Chapter 1. Introduction: The play’s the thing -- Chapter 2.What is empathy? -- Chapter 3. Shakespeare in medical education -- Chapter 4. Investigating the experience of empathy -- Chapter 5. Psychosocial perspectives of Shakespeare’s empathy -- Chapter 6. Shakespeare and emotional empathy -- Chapter 7. Empathy, the Performed Self and Shakespeare’s Language -- Chapter 8. Shakespeare’s empathic imagination -- Chapter 9. Shakespeare’s empathy and ethics -- Chapter 10. Epilogue.

This book investigates new insights into the factors influencing empathy in medical students examining how a study of Shakespeare’s plays may enhance empathy in doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals. Addressing the widely perceived empathy gap in teaching and medical practice that emerged after the Covid-19 pandemic, the book presents a new study into the psychosocial elements of human interactions. It offers invaluable insight into how students and practitioners may be supported in dealing appropriately with their emotions as well as with those of their patients, thereby facilitating more humane medical care. Fostering an empathic patient-doctor relationship, the author explores the emotional, cognitive and moral dimensions of care and describes how Shakespeare studies can be realistically incorporated into the medical curriculum through group reflections, workshops and special study modules. David Jeffrey is Senior Lecturer in the new Three Counties Medical School at the University of Worcester, UK. With experience as general practitioner, consultant in palliative medicine, and academic mentor, his research explores empathy in medical students. He has published widely on palliative care and medical ethics, including Exploring Empathy with Medical Students (2019) and Empathy-Based Ethics: A Way to Practice Humane Medicine (2020), both with Palgrave Macmillan.