A Dose Of Empathy Is All Some Patients Need

A review of 28 trials published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine last week quantifies what many doctors already knew: empathic, positive communication benefits patients.Two true stories motivated me to do the review. Archie Cochrane reports the first. He was the only doctor in a prisoner of war camp during World War II. One night the Germans dumped a young Soviet prisoner in his ward. The soldier had pleurisy (holes in his lungs) and was screaming. Cochrane didn’t want to wa