Empathy is an essential component of compassionate care, and physician empathy has been shown to reduce medical errors, create better patient outcomes, and result in more satisfied patients. It also results in fewer malpractice claims and happier doctors. But can people learn to be empathetic? A new study says they can, and Dr. Helen Riess, director of the Empathy and Relational Science Program at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, has created a series of empathy training modules for doctors. Tests of the program show that doctors-in-training who participated in the classes showed significant improvement in their empathetic behavior, while those who didn’t participate actually got worse.Read the full article here: Can Doctors Learn Empathy?