Emotions, narratives and empathy in clinical communication

Patients sometimes report that doctors consider them a set of symptoms rather than a person. A recent article by a patient in a major Norwegian newspaper had the title ‘I am not a knee cap’. The author had suffered a knee injury, but felt that he was treated by doctors merely as a knee cap rather than as a human being. This feeling is hardly unique. In a focus group study a few years ago patients with rheumatic diseases reported similar experiences and emphasized the importance of being seen as an individual rather than a disease entity [1]. Moreover, in an empirical test of the Four Habits communication skills training model Krupat et al. found that skills in taking the patient perspective were among those performed most poorly in a sample of primary care physicians [2].