Center for Empathy in Healthcare in Brazil
The Global Empathy in Healthcare Network, with Centers in more than seven countries around the globe and in various continents, was designed by Professor Jeremy Howick, Director of The Stoneygate Centre for Empathic Healthcare. The Center for Empathy in Healthcare in Brazil aims to develop good practices and research, offer training and promote initiatives to disseminate empathy in healthcare, and to contribute to the recognition of empathy as a fundamental component of Patient-Centered Care, the provision of quality care and the improvement of clinical outcomes in health services and in the training of professionals.
The Center for Empathy in Healthcare in Brazil brings together researchers and professionals from various fields of knowledge, thus constituting an interdisciplinary group.
In particular, the Center for Empathy in Healthcare in Brazil focuses on the correlations between Empathy, Bioethics and Patient Law, seeking to deepen the moral role of empathy and its importance for the implementation of patients’ rights, as well as the role of such rights in the dimension of clinical empathy action, that is, its importance for the adoption of pro-patient behaviors.
The Center for Empathy in Healthcare in Brazil aims to be a catalyst for empathy in the country and for the promotion of a new culture in healthcare, based on the professional-patient partnership and on the endorsement of patient centrality in their care.
The basic assumption of this theme is demonstrating that issues around the morality of empathy matter in the day-to-day of healthcare, notably for the implementation of a culture of respect for the centrality and participation of the patient, and of patients’ rights.
On the other hand, it is important to recognize that the moral role of clinical empathy in judgment and motivation has significant controversies, which reflect those present in the literature on empathy and morality in general.
Thus, an intermediate position is supported, in other words, that clinical empathy has a relevant moral role in healthcare; however, this is insufficient to guide the ethical behavior of health professionals, given that empathy is not always the best guide for moral behaviors, since it generates social preferences and favoritism.
Thus, despite empathy being associated with pro-social behaviors, a comprehensive ethical theory requires the adoption of principles or other prescriptive constructs. In fact, clinical empathy is not enough for professionals to respect the patients as agents of their health and their lives, and to act with a view to empowering them in this regard.
To prevent clinical empathy from being associated with paternalistic behaviors, patients’ rights must be combined with the therapeutic responses that health professionals give when checking their understanding of the patient’s mental states and perspective.
Therefore, the language of patients’ rights must modulate the behavior of the professional, by assigning this professional with moral and legal obligations, and conferring power of agency to the patient.
Clinical empathy, in its active component, cannot be disconnected from the empowerment of the patients and their rights, in order to prevent it from becoming a tool to conceal the power of the professional, since clinical empathy is premised on the understanding of the professional, who can modify the contributions brought by the patient or disregard these contributions in the decision-making process.
In addition to the aforementioned benefits and its role in specific approaches in healthcare, clinical empathy’s role is to contribute to the realization of Patients’ Rights in the daily life of clinical practice, and is articulated with its theoretical foundations.
Studies on the correlations between clinical empathy and patients’ rights are scarce. Such scarcity can be attributed to the fact that the theoretical construction around Patients’ Rights is still incipient and that clinical empathy is a topic unknown to researchers in the area of Law.
The child patient, especially the newborn, is more vulnerable. It is essential that the evolutionary capacities of childhood are known to all health professionals and that the rights of the child during healthcare are respected.
In this sense, quality and safe care is a patient’s right and their participation in their care should be supported and encouraged.
This does not happen in practice, and the child, regardless of age and level of care, has their perceptions, values and feelings undervalued or not even taken into account, being left on the sidelines with regard to care, and not its protagonist. This practice invalidates the individual as a person and as a patient.
A structural, intrinsic, and sustained change is necessary for these practices to be modified, in favor of the most humane and fair care offered to the pediatric patient.
Thus, a patient-centered care that values and understands the perspective and reality of the newborn in a compassionate way, that is, empathic care should be the goal, and professionals should make every effort to achieve this goal. I started my studies on empathy with a focus on neonatology, given the particularities of the newborn, who is totally dependent on their caregiver.
