What Doctors Feel

Medicine and hospitals have long been a great source of drama.  From Marcus Welby and Dr. Kildare to General Hospital and Grey’s Anatomy and House, medical drama has kept us riveted.  Perhaps never better than in Paddy Chayefsky's The Hospital. There, the Chief of Medicine's wife has left him, his children don’t talk him, he fears he suffers from impotence and his hospital is falling apart.  Yet..he soldiers on treating patients.

Ironically in spite of all of this, we somehow think that Doctors are above allowing emotions to impact their work, that somehow they all took that class in medical school in Detachment 101. Nothing could be further from the truth.  

Now Dr. Danielle Ofri, Associate Professor of Medicine at NYU School of Medicine and long time doctor at New York's Bellevue Hospital, takes a look at the connection between how doctors treat patients and how they feel.

My conversation with Dr. Danielle Ofri about What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine.