In an interesting article in the New York Times, Carolyn and Matthew Bucksbaum are investing $42 million to the University of Chicago to put compassion and empathy on the same level as science and technology.  From the article:

Medical education experts say the human dimension is sometimes crowded out by discussions of the latest technological innovations. Practicing doctors face their own pressures, said Dr. Laura Roberts, chairwoman of the psychiatry department at Stanford University.

“The modern world of medicine,” Dr. Roberts said, “has become bureaucratized, distant, regulated.”

In Dr. Roberts’s view, the University of Chicago initiative will be unparalleled in its goal to “preserve the sense of kindness” in medical students before those attributes “get beaten out of them” during training and practice.

The institute will develop new courses on the patient-doctor relationship and rely heavily on junior faculty members and older practicing clinicians as mentors. It will also offer electives in the doctor-patient relationship to those students who are not scholars in the program.

You can read the full article here on the New York Times website.