About us

The Global Empathy in Healthcare Network is a non-partisan organisation which is driving forward empathic healthcare.

It provides a virtual place where the leaders of empathy organisations and academic researchers with an established track record of research and teaching empathy from around the globe can:

Share best practice
Share information about events
Develop joint funding applications (and increase the chances of obtaining funding in their contexts on the basis of being part of this global network)
Catalyse the international move towards more empathic healthcare

The network also hosts a biennial summit of worldwide empathy organisation leaders to generate synergies and produce joint statements.

If you have an Empathy Centre, Group, or are an internationally recognised individual empathy researcher or teacher (see Membership section below for more information), please contact us to join.

Our background

Empathy research, practice, and teaching are thriving globally, with dozens of empathy-related organisations, including centres, museums and research groups. These organisations share the common aim of improving patient and practitioner outcomes, and could learn from each other, generate synergies, and share best practice.

The Global Empathy in Healthcare Network enables leaders of different empathy organisations and initiatives from around the world to connect.

We aim to catalyse connections between empathy organisations and reduce unnecessary repetition.

Member organisations contribute to biennial summits, bringing together expert leaders in the field.

The Global Empathy in Healthcare Network is an umbrella organisation which has seed funding from the Oxford Empathy Programme and the Stoneygate Centre for Empathic Healthcare (part of the University of Leicester) to create and manage this website.

The Leicester Empathy Declaration

Recognising that empathy-informed healthcare is essential for the wellbeing of healthcare professionals and their patients, we declare that all schools of medicine and nursing and all healthcare systems should adopt policies and procedures to address and implement training in empathy and compassion for self and others.

Read the full article in Patient Education and Counseling: The Leicester Empathy Declaration: A model for implementing empathy in healthcare

Membership

Empathy is closely related to several other terms ranging from compassion and sympathy to person-centred care.

Only organisations working explicitly on empathy will be eligible to become members of the Global Empathy in Healthcare Network in the first instance.

Academic organisations and charities will be invited to join, in the first instance. A model for commercial organisation inclusion or mention will eventually be developed.

Individual academic researchers with an established track record of research and teaching empathy – for example, those who have written a book on empathy – will be viewed, for the purposes of this network, as organisations.

We will explore a method for other individuals and organisations to join as associate or non-members.