[paviva]

There always be room for feelings, and empathy, but those will manifest only when you're not doing the technical job of medicine, i.e. the part of the job that will require your full attention and the full use of your skills.

This will come naturally with expertise, and is not a state of mind where you actively "force" yourself to stop caring, but rather a kind of single-minded flow[1] where you can only feel completely relaxed and at peace with whatever's happening. This is important because it allows to function at your best and ensures you treat all you patients to the best of your ability, because your immediate motivation is not their wellbeing, but staying in the flow.

What do I mean by those "technical" acts? Anything that requires fine-tuned skill. Everybody thinks of fine-motor procedural skills (surgical techniques, intubation, difficult LP), but purely mental skills are exactly the same. Getting a history from a patient while forming diagnostic hypotheses feels good.

Of course, as soon as you'll be delivering bad news to your patients, you want be functioning like a highly skilled worker but as a fellow human being who can't do much more than commiserate. You wont be in the flow, and you wont feel any less for your patients just because you're the doctor.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)