IS EMPATHY COST-EFFICIENT

Psychiatrists and other physicians are currently considering alternate healthcare-delivery systems to curtail the escalating costs of the existing healthcare-delivery organization. This paper addresses the impact of this cost-efficiency focus on our capacity to be empathic by outlining how an emphasis on monetary factors may encourage self-serving financial attitudes within psychiatrists. These concerns over our economic well-being may inhibit an empathic approach to patients. Ultimately, this scenario can result in a view of "unprofitable" patients as bad objects that deprive financially and require countertransference control or abandonment.