‘Don’t you have to care about people?’ : the challenges of caring

The need for caring in the doctor– patient relationship seems self-evident. How can doctors treat patients effectively without caring? Yet debate on how best to teach patient-centred care and whether or not empathy declines in medical school continues. Such debates often find their expression in simplistic dichotomies of cure versus care, science versus humanity, and technical skills versus interpersonal relationships. This concern is discussed not only in academic and clinical settings, but has seeped into the public sphere of popular culture, in which caring is often jettisoned in favour of technical skills.