Clinical Empathy

This updated book provides expanded evidence that empathy is the heart of the art of patient care. To achieve that goal, this volume assembles the most current research and development on empathy in the context of health professions education and patient care.

The original edition of the book: Empathy in Patient Care: Antecedents, Development, Measurement, and Outcomes was published by Springer in 2007. The second expanded and updated edition of the book was released in 2016 under a new title: Empathy in Health Professions Education and Patient Care.

The third edition of this book updates and expands the content of the previous editions by incorporating a large volume of empirical, qualitative and review articles published by national and international researchers, after the release of the previous editions. It also includes a new chapter describing a landmark nationwide project on clinical empathy in osteopathic medical students in the United States. This edition will help readers embark on a journey to the unchartered terrain of clinical empathy, beginning with its conceptualization and measurement. The journey will proceed to empirical research findings from the author’s own team as well as national and international researchers on correlates, group differences, erosion, enhancement, and educational and healthcare outcomes of empathic engagement in patient care. A great majority of these studies (Appendix A) used the well-known instrument for measuring clinical empathy, the Jefferson Scale of Empathy, developed by the book’s author.