Journal Club, Session 2

Bloom [2017] - Empathy and its discontents

 What is your specific definition of “empathy”?

o Does Bloom’s definition corroborate or conflict with yours?
 P. 25: Imagine that hypothetical scenario of Sheri Summers, how would you have reacted
to that prompt?
o Is it morally unacceptable for us to prioritize people “we know” (our friends and
families) over strangers?
 P. 28: How would you differentiate compassion from empathy?
 P. 29: “Empathy can have negative effects, including exhaustion and burnout as well as
diminished engagement with individuals in distress”
o Do you believe this rings true for physicians you have interacted with?
o How do we preemptively counteract this as future physicians?
 P. 30: “Empathy is an important source of pleasure”
o Do you agree with Bloom, that empathy is just a roundabout way of making
ourselves happy?
 P. 30: “Empathetic distress has its appeal; there is a fascination we have with
experiencing the lives of others, even if others are suffering”
o There is an inherent desire among many medical students to see the most critical
cases whilst in the hospital. Do you think this contributes to that?
 Do you agree with Bloom’s last line, that “we are better off without it [empathy]?”

Highlighting some of Bloom’s Outstanding Questions P. 30

 “Are highly empathetic individuals who work in helping professions more prone to
burnout? More generally, do the best doctors, nurses, therapists, and so on tend to have
low empathy, normal empathy, or high empathy?”
 “What about the best policymakers? Can we find an objective and unbiased method to
determine whether the best leaders have low empathy, normal empathy, or high
empathy?”
 “How can we manipulate, and perhaps dampen, our empathetic reactions?”