To cite: Heron J, Barry E, Duncan F, et al. Med Humanit 2016;42:63–64. To be ‘compassionate’ is to share the passion— etymologically, to suffer together. For some clinicians, there is an understandable tension between this compassion (to feel pity) and the imperative of diagnosis (to know thoroughly). This tension became an explicit concern of the 2013 ‘Beckett on the Wards’ medical humanities ...
