Compassion in medicine

This monograph is a collection of papers presented at another in a series of conferences on the theme of ethics and communication in medicine, organised annually by the Czech Medical Chamber since 2011. The thirteenth conference, held at the end of 2023, focused on compassion in medicine.

The book extends an uninterrupted series of publications on ethics and communication in medicine that is unparalleled in both domestic and international literature. It is intended not only for healthcare professionals, medical ethicists, and experts in related fields, but also for laypeople who are interested in the highly humanistic topic of compassion in medicine and in life in general. Like the previous publications in this series, the book aims to serve as a source of information, a stimulus for discussion, and material for teaching ethics at medical faculties and healthcare schools.

The book contains 52 texts. Given the central theme of the collection/conference, theologians are more prominently represented among the authors than in previous years. Medical ethicists, psychologists, and psychiatrists, lawyers, and, traditionally, clinical doctors from various fields—such as a gerontologist, a neonatologist, oncologists, a neurologist, a rheumatologist, a dentist, a plastic surgeon, and doctors specialising in emergency medicine, primary care, preventive medicine, or pain management—also have their say. His Excellency Mons. Jan Graubner, Archbishop of Prague and Primate of the Czech Republic, and the current Chief Rabbi of the Land, Efraim K. Sidon, have also enriched the collection with their perspectives on compassion for the suffering.

Thanks to them, readers will understand the differences between compassion, empathy, and pity. They will learn how to strengthen and increase empathy, how to support it, and even how to teach it. They can reflect on their own definition of compassion, their own approach to patients, and the circumstances under which compassion no longer helps patients or healthcare professionals, but rather does harm.