We build a caring relationship by sharing experiences, disclosing something of ourselves to her as we ask her to reveal herself to us. We can disclose something of ourselves as an example, as when I explain to a new Mom with a colicky baby my own experience walking the floor with my colicky daughter. We sometimes share our own experiences as a way of empathizing with a patient. In a caring relationship, the physician recognizes the meaning a patient's symptom or illness takes on in her life. For example, recognizing how scary a fall on ice and blow to the head can be.
Treatments can be scary, too.
We should pay more attention to what our treatments mean to our patients' lives. We also show caring when we express real feeling. In one of your first-year classes, the Practice of Medicine, you will learn, among other things, the importance of being a good listener. In a caring relationship, however, you go further, showing your own feeling. I don't think so.