Thanks for sharing your insights from working in the healthcare industry! I think you're exactly right; we need to put ourselves in other people's shoes and think how we'd want to be treated.

This may not be what you are looking for at all but here is what I think: I worked in a trauma center for 4 1/2 years, and I still work in health care. It can be easy for people who have worked in the environment I have to become desensitized to other peoples trouble because, in a sense, we sort of have to in order to do our jobs. But we have to detach or go crazy with how sad it really is sometimes. I have noticed that some of the people who have been doing this job for a long time have lost the empathy that they may have started out with. And, truly, it can be difficult to hang onto it with certain populations–I find myself battling cynicism all the time. To keep my perspective, as simple and trite as it probably sounds, I have to put myself in my patient's position once in a while. When I find myself being flippant, or maybe getting irritated with someone I have to stop and think of how I might feel if I were them, and how I would want someone to treat me. I guess that works outside of work too.