Empath Report

As a medical educator, I appreciated the considerable insights in Heidi Julavits’s essay on empathy and doctors [“Diagnose This,” April]. Columbia University’s Program in Narrative Medicine and other efforts to transform future clinicians into better listeners are certainly commendable, but when it comes to the problem of physicians who do not listen, we cannot teach our way out.

Nor are the reforms to the medical-school admissions process Julavits describes sufficient. We must steer our best listeners, from an early age, toward medical careers. We must find a way to encourage children with gifts for empathy and compassion to…