The article by Phillips et al. [1] piqued my interest as it explored how volunteering can have significant “physical, psychosocial, and emotional outcomes” on medical students. It highlighted that the latter report an erosion in empathy over their third year of studies, and this made me evaluate my own volunteering experience. As a junior doctor in England, I understand how central empathy is to patient care, and I was inclined to share my viewpoint.

The article highlights how “value-centric participants were more likely to select volunteering activities with patient contact” and that this promoted students’ empathetic and resilient behaviour. Having volunteered at the Manchester Royal Infirmary for 12 months during my medical studies as part of the CHUMS Society at the University of Manchester, I believe there is considerable truth to this statement. As a team, we spent 2 h at the hospital on a weekly basis with children admitted for myriad medical morbidities, and my time there included playing board games, making animal-shaped balloons or painting with the younger children, or sitting down, and talking through anything from school to daily life and oncology treatment options with the older ones, depending on what they felt they needed on the day. After long days of clinical placement, weekly volunteering boosted my psyche and helped in moulding my reaction to setbacks — interacting with patients then and even now as a doctor reminds me of their resilience in braving multiple medical conditions. I have been diagnosed with a melanoma in situ in my final year of studies and have navigated the rollercoaster of emotions this inevitably brought along, partly because I kept in mind that I could get through it just like my paediatric counterparts, all whilst showing myself the same empathy.

The work of Teding van Berkhout and Malouff [2] accentuates that “empathy may be influenced by education and training”. Whilst I agree with the sentiment that “integrating volunteerism into medical school curricula may be limited by … career-oriented motivation”, I also believe that medical school curricula can shift the focus. My suggestion would be to include similar volunteering activities as teambuilding exercises for the first few days of every semester so that both the empathetic aspect of being in the medical field and resilience can be nurtured before the stress of assignments and exams takes over. This will allow medical students’ cups to be filled before they can pour effectively into others.