You don’t need to be in residency to learn it. The skill is trainable and can be practiced deliberately in daily patient care. Start by consciously shifting from emotional absorption to clinical presence: instead of internally sharing the patient’s distress, acknowledge it, name it, and focus on what concrete help you can provide. Short structured programs such as compassion-training courses, reflective case discussions, or even peer debriefing after difficult cases can reinforce the habit, but the core is a mental discipline you apply in each encounter. Over time, repeatedly practicing “I am here to help” rather than “I must feel what you feel” becomes protective and sustainable.
Stoicism, for example, teaches physicians to separate what they can control from what they cannot. We cannot control disease or outcomes, but we can control our effort, honesty, and presence with patients. Caring well does not require absorbing suffering, only responding to it with skill and compassion. So learning and reading about stocism may help too.
How can those of us out of training, but still need this type of training, access this?
You don’t need to be in residency to learn it. The skill is trainable and can be practiced deliberately in daily patient care. Start by consciously shifting from emotional absorption to clinical presence: instead of internally sharing the patient’s distress, acknowledge it, name it, and focus on what concrete help you can provide. Short structured programs such as compassion-training courses, reflective case discussions, or even peer debriefing after difficult cases can reinforce the habit, but the core is a mental discipline you apply in each encounter. Over time, repeatedly practicing “I am here to help” rather than “I must feel what you feel” becomes protective and sustainable.
Stoicism, for example, teaches physicians to separate what they can control from what they cannot. We cannot control disease or outcomes, but we can control our effort, honesty, and presence with patients. Caring well does not require absorbing suffering, only responding to it with skill and compassion. So learning and reading about stocism may help too.