The DOI matches its Crossref record; 40 of the 40 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Empathy in Medicine: What It Is, and How Much We Really Need It
Abstract
It is acknowledged that empathy plays a critical role in the physician-patient relationship and has a positive impact on health outcomes. However, as the field of empathy expands, the lack of conceptual coherence challenges advances in medicine. In fact, in some cases there is little added theoretical or clinical value in applying the all-encompassing term of empathy in medical setting, which is by nature multidimensional, interpersonal and modulated by the context. Functional neuroimaging studies of health professionals, designed to examine patterns of brain activation in response to empathy-eliciting situations bring theoretical clarity to the neurocognitive mechanisms that underlie interpersonal sensitivity, emotional empathy, cognitive empathy, and caring. These components are relatively independent, but often interact and are deeply interwoven in the fabric of the brain. Nevertheless, it seems clear from this review that cultivating empathic concern or compassion in today's medicine is more important than other aspects of empathy, like vicariously experiencing and introspecting about patients' emotions. Specific neurobiological mechanisms explain the benefit to patients of their physicians' perceived empathy.
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Cites
The free-energy principle: a unified brain theory?
Friston, K. (2010) · Nature Reviews Neuroscience · doi:10.1038/nrn2787 · Cited by 8,120
The functional architecture of human empathy
Decety, J., & Jackson, P. L. (2004) · Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience Reviews · doi:10.1177/1534582304267187 · Cited by 3,407
Self-citationCompassion: an evolutionary analysis and empirical review
Goetz, J. L., Keltner, D., & Simon-Thomas, E. (2010) · Psychological Bulletin · doi:10.1037/a0018807 · Cited by 2,200
Lamm, C., Decety, J., & Singer, T. (2011) · NeuroImage · doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2010.10.014 · Cited by 2,016
The social neuroscience of empathy
Singer, T., & Lamm, C. (2009) · Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1111/j.1749-6632.2009.04418.x · Cited by 1,981
The Neural Substrate of Human Empathy: Effects of Perspective-taking and Cognitive Appraisal
Lamm, C., Batson, C. D., & Decety, J. (2007) · Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience · doi:10.1162/jocn.2007.19.1.42 · Cited by 1,464
Self-citationThese Things Called Empathy: Eight Related but Distinct Phenomena
Batson, C. D. (2009) · The Social Neuroscience of Empathy · doi:10.7551/mitpress/9780262012973.003.0002 · Cited by 1,363
Physiciansʼ Empathy and Clinical Outcomes for Diabetic Patients
Hojat, M., Louis, D. Z., Markham, F. W., Wender, R., Rabinowitz, C., & Gonnella, J. S. (2011) · Academic Medicine · doi:10.1097/acm.0b013e3182086fe1 · Cited by 1,203
The neuroscience of placebo effects: connecting context, learning and health
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Cited by
The association of physician empathy with cancer patient outcomes: A meta‐analysis
Lelorain, S., Gehenne, L., Christophe, V., & Duprez, C. (2023) · Psycho-Oncology · doi:10.1002/pon.6108 · Cited by 42
Expectation of clinical decision support systems: a survey study among nephrologist end-users
Kotsis, F., Bächle, H., Altenbuchinger, M., Dönitz, J., Njipouombe Nsangou, Y. A., Meiselbach, H., Kosch, R., Salloch, S., Bratan, T., Zacharias, H. U., et al. (2023) · BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making · doi:10.1186/s12911-023-02317-x · Cited by 11
Developing relational empathy in virtual ethnographic intercultural teaching
Zhou, Y., Calloway-Thomas, C., Li, G., & Zhang, X. (2025) · Chinese Journal of Applied Linguistics · doi:10.1515/cjal-2025-0109 · Cited by 1
Metadata
- Authors
- Decety, J.
- Venue
- The American Journal of Medicine
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2020-05
- Volume
- 133
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 561-566
- ISSN
- 0002-9343 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W3000307906
- Cited by
- 284
- References
- 40
- FWCI
- 20.27
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
