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Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview: 

#1 I was a volunteer rape crisis counselor at Bellevue Hospital. I was assigned to a Hispanic teenager who needed to fill out forms with a nurse. I was terrified of what I would see if I looked at the patient, but I had to.

#2 I was assigned to care for a patient who had just been raped. I was terrified, but knew I had to help her. I was shocked at how the nurse’s aide helped the patient, and how much I needed to learn about medicine.

#3 Empathy is the ability to see and feel from another person’s perspective. It is a prerequisite for compassion, and it is difficult for doctors to fake. It is most difficult when the suffering doesn’t make sense to the doctor, when the patient has an ulterior motive, or when the disease is self-inflicted.

#4 Doctors, just like everyone else, can be repulsed by the nonmedical things they find repulsive. It takes a lot of self-control to overcome these reactions, and some people can do it effortlessly.

Summary of Danielle Ofri's What Doctors Feel

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