It looks like a dance class going on in a second floor conference room at UC San Diego. But it’s a fellowship training at the Sanford Institute for Empathy and Compassion. The folks on the floor are medical professionals. Why are these doctors dancing?
“We use an arts and humanities based curriculum to teach listening and connection, team building. And through that comes empathy and wellness. That’s what we’re finding through our research,” said Evonne Kaplan-Liss, Director of Compassionate Communication at the Institute.
Neuroscientists said humans are hardwired to understand the feelings and needs of the other. Researchers at the Institute for Empathy and Compassion study those neural networks, and they teach medical professionals to make the most of them.
Just down the hall from the fellowship class, institute director Bill Mobley worked beneath a large portrait of the Dalai Lama in his office at UC San Diego. That powerful symbol of empathy and compassion illustrated what Mobley said was native to all humans, and was a key part of our evolution.
“It’s in the brain. We know it’s in the brain. Empathy and compassion are as much a part of brain function as listening and hearing and vision and motor function,” Mobley said.
“It’s right there for us to understand and explore, and hopefully right there for us to understand well enough that we can devise training programs to make it easier for us to be skillful in our empathy.”
The Institute for Empathy and Compassion was founded in 2019 with a financial gift from philanthropist T. Denny Sanford. It is divided into different specialties that included medical education, compassionate communication and research into empathy and compassion.
By the use of brain imaging, neuroscientists like Mobley have identified a neural circuit that creates feelings of empathy.
“And another circuit that’s linked to that, that has the willingness not only to understand the distress of another but to care for another. That’s compassion. So they’re separate circuits,” Mobley said.
Those senses might come naturally, but they could be forgotten when dealing with frightened or frustrated patients. Along with the institute’s fellowship programs, their training in empathy and compassion is also part of the UCSD med school curriculum.
Mobley described “seeing the other” as the fundamental lesson in their training programs.
“To be comfortable enough to see the other. To be nonjudgemental enough to see the other. So when you see someone who is doing something you’re not happy with, asking , ‘I wonder what is going on with that person? What are the things in their life that make it difficult for them to behave with empathy and compassion?’” he said.
In one of the Institute’s videos, emergency room doctor Rachna Subramony gave an example of patients waiting for hours in the hallway of a hospital to see a doctor. She didn’t want to address that before. But she said her ways have changed.
“I just go straight to the patient and I say, ‘I’m so sorry for your wait. I’m sorry you’re in the hallway. This is not the care I want for myself or my loved ones.’ And that alone has made such a difference, just acknowledging it,” Subramony said.
Preventing physician burnout and suicide are also at the center of the institute’s mission and training. Doctors and other health care workers have a heightened rate of suicide compared to other professions.
One estimate shows about 300 physicians commit suicide every year in the U.S.
“If you ask (doctors) what their biggest barrier is, it’s burnout and the health care system,” Kaplan-Liss said. “How do you continue this in the structure of our health care system?”
She said in order to be compassionate to patients, people in health care need to be compassionate to themselves.
