If you were to name one thing that could simultaneously increase patient satisfaction and reduce provider burnout, would empathy come to mind? Well, based on research published in peer-reviewed journals, it should, as we’ll learn from our Raise the Line guest Dr. Helen Riess, a clinical professor at Harvard Medical School and author of the book, The Empathy Effect. Trained as a psychiatrist, Riess has built a training program based on the neuroscience of emotion that bucks the prevailing wisdom that empathy is an inborn trait that can’t be taught. “I feel your pain is not just a figure of speech. We actually do feel other people's pain and our very survival depends on it,” Riess explains to host Shiv Gaglani. The company Riess founded and leads, Empathetics, has put thousands of clinicians and frontline staff through its e-learning courses with impressive results including major increases in patient experience scores and improvements in staff retention with the longest follow-up case study showing an 82.9% decrease in turnover among participating clinicians. In a nutshell, the training builds perception of emotion and fosters a deeper understanding of what Riess calls ‘the whole person.’ “You know, not just the broken wrist, but what does the broken wrist mean for a sixty-five-year-old woman who is the only caretaker for her grandchild?” Join us for a fascinating look at the neuroscience of empathy and its role in transforming the culture of healthcare.

Mentioned in this episode: https://www.empathetics.com/