Medical empathy in the physician-patient relationship: A review from a cultural perspective

Medical empathy is a fundamental pillar in the social construction of the physician-patient relationship. In this light, patients' beliefs and perceptions of medical empathy, and physicians' empathic attitudes towards their patients are guided by their socio-cultural understandings and expectations, which naturally vary from culture to culture. Such considerations are particularly relevant to the field of social psychology and to public healthcare systems where a growing number of foreign physicians characterise their highly diverse socio-demographic makeup. However, there is no clear research agenda concerning the way in which medical empathy should be investigated from a cultural point of view in years to come.

To this end, the paper presents a systematic review of studies that examines medical empathy in healthcare contexts from a cultural perspective to synthesize their findings, evaluate their limitations and propose future lines of research.

The review considers articles published from January 2010 to June 2022 in the PubMed, Scopus and Web of Science databases and follows the PRISMA methodology.

Three studies, of the 314 articles analysed, met the criteria established for this investigation. The analysis shows that research on medical empathy has analysed the cultural diversity of physicians of a limited range of cultural backgrounds, exclusively from a cross-cultural perspective, employing quantitative research designs and exclusively using the Jefferson Medical Empathy Scale.

We suggest that future studies adopt an intercultural perspective of medical empathy as a psychocultural construct rather than as merely a sociocultural one.