It's a fact that many doctors lack beside manner, the protocol of empathy toward patients appears to have completely escaped their notice, we feel. They seem disinterested, disengaged in the human being before them, seeing them as mere cyphers whom they must see, study, diagnose and treat, if possible. There certainly are doctors who have little empathy for others, who act like technicians and whose medical treatment lacks the merest degree of sentiment.

Then there are those who do have the emotional attachment toward others and who know that they must school themselves to look at their patients objectively, indeed as feeling human beings, but making the disciplinary decision that they must hold their own emotions in check. They must view the patient as a patient, one of countless who come before them to take advantage of their medical expertise and their mediating potentials.

And then there are those whose own deep-seated humanity cannot be separated from the emotions of their patients, who go out of their way because there is no other way for them, to empathize completely with those whose compromised health takes such an incredibly heavy toll when they are informed that due to genetics, environment and just pure bad luck, their body now hosts a morbidly deadly disease.

The doctor's role is to scrutinize symptoms, order advanced technological medical tests to ascertain whether their initial diagnosis is correct, and then to tailor an intervention through a pharmaceutical or lifestyle alteration, or surgical treatment leading to additional protocols that will attempt to save the quality of the affected person's life - and in many instances, save that individual's life through prompt and appropriate treatment.

The responsibility that all of this entails, the sheer numbers of people affected and the close observation of the breakdown of the human body, witnessing the toll it takes on the helpless and their family members, weighs very heavily on those medical practitioners who are unable to separate their own sympathies from those of their patients' dilemmas.

I have seen the robust good health of a cardiologist who assigned himself the task of looking after my health as a heart specialist slowly become compromised over the space of just a few years. His sensitivity to my own situation was quickly apparent when he and his colleagues interpreted the symptoms that persuaded me to present at the emergency department of our local hospital.

And during that time of my admission and my stay at the heart institute the protocols that he established for me with the assistance of state-of-the-art electronic devices that aided his diagnosis and prognosis, has ensured that I now have the tools at my disposal to continue to live a long and healthy life whose quality will not be impaired by any additional deterioration.

This last visit to this good, concerned man whose own son is now on the precise and studious journey through academia to become a doctor himself, has demonstrated the stark reality of responsibility, concern and empathy weighing far too heavily on the shoulders of a skilled medical practitioner incapable of separating himself from the anxieties and fears of his patients.

I was alarmed to see the evidence of that weight this morning, in the nervous tic that has so swiftly descended upon him, as he studied my electronic records, as we discussed the results of the latest echogram, and as he pronounced satisfaction with the balanced state of my condition.

The pronounced subconscious shoulder shrug that repeated itself rapidly and repeatedly is a testament to his humanity and vulnerability. I will see him again next year. At that time I hope that I will see that he may have found some coping mechanism that will allow him to continue his practise without a continued deterioration of his own health in aiding others to cope with theirs.