Many of our earlier pieces address, implicitly, the role of empathetic imagination in the enhancement of palliative care, broadly construed. Through our active imagination of the feelings of another (the other’s anxieties, aspirations, complacencies and frustrations) we enrich and deepen our responsive empathy, which in turn enables our provision of care tailored to the individual. And the individual’s recognition of the tailoring of the care animates and sustains the therapeutic benefits of the care.

With this in mind, we compliment The New England Journal for a piece in this week’s edition: “Becoming a Physician: Rethinking the Social History.” We cannot over-emphasize the value in the exhortation of the importance, in continuing medical education, of contextualization of patient care to promote satisfactory and satisfying health outcomes. The piece encourages, through illustration, an education that “elucidates how patients’ environments influence their attitudes and behaviors and how patients’ agency — the ability to act in accordance with their free choice — is constrained by challenging social environments.”

Whether or not we are physicians, we are social beings commonly called upon, by ourselves and by others, to provide palliative care in the broadest sense, and our cultivation of imaginative empathy in ourselves and our support for its cultivation in others hold prospects for increased well-being, with no harmful, and many helpful, side-effects for all concerned.