The presenter of this conference, has been passionately interested in the factors that affect care in acute and chronic pain patients. In qualitative research, we found that two of the most important factors that are implicated in the care of acute and chronic pain patients are compassion and communicational skills. However, worldwide there is a lack of intentional education on these matters. The medical curriculum has traditionally given preference to teaching hard skills, leaving others like assertive communication and empathy to be spontaneously acquired for the students. To no surprise, the empathy levels in medical students decrease during their training, being lower the more trained the medical practitioner is. In previous research, we found that the lack of these skills generates a real barrier to the adequate treatment of pain patients. 

We fundamentally believe in the power of compassion to improve the quality of the health care delivered to our patients. The difficult conditions that our healthcare workers daily confront, compounded with a lack of optimal resources to work, leads to an incredible amount of pressure and high rates of burnout in the healthcare workers. Compassion is an useful tool to decrease burn out and increase patient satisfaction. In this conference we will   cover the concepts of empathy and compassion, the importance of those in medical practice and how to improve the acquisition of these abilities in our medical curriculum.