Adding empathy to health consultations found to boost patient and staff satisfaction with the NHS

Adding empathy to all health consultations will improve the lives of patients and medical staff and reduce NHS costs, according to a major new publication.

The Stoneygate Centre for Empathic Healthcare, based at the University of Leicester, delivers world-leading training to equip the NHS with empathic, compassionate and resilient healthcare practitioners.

A new report, based on the findings of the centre’s work with NHS staff, has revealed adding empathy to health consultations increases patient satisfaction and experience of the NHS by 10 per cent and cuts practitioner burnout by 50 per cent.

Stoneygate Centre for Empathic Healthcare director Professor Jeremy Howick said: “The British Social Attitudes survey, published this April, revealed only one in five adults were ‘very’ or ‘quite’ satisfied with the NHS – the lowest recorded level of satisfaction since the survey began in 1983.

“In the latest NHS Staff Survey, one in three NHS staff reported feeling burnt out because of their work and in recent years we’ve seen rising numbers of staff leaving the organisation.

“A growing body of evidence shows empathic healthcare improves outcomes for patients and staff and our evidence-based empathy training for healthcare practitioners has been found to raise patient and practitioner satisfaction rates by 10 per cent. Our system empathy workshop for organisations has also increased patient and staff satisfaction in participating hospitals.

“Adding empathy to health consultations is a low cost, evidence-based solution which will help the NHS to address some of the challenges it is facing at a time when UK government finances are tight.”

The report, released in conjunction with the University of Leicester Institute for Policy, also highlights that increased empathy:

• Reduces post-operative morphine use by 50 per cent and post-operative pain in patients by 34 per cent
• Lowers mortality in people living with diabetes by 40 per cent
• Improves the extent to which patients use medications optimally by 19 per cent
• Raises the cellular immunity of post-operative patients by 14 per cent
• Lowers chronic pain by 10 per cent

The report also found that empathy enhances the cost-effectiveness of care and reduces costs on unnecessary drugs.

It recommends that empathy should be added to all healthcare consultations to boost patient satisfaction and outcomes, staff wellbeing and to reduce costs.

To drive forward the report’s recommendations, the Stoneygate Centre for Empathic Healthcare is rolling out a series of evidence-based courses, workshops and bootcamps designed to equip hundreds of thousands of UK healthcare professionals with empathic healthcare skills.

Professor Howick said: “Key to our ambition is our Train the Trainers bootcamp for training practitioners.

“At these sessions 200 practitioners will be selected and trained so they can go on to train other practitioners in empathic healthcare practices.

“Our aim is for 200,000 practitioners to be trained – a substantial proportion of the workforce – so that together we can create a deep cultural change.”

To read the report in full, visit https://doi.org/10.25392/leicester.data.29097752.v1

To find out more about the Stoneygate Centre for Empathic Healthcare, visit https://le.ac.uk/empathy or email empathy@le.ac.uk