International Supervisor
Jeremy Howick
Professor of Empathetic Healthcare and Director of the Stoneygate Center for Empathetic Healthcare.
Principal
Aline Albuquerque
Bioethicist. Visiting Researcher of the Empathy Program at the University of Oxford. Post-Doctorate in Patient Human Rights at the University of Essex. Professor of Graduate Studies in Bioethics at the University of Brasília. Director of the Brazilian Institute of Patient Law. General Coordinator of the Patients’ Rights Observatory of the Graduate Program in Bioethics at the University of Brasília (UnB).
alineaoliveira@hotmail.com
Cristina Ortiz Sobrinho
Valete
Pediatrician, specialist and with extensive experience in neonatology and pediatric intensive care. She holds a doctorate in Collective Health and completed a postdoctoral degree in the Bioethics Program at UnB in 2024, with a study on clinical empathy in neonatal care. Currently, she is a professor at the Department of Medicine of the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar), in the area of Children’s Health and the Graduate Program in Clinical Management – PPGGC. She is deputy coordinator of the Medical Residency Program in Pediatrics at UFSCar.
cristina.ortiz@ufscar.br
Cláudia Matias
Psychologist. Quality Manager at Hospital Vera Cruz Campinas. Specialist in Patient Experience and holder of an Executive MBA in Health from FGV. Director of the Brazilian Institute of Patient Law. Member of the Deliberative Council of the Brazilian Society of Patient Experience, the Voluntary Health Association and the Brazilian Society of Patient Safety.
Nelma Melgaço
Lawyer. Master in Bioethics from the University of Brasília. Director of the Brazilian Institute of Law at IBDPAC. Coordinator of the Postgraduate Program in Patient Law at IBDPAC. RedLatino American and Caribbean Bioethics Specialist from Unesco, Argentina. Member of the Patients’ Rights Observatory at UnB. Member of the Ethics Committee in Research with Human Beings/Centro Universitário de Brasília. Member of the Hospital Bioethics Committee at the Hospital de Apoio de Brasília/DF.
Felipe Rocha
Physician with a Higher Degree in Anesthesiology from the Brazilian Society of Anesthesiology. Master’s Degree in Bioethics from the University of Brasília. Postgraduate lato sensu in Pain Patient Care from the Sírio-Libanês Hospital and in Cardiovascular and Thoracic Anesthesia from the University of Taubaté. He works in public and private hospitals in the Federal District in the area of healthcare for adult and pediatric patients.
Isabella de Melo Rodrigues
Franco
Medical student at the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar). Member of the research group Center for Studies in Epidemiology Applied to Perinatal and Pediatric Health.
Maria Clara Alves Pilati
Medical student at the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar). Member of the research group Center for Studies in Epidemiology Applied to Perinatal and Pediatric Health. She acted as President of the Academic League of Pediatric Specialties at UFSCar. She undertook Scientific Initiation with a CNPq scholarship called “Measurement of the empathy of health professionals in neonatal care in the rooming-in of the Irmandade da Santa Casa de Misericórdia de São Carlos.
The workshop aims to:
General objective: to train health professionals in order to increase their empathic capacity in the interaction with patients and to improve the reflection on ethical issues emerging from healthcare.
Specific objectives:
(1) To explain the definition of empathy and its cognitive and emotional dimensions, as well as create a safe space for participants to experience empathic interactions with each other.
(2) To explain the concept of clinical empathy, its components and benefits for patients, professionals and hospitals.
(3) To develop the health professionals’ capacity to have other perspectives in relation to patients in ethically complex decision-making contexts.
(4) To reflect on the moral function of clinical empathy and its importance for the resolution of conflicts and bioethical issues.
(5) To develop empathic skills to understand ethical issues in the clinical practice environment.
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