Context: Empathy is a fundamental professional skill of healthcare professionnals, particularly in geriatrics and psychogeriatrics. However, several elements highlight the question of time. So, would time be an obstacle to clinical empathy? And how?
Method: A non-systematic review of the literature was performed until January 2022 in the PubMed database.
Results: The medico-scientific analysis is carried out in two parts. The first focuses on the definition and the study of time’s concept, its perception and representation. The second section attempts to clarify the notion of clinical empathy.
Discussion: Two models are developed to improve understanding of the influence of time on the empathic relationship. The first focuses on the inter-individual aspect in the form of a process, the second proposes the premises of a systemic approach to clinical empathy.
Conclusion: Limiting the reflexion to the total duration of the singular encounter between caregiver and patient amounts to concealing the plurality of the mechanisms of understanding that make up the empathic process as well as its systemic character.