Can those who totally lack empathy ever be good doctors and nurses?

[Babygirl_S]

Imagine if they were sadistic psychopaths. They would hurt patients for pleasure and never be guilty.
I believe they should also have an EQ test to decide a person’s empathy and emotional intelligence before imparting such knowledge. It can’t be a written exam. People’s real actions and intentions should be taken into account.

Also, AI can never replace humans in this field. If you lack feelings, you are not allowed to handle any person with feelings. They’re even talking about replacing healthcare workers with AI. I can NEVER trust any such doctor or nurse. The most they can be allowed to do is non-clinical work like teaching and anything else that doesn’t involve direct contact with any patient.

Yes

No

[Stevepro68]

As a medical professional I will tell you that empathy is necessary component of good practice. There are bad people in all professional areas of human endeavors. A written test has zero chance of getting you what you want sociopaths and personality disorders out of medicine. It's a long stressful and thankless job to be trained as a nurse or a doctor. Death disease and trauma drain you. Patients and family can be abusive demanding and completely tone deaf to other humans. Training allows you to be professional and you need to have some compartmentalize emotional ability. Or you won't be good at what you do.. never treat your own family completely empathetic but you lose the objectivity to see clearly and treat appropriately. Most medical training is so difficult that a lot of doctors who lack personal skills end up in no contact professions like pathology, research or maybe 🤔 radiology. Or if the are truly disfunctional they get help in residency. It's complicated like many societal problems there are no easy answers. AI like all computers are limited by the same problem. Bad data in bad data out. They may have a bigger role someday but the diagnosis bot 3000 is a long way away from reality. Once I see an EKG machine that actually has a correct interpretation all the time (doesn't exist) I'll worry about AI replacing me.

[RandomUser1000]

I think it's possible to get the knowhow and possibly also the skill to do surgery even if you lack empathy.
But actively being sadistic and wanting to hurt people are of course bad.

I think most people in the medical field are at least somewhat empathic and that is good.

Then on the other hand, I think you might not be able to handle working in medical field if you are too empathic.
Like overly empathic.
I think you probably also need to be able to handle a disconnect between work and you as a person and not taking everything personally.
If you take on everyones pain, then you may not be able to work with people in pain.

[Blueeyes81]

A lack of empathy doesn't necessarily make a person a psychopath or sociopath. Also not all psychopaths want to induce pain and suffering. They may simple not care about your feelings. I'd be more inclined to say their bedside manner may be lacking but not their skill set as a doctor.

[Twalli]

You don't have to actually see patients as a doctor.

[Bklynbadboy12]

Nope its hard for those type of people to be anything