Teaching the art of empathic interviewing to third-year medical students using a fairy tale--"The prince who turned into a rooster".

Can empathy be taught? How can we protect the embryonic forms of empathy germinating in our medical students? Can we immunize them against the ravages to their humanism, astutely observed to occur by Henry Silver, Dean of the University of Colorado in 1982, when he published his clear-sighted commentary, Medical Students and Medical School (Silver, 1982; Krugman, 2008). Although studies show that empathy is damaged during medical school, the author proposes that empathic growth through medical school might be possible if enlightened teaching methods are implemented by governing boards, such as the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), The Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME), and the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME). The author shares a novel teaching method adapted from a technique used by child psychiatrists, storytelling.