Clinical empathy refers to the ability of understanding patients experiences, needs, and perspectives, checking how accurate one’s understanding is, and providing appropriate help accordingly. Clinical empathy has a huge impact on the work of medical staff. This paper reviews the research of clinical empathy and medical staff's burnout, analyzes the relationship between them and further discusses the mechanisms of clinical empathy from two aspects: the generation of clinical empathy and its regulating process, which provides an explanation for the complex relationship between clinical empathy and burnout. The future research in this field is also prospected.