Study

Undergraduate training

Empathy can be taught, and our first step has been to include empathy training in the medical school’s Medical Foundation Year curriculum. This has been a resounding success.

Now, together with our partners from across the healthcare sector, we are developing, piloting and evaluating the UK’s first medical curriculum to incorporate mandatory empathy modules at all stages of medical training for University of Leicester undergraduate medical students.

Our focus on patient-centred training sets us apart from other medical schools, with outreach activities that seek to recruit a diverse cohort of students who are representative of the communities they serve. 

By building on Leicester University’s strong tradition of producing compassionate doctors, with a golden thread of empathy throughout our world-first medical curriculum, we aim to provide the NHS with the most empathic, compassionate and resilient junior doctors possible.

Longitudinal Empathy Curriculum

We are developing, delivering and evaluating five curricula 'streams' at Leicester Medical School:

• Reversing the decline in student empathy through near-to-peer learning
• Patients as educators in the biomedical and clinical science curriculum
• Extending the clinical skills programme into Phase II of medical school
• 'Walk a mile in your shoes' student experiences from a patient's perspective
• Self-empathy through new opportunities for health enhancement and wellbeing

Postgraduate training

Building on our experience and expertise in delivering effective empathy training to undergraduate medical students, we will develop a set of clinical empathy modules and training resources for use in the postgraduate medical population.

Professional development and compassionate leadership

We will apply our curriculum to a series of modular CPD courses for healthcare professionals recognised by regulatory bodies such as the GMC. This will support the development of resilience and wellbeing right across the healthcare profession. We will also work towards delivering ‘top-up’ modules to ensure empathic and compassionate leadership training is delivered for all levels of experience.