page_title: Clinical empathy
section_title: Clinical detachment
hierarchical_section_title: Clinical empathy / Clinical detachment
caption_attribution_description: The Main Building of Thomas Jefferson University's Jefferson Medical College at 132 S. 10th Street between Sansom and Walnut Streets in Center City, Philadelphia
context_page_description: Clinical empathy is expressed as the skill of understanding what a patient says and feels, and effectively communicating this understanding to the patient. The opposite of clinical empathy is clinical detachment. Detached concern, or clinical detachment, is the ability to distance oneself from the patient in order to serve the patient from an objective standpoint. For physicians to maximize their role as providers, a balance must be developed between clinical detachment and clinical empathy.
  In 2001, an instrument was created to measure a physician's empathy towards each patient. This tool is called the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy. The 20-item questionnaire was originally developed for administration to medical students and physicians but has extended to dentistry and nursing because it is easy to interpret, administer, and analyze.
  From a student's first year to their fourth year in medical school, empathy scores on the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy decrease. Both gender and specialty choice affect empathy scores, favoring women and primary care specialties.
context_section_description: Clinical detachment is a means of providing objective, detached medical care while maintaining enough concern for the patient to offer emotional understanding. A close patient-provider relationship threatens objectivity, therefore a social distance is expected to ensure professionalism. Students in medical school are taught clinical detachment as a protective mechanism for dealing with emotional experiences such as death and dying. Clinical detachment is also a means of dealing with the pressure of making mistakes and medical uncertainty.  Suppression and repression of emotions, intellectualization, and humor are mechanisms used to confront distressing situations in order to give an objective assessment.
caption: Jefferson Medical College Main Building 132 S. 10th Street, Beyond My Ken, GFDL
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