Empathy and HealthCare

Lights, Camera, Empathy!
The Empathy Project brings together leaders in medicine, education, entertainment, and technology to promote empathy in medicine. The project creates engaging, Hollywood-quality short films that train healthcare providers to be more humane and help empower patients to be effective participants in their own care.

Join our three-day course at the University of Leicester to master empathy teaching in healthcare. Boost patient care, overcome barriers, and lead with compassion.

Who is the course for?

This course is for educators, trainers, clinicians, and others involved in healthcare teaching or supervision. It is particularly relevant for those designing or delivering curricula in medical, nursing, or allied health education.

By the end of this course, participants will:

• Comprehend different approaches to teaching empathy
• Deliver confident and effective instruction on elements of empathy teaching
• Grasp the variety of methods and assessment approaches needed for empathy education
• Provide instruction on empathy topics
• Recognise the essential elements of a successful empathy teaching

A call has gone out for professionals working in empathic healthcare to provide poster, abstract and workshop submissions for a ground-breaking international symposium.

The Global Empathy in Healthcare Network Symposium: ‘Rehumanising Healthcare in a Divided World’ will attract healthcare professionals, researchers, educators, and advocates from around the world to Leicester in September.

Professionals have until Saturday, March 16, to submit abstract and poster submissions relating to the themes of Teaching, Research, Policy or Integrated themes spanning Teaching, Research and Policy.

Empathy’s impact
In the April 2024 issue of JAMA Network Open, we reported that patients treated by very empathic physicians had better outcomes than those treated by physicians with less empathy. Over 12 months of follow-up, greater physician empathy was associated with less pain intensity, fewer back-related disabilities and better health-related quality of life involving physical function, anxiety and depression, sleep health and impact on social roles and activities.

Greater physician empathy was associated with better patient outcomes than costly, risky or invasive treatments such as opioid therapy or lumbar spine surgery.

Despite such benefits associated with physician empathy, some research has shown that medical students and residents may become less empathic during their education and training. This is often attributed to the ever-growing volume of information to be learned and a perceived need for objectivity in making medical decisions, ostensibly through patient detachment and reliance on technology.

Empathy: the core of medicine
In medicine, technical skills are undeniably vital, but empathy—the ability to truly connect with and understand a patient’s pain—is just as essential. This belief became even more deeply ingrained in Crabtree during the evacuation of Afghanistan in 2021. In the midst of gunfire and flames, he was called to treat a 12-year-old girl, severely burned in a brutal attack.

Join us for a conversation with Fazlur Rahman, a hematology-oncology physician and author of Our Connected Lives. In this episode, we explore how Fazlur's journey from physician to patient transformed his understanding of empathy.

He reflects on the importance of personal connection in medicine, the impact of a lack of empathy on both doctors and patients, and the need for medical education to include the humanities to foster compassionate care. This episode dives deep into the role empathy plays in improving patient outcomes and doctor-patient relationships.

International collaborations sound impressive on paper – but most fail to move beyond initial enthusiasm and a signed memorandum of understanding. Jeremy Howick shares lessons from building a global network focused on empathy in healthcare.

As the founder of the UK’s first empathy centre, focused on improving healthcare outcomes through greater understanding of patient perspectives, I am keen to seek out international best practice in this area. 

What started as a conversation with a colleague about working with the other empathy specialists around the world has transformed, two years later, into a global network of 13 centres across five continents.

Facilitator: Dr Rachel Winter, Associate Professor of Medical Education and Honorary Consultant in Psychiatry

About the session:
This presentation explores the personal and professional benefits of empathy training for healthcare students and practitioners. While empathy is often discussed in terms of improving patient care (and it certainly does!), this session emphasises that empathy training also provides powerful support for practitioners themselves.

This session is especially timely given the current state of the NHS workforce. Across the system, healthcare professionals are experiencing low morale, high stress, and increasing levels of burnout. Many report feeling professionally isolated, emotionally exhausted, and disconnected from the core values that drew them to the profession.

Empathy training, particularly through the arts and humanities, offers a restorative space to reflect, reconnect, and rehumanise practice. By supporting emotional regulation, reducing isolation, and helping practitioners process the difficult realities of care, empathy training is not just important for patient outcomes, it's urgently needed as a tool to sustain and support those who care for others.

Learning outcomes:
-Explore the evidence base for how empathy training can support practitioner outcomes
-Understand the benefits of 'creative empathy' training for those who take part
-Hear about opportunities to take part in 'creative empathy' training
-Be aware of some everyday tools and techniques you can use to support your own learning and development

Our Educating for Empathy in Healthcare Course ran from the 22nd-24th April 2024, for leaders in healthcare education with an interest in developing, improving and delivering empathy-focussed training in undergraduate and postgraduate curricula.

"Empathy is the essence of our human connection. It is an essential part of healing – body, mind and spirit," said Maureen Sullivan, Vice President, Patient Experience & Service Excellence.

“A little empathy goes a long way," said Jennifer Lastic, Director, Experience Excellence, Office of Patient Experience. "You never know what someone you encounter is experiencing, whether a patient or family that we serve or one of own cherished colleagues."

This one-day workshop is designed for healthcare practitioners, clinical educators, educational supervisors and training leads.

An increasing amount of evidence shows that empathy improves patient outcomes (including patient satisfaction) and practitioner well-being. With a keynote on the latest evidence around empathic healthcare, group work, and patient stories, this workshop will cover the theory and practice of empathy in healthcare and facilitate the development of evidence-based ‘empathy habits’ to enhance empathy in clinical practice and organisations.

This workshop will be facilitated by Dr Andy Ward, Director of Education and Training for the Stoneygate Centre for Empathic Healthcare.

A comics journalist looks at how medical schools have explored improv comedy, VR and comics to foster empathy in future physicians.

Join us for a conversation with Fazlur Rahman, a hematology-oncology physician and author of Our Connected Lives. In this episode, we explore how Fazlur's journey from physician to patient transformed his understanding of empathy.

He reflects on the importance of personal connection in medicine, the impact of a lack of empathy on both doctors and patients, and the need for medical education to include the humanities to foster compassionate care. This episode dives deep into the role empathy plays in improving patient outcomes and doctor-patient relationships.