Detached Concern?: Emotional Socialization in Twenty-first Century Medical Education

• In Event: 480 - Section on Medical Sociology Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 09. Health Expert Knowledge

Abstract

Early works in medical sociology have been pivotal in the development of scholarly knowledge about emotions, emotional socialization, and empathy within medical training, medical education, and medical contexts. Yet despite major shifts in both medical education and in medicine writ-large, medical sociologists’ focus on emotions has largely disappeared. In this paper, we argue that emotional socialization in medical education should be a renewed interest for sociologists because of the radical transformations that have occurred in medical education. Developments in medical education such as increased diversity among enrollees, the rise of patient health movements, and curricular transformation have made this context a particularly interesting case for sociologists working on a variety of questions related to structural, organizational, and cultural change. We offer three areas of debate within studies in medical education that sociologists may be interested in studying: 1) gendered and racialized differences in the performance of clinical skills related to emotion, 2) differences in self-reported empathy among subspecialties, and 2) loss of empathy during the third year or clinical year of medical school.

Authors

• Kelly Underman, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Laura Ellen Hirshfield, University of Illinois at Chicago