Background: Empathy is a fundamental element of the physician-patient relationship for treatment and therapeutic adherence that has had to face significant changes due to the migrations of the health system in Chile. Aim: Characterize the empathetic physicians according to the perceptions of chronic patients during the encounter with national and foreign doctors in the public health system in the Maule Region. Methods: Qualitative study of exploratory-descriptive type. Twenty chronic patients from public health services in the Maule region were interviewed remotely using the free listing technique. A thematic processual qualitative analysis of the content and a descriptive quantitative analysis were carried out where the frequency and salience of the Smith index assisted by the Anthropac 4.98 software were obtained. Results: Seven categories of empathetic care were identified in the physicians-patient relationship: Affectivity (37%), Communication (19%), Attention (13%), Respect (12%), Research (9%), Knowledge (5%) and Efficiency (5%). Conclusions: The affective and psychoemotional aspects were more valued than the cognitive aspects of empathetic care. No differences were observed in assessing the empathetic care of patients seen by Chilean physicians and those treated by foreign physicians.