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.
In the same way that we learn about normal variations in blood pressure, we need to learn about “normal” variations in sexual interests and practices. We want to avoid clueless questions or unintentionally inflammatory statements.