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What we need in medical schools is not to teach empathy, as much as to preserve it. The process of learning huge volumes of information about disease, of learning a specialised language, can ironically make one lose sight of the patient one came to serve; empathy can be replaced by cynicism.

Abraham Verghese
School, Sight, Empathy
"'Literature about medicine may be all that can save us'" by Andrew Solomon, www.theguardian.com. April 22, 2016.
What we need in medical schools is not to teach empathy, as much as to preserve it. The process of learning huge volumes of information about disease, of learning a specialised language, can ironically make one lose