa, C. (2021). Empathy in Patient Care: From ‘Clinical Empathy’ to ‘Empathic Concern.’ Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy, 24(4), 573–585. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11019-021-10033-4
Nembhard, I. M., David, G., Ezzeddine, I., Betts, D., & Radin, J. (2022). A Systematic Review of Research on Empathy in Health Care. Health Services Research, 58(2), 250–263. https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6773.14016
Razi, M. O., Fouzia, R., & Razzaque, M. S. (2023). Decline of Empathy Among Healthcare Apprentices. International Medical Education, 2(4), 232–238.
Comments