Medical School: How the “Hidden Curriculum” Snuffs Out Compassion

In the post below, “Can Empathy Be Taught?” Dr.  Chris Johnson reflects on how and why, so many medical students seem to lose that compassion for others that is “innate in all of us,” and causes many students to choose the profession in the first place. Johnson writes: “We need to prevent medical training from driving [compassion] into the background, belittling it, or even snuffing it out.”

For nearly thirty years Johnson has been practicing medicine in an area that makes great demands on both the heart and the mind—pediatric critical care. It is a field that, in the words of 19th century medical ethicist Thomas Percival requires that the physician “unite” great “tenderness with steadiness.” Johnson is a blogger and the author of  How Your Child Heals, How to Talk to Your Child’s Doctor, and Your Critically Ill Child.

Throughout most of his career, he has taught medical students, residents, and fellows. “I also served on a medical school admissions committee for some years,” he notes “and interviewed many prospective students, so I have had the opportunity to see and speak with them before the medical education system got hold of them.”