New centre to place empathy at heart of medical training

University of Leicester and medical research charity The Stoneygate Trust have announced the creation of the Stoneygate Centre for Excellence in Empathic Healthcare, designed to promote the importance of empathy in medical training.

The £10m centre, which is co-funded by the university and the charity, will deliver empathy-focused training for undergraduate and postgraduate healthcare students and professionals in Leicester, with the aim of making this available nationally.

Leicester Medical School claims to be the only institute in the UK to deliver a mandatory empathy-focused curriculum to Foundation Year students. This training will now be enhanced and extended across the whole medical school.

In a clinical setting, empathy means the ability to understand a patient’s perspective, their situation and feelings, being able to communicate this understanding to them and then acting on it, with the patient, in a therapeutic and helpful way.

The centre will focus on empathy at all stages in medical training, developing recruitment selection criteria to assess students’ aptitude for empathy when applying for healthcare degree programmes.  It will also undertake research into the impact of empathic care on both patients and practitioners, and campaign for empathy to be placed at the heart of the healthcare system.

Professor Nishan Canagarajah, President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Leicester, said: ‘Our vision is to create a Centre of excellence that will lead the sector in placing empathy at the heart of improved and effective healthcare for patients locally and across the UK.

‘Through the expertise and dedication of the team, and with the generous and inspirational philanthropic support of The Stoneygate Trust, we will cement Leicester’s place at the forefront of the empathic healthcare movement, and as a world-leader in producing the most highly capable and empathic doctors and practitioners.’

Sir Will Adderley, Founder of The Stoneygate Trust, said: ‘The Stoneygate Trust is delighted to build on the success achieved by Stoneygate and the University with the Leicester Medical Foundation Programme over the last five years. This has demonstrated the power of empathic healthcare and developed real champions amongst students from diverse backgrounds.

‘The University and the Trust together are now building a Centre of Excellence in Empathic Healthcare to train doctors to achieve both better outcomes for patients and increased resilience amongst healthcare professionals.  I am very excited by the far-reaching potential of this major initiative.’

Photo by Matheus Ferrero