Having doctors with empathy creates a day shorter cold.
Practitioner Empathy and the Duration of the Common Cold
David P. Rakel, M.D.,
Theresa J. Hoeft, B.S
Bruce P. Barrett, M.D., Ph.D
Betty A. Chewning, Ph.D.
Benjamin M. Craig, Ph.D.,cMin Niu, M.S.
"To assess the relationship of empathy in medical consultations to subsequent cold outcomes."
"RESULTS
In evaluating the data, we found that patients who gave their clinical encounters perfect CARE scores at baseline subsequently had shorter duration and a trend to lower severity of their colds. Somewhat surprisingly, this predictive association did not seem to hold across CARE scores below the perfect score level."