“Empathy needs no genius” (Beta, 2000-2016). In Leslie Jamison’s The Empathy Exams she makes the point of you being a good doctor does not just have to do with knowing all the medical situations, but also being able to empathize with patients. Showing empathy to a patient can help the doctor-patient or nurse-patient interaction because it will make the patient feel more like a human being. Jamison says empathy suggests “… you enter another person’s pain as you’d enter another country, through immigration and customs, border crossing by way of query: What grows where you are? What are the laws? What animals graze there?” (Jamison, 2014). The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison emphasizes how important empathy is important in healthcare workers and patient …show more content…
The readers learn that one of the main topics focused on when teaching medical students is how to show their empathy to a patient. Jamison mentions how her supervisor explains how to help better the student’s empathy. This is explained because Jamison is not the only person who believes empathy is a good trait for a nurse or doctor to have, many people believe this as well. In the exams, true stories from Jamison’s life help readers understand why she is certain empathy is such a good characteristic. Dr. G, Jamison’s heart surgeon, showed her lots of empathy after her operation was not successful. This empathy helped Jamison get through what could have been a rough time, and it made her feel like an actual person. Jamison says, “… he was helping me understand that even this, the barnacle of a false heart, would be okay. His calmness didn’t make me feel abandoned, it made me feel secure” (Jamison, 2014). With this example readers know why Jamison believes empathy is so important. She knows from firsthand experience how being shown empathy helped her thought a hard time in her