Doctors can feel their patients’ pain
A patient’s relationship with his or her doctor has long been considered an important component of healing. Now, in a novel investigation in which physicians underwent brain scans while they believed they were treating patients, researchers have provided the first scientific evidence indicating that doctors truly can feel their patients’ pain — and can also experience their relief following treatment. Led by researchers at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and the Program in Placebo Studies and Therapeutic Encounter (PiPS) at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC)/Harvard Medical School (HMS), the new findings, which appear online today in Molecular Psychiatry, help to illuminate one of the more intangible aspects of health care — the doctor/patient relationship. “Our findings showed that the same brain regions that have previously been shown to be activated when patients receive placebo therapies are similarly activated in the brains of doctors when they administer what they think are effective...