Are we educating a medical professional who cares?

We examined four domains in which physicians must demonstrate their capacity for caring. These include the knowledge base that forms the foundation for the practice of medicine, the personal characteristics and attributes that a physician brings to the profession, the individual patients for whom the physician accepts responsibility, and the society in which the physician lives. We conclude that the system of medical education does produce caring physicians. The profession's history of self-evaluation and criticism should not obscure medicine's real success in meeting its responsibility to care as well as to cure.