A Review - Jamison, Leslie, 'The Empathy Exams', 2014.

"Empathy requires inquiry as much as imagination"

Hi everyone, Ibrahim again! For my first official review, I’ll be looking at ‘The Empathy Exams’ by Leslie Jamison…

What is effective in the author’s telling?

I found Jamison’s personable writing style effective as she admits to vulnerabilities and makes us feel like we are in her position (“...in truth I don’t know much about the person I’m supposed to be or the place I’m supposed to be from”). I also found her attention to detail effective as she describes her role down to her physical appearance and tone. The inclusion of seemingly minor details on the people around her, e.g. how ‘Blackout Buddy’ gets prepared for his role, made Jamison’s experience feel more immersive; instead of it simply being ‘her’ story, the inclusion of other actors and medical students allowed it to become ‘our’ story.

Where did you need more from the author to be engaged?

I would have liked to have seen more perspective from the other actors and medical students, instead of just hearing Jamison recall their behaviour after-the-fact. This would have allowed us to gain a wider perspective on the world of medical acting, given that the relationship between Standardised Patient and medical student is mutual (“We each understand the other is inventing this small talk, and we agree to respond to each other’s inventions as genuine exposures of personality”).

What did the piece make you consider in an associative manner?

The piece made me consider empathy as a form of travel/penetration into someone else’s pain, while connecting this with Jamison’s exploration of her character and the lessons she learns (“Empathy isn’t just listening, it’s asking the questions whose answers need to be listened to. Empathy requires inquiry as much as imagination”)

What were your overall thoughts?

I found this an engaging piece overall. Jamison establishes her experience as a medical actor early on, which provides coherence to the other ‘threads’ in the essay, e.g. her personal life, her understanding of empathy. The ‘threads’ were relatively easy to pinpoint and follow as the essay went on. However, the neat divide between her Standardised Patient training materials and Stephanie Phillips’s training materials felt contrived and abrupt, breaking the flow of her writing.

Overall Rating: 4 out of 7 Sahabs

To read about the Sahab 7even rating system, please visit this post.