[bearsnowstorm]

As an intensive care specialist (what would be called an attending in the US) I find it best to control my emotional response to my job. Also, empathy is probably not as wise as compassion in this context, from a career longevity point of view. If you find during your training that you have difficulty setting emotional boundaries and regulating your emotional responses, consider choosing a specialty with fewer unhappy endings (though probably not something with a strong pattern recognition component such as radiology or anatomical pathology, given technological progress in that area - you'd have to expect that we will need less of them as time goes by). There's lots of scope to do less emotionally taxing but still very useful and satisfying work if that fits your aptitudes better.