There are at least two considerations here: the patient’s perception of a physician’s empathic expression and the physician’s level of comfort with expressing empathy and attending to patients’ emotions.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(2):111-115. doi:
10.1001/virtualmentor.2015.17.2.ecas1-1502.
Constraints on hospitalists and surgeons and restricted orthopedic admission criteria can exacerbate patients’ distress that comes from clinicians’ disagreements.
AMA J Ethics. 2023;25(12):E873-877. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2023.873.
Patients who have been encouraged to think of themselves as consumers and a medical system that is driven by individual demands rather than big-picture planning can undermine fairness in the distribution of vaccines.
Even if they are not sick, people in quarantine are still patients; the physician is responsible for their well-being and may find that it is necessary to advocate for them.