Should Doctors and Nurses Love Their Patients?

Challenging interactions with patients pose a continuing problem for the medical staff. Workshops and training modules frequently fall short in addressing strategies for dealing with patients and their family members who cause frustration. Resentful staff members make harsh judgments and rush through encounters. Negative labels for patients take over the workstation chatter and introduce bias into the medical record. Can the staff learn to love their patients, and should they try to do so? It sounds hopelessly idealistic, but it would be a worthy effort. Thoughts of loving admiration and worthiness for even the most “difficult” patients would lead to kind and gentle actions on the part of the medical team members. Patient care would improve, and so would staff morale.