The moral role of clinical empathy in patient healthcare

In healthcare, clinical empathy is rarely analyzed from the perspective of its moral role, even within bioethics. Instead, empathy is usually examined from its benefits to patients, health professionals, and even institutions. we propose moral roles of clinical empathy. It is noteworthy that the moral roles offered by the authors consist of original formulations from research developed over time in clinical empathy and ethics in healthcare. This is a theoretical study whose goal is to create theoretical contributions that aim to add to the scarce investigations on the articulations between clinical empathy and morality in healthcare. Clinical empathy should not be the only moral construct within health care ethics, as it is limited and does not account for the complexity of the moral phenomenon. Yet, considering that the current care model advocates patient centrality and participation and patient respect as subjects of rights, it is concluded that clinical empathy is a non-negotiable moral construct to implement the contemporary model of care.