Committee Opinion No. 480: Empathy in Women's Health Care

Empathy is the process through which one attempts to project oneself into another's life and imagine a situation from his or her point of view. Most individuals do have an innate capacity to show empathy toward others. Empathy is as important to being a good physician as technical competence. However, at times the health care environment and educational process overly emphasize technological competence, curing disease rather than healing the patient, or the economic aspects of medicine. This may interfere with an empathic approach in the clinical setting. In this Committee Opinion, the Committee on Ethics of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists defines empathy and related terms, describes the role of empathy in medicine, outlines objections and barriers to incorporating empathy into clinical care, reviews research on measuring empathy, discusses the inclusion of empathy in medical education, and makes recommendations about empathic care for health care providers and the health care system.