Is It OK to Be a Fan and a Team Physician?
The patient population we serve in sports medicine is much different than that of other branches of medicine. Physicians express empathy (understanding, sympathy, and compassion) toward those with disease and illness. Empathy is considered an essential virtue of the ethical medical care provider, along with veracity and fidelity. Empathy provides a healthy balance between anxiety and coldness, intimacy and detachment, subjectivity and objectivity. Each physician seeks the line that separates these qualities.
Matheson
Gordon O
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Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, 94305, USA. gord@stanford.edu.