Conference shows how empathy can help patients and healthcare professionals
A major conference has shown how using empathy in healthcare consultations can improve outcomes for both patients and clinicians.
Around 120 healthcare professionals, researchers and educators from around the world descended on Leicester this week for the Global Empathy in Healthcare Network Symposium 2025.
The international event focussed on how healthcare professionals can use empathy to rehumanise healthcare in an era of technological advancements and remote interactions.
Professor Jeremy Howick, director of the Stoneygate Centre for Empathic Healthcare at the University of Leicester, and co-founder, with Catherine Eyres, of the Global Empathy in Healthcare Network, said:
“Leading experts from around the world united at this symposium to show the huge benefits that come from treating patients with empathy.
“We know that empathic healthcare cuts practitioner burnout and increases patient satisfaction and experience of the NHS.
“There’s also evidence to show that it reduces post-operative pain in patients, lowers mortality in people living with diabetes, improves the extent to which patients use medications optimally and lowers chronic pain.
“Adding empathy to health consultations is cost-effective and is so important to the outcomes for both patients and healthcare practitioners and we’re confident that this symposium will have helped to increase the implementation of empathy in healthcare consultations globally.”
The conference’s award-winning plenary speakers included CBS News’ Chief Medical Correspondent Jonathan LaPook who is Professor of Medicine at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, an internist and gastroenterologist at NYU Langone Health, and the Founder and President of the NYU Langone Empathy Project.
Leading international experts also delivered a series of insightful masterclasses and the event featured a debate entitled ‘AI care- and chat-bots cannot provide empathic care’.
The symposium was delivered in association with the International Association for Communication in Healthcare (EACH) and attracted attendees from Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Estonia, Germany, Hungary, India, Ireland, Japan, Mexico, Nigeria, Singapore, Slovenia, Switzerland, the UK and the USA.
Earlier this month, the Global Empathy in Healthcare Network was shortlisted for the International Collaboration of the Year title in the Times Higher Education (THE) Awards 2025 which recognise excellence and innovation across the UK higher education sector.
Delegates at the Global Empathy in Healthcare Network Symposium