Physicians' self-assessed empathy levels do not correlate with patients' assessments

Empathy is a fundamental humanistic component of patient care which facilitates efficient and patient-centered clinical encounters. Despite being the principal recipient of physician empathy little work on how patients perceive/report receiving empathy from their physicians has been undertaken. In the context of doctor-patient interactions, knowledge about empathy has mostly originated from physicians' perspectives and has been developed from studies using self-assessment instruments. In general, self-assessment may not correlate well with the reality observed by others. Funding was provided by Fapesp-Fundação de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo(2016/11908-1) to Dr Marco Antonio Carvalho-Filho