Ethics, empathy, and gender in health care

The changes that have taken place in medicine over the past few decades have challenged our views about the responsibilities and obligations of those providing health care and about their relationships with their patients. The demands brought by technologic advances and economic concerns have tested our ability to practice humane, empathic, and ethical medicine. This paper addresses the connection between ethics and empathy in the context of our current health care system. The author reviews the concept of empathy and argues that ethical medicine is empathic medicine. Since gender differences in health care needs and disparities in treatment have been identified, gender serves to focus some of the issues and exemplify some concerns about empathic and ethical practice.