Welcome to the Empathy Initiative!

If you are reading this blog post you have discovered the ‘Empathy Initiative’. As such, on behalf of the team, I’d like to extend a sincere welcome. This website has been designed to profile the scholarly activities of a group of like-minded academics and practitioners who (a) share a belief in the power and potential of empathy/compassion to transform healthcare; and (b) who have a commitment to equipping healthcare students, graduates and practising staff with the empathy skills needed for practice.  

The Empathy Initiative is premised on four key understandings:

1. Empathy is a key factor in patients’ definitions of quality care

2. The provision of healthcare devoid of empathy results in a wide range of negative psychological and physiological outcomes for patients.

3. Empathy is critical to healthcare professionals’ emotional well-being, satisfaction and resilience.

4. Explicit attention must be given to the development of empathy as a requisite employability skill for all healthcare graduates.

While we have undertaken a number of empathy projects, there is much work still to be done. This presents exciting opportunities for us to work collaboratively and creatively to implement, evaluate and disseminate empathy studies.

This blog will feature our scholarly activities as well as the work of other empathy researchers and practitioners. We will review empathy studies, promote educational initiatives designed to enhance empathy, and discuss provocative issues associated with empathy. 

If you would like to be kept up to date with our work and/or perhaps collaborative with us, please provide your details here. 

The Empathy Initiative Symposium

Join us on December 7 2018 when we will be hosting an Empathy Symposium where we will bring together a panel of thought leaders who will share their empathy research and teaching experiences. More details here.

Written by Tracy Levett-Jones