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Taking place on the first Thursday of each month (except August and December).

Join us for a thought-provoking series of free one-hour lunchtime webinars exploring the power of empathy in healthcare. These interactive sessions will examine key topics such as breaking down barriers in inclusion healthcare, and enhancing empathy through creativity and compassionate communication. We’ll consider the value of involving patients as partners in health profession education, and discuss the cost-effectiveness of empathic healthcare, to demonstrate how empathy leads to better outcomes for patients and practitioners. Open to all healthcare professionals, educators, and students, these webinars offer a unique opportunity to deepen your understanding of empathic practice and its impact.

Date: 20–22 April 2026

Join us for this three-day interactive course, designed for clinicians, educators, and academics who want to develop the skills to teach empathy effectively in their own settings.

Empathy benefits both patients and practitioners: become an expert in teaching this essential skill!

Dates of event

• Half-day, online (MS Teams)
• 2026 date: 12 February 2026
• 2027 date: 11 February 2027

Systematic reviews have shown that empathy varies between healthcare practitioners, can be taught, and improves patient outcomes. Yet empathy often declines during clinical training. This interactive half-day webinar explores the what, why, and how of teaching empathy. Drawing on current evidence and practice from the Stoneygate Centre for Empathic Healthcare, participants will examine frameworks such as therapeutic empathy and the CARE Measure, and learn practical strategies to foster empathy in medical education. Participants will also work collaboratively to design a teaching intervention tailored to their clinical or educational context.

Find out more and book your place

Title of the article: A new framework for developing and evaluating complex interventions: update of Medical Research Council guidance
Date of publication: 9 August 2021
Date of club meeting: 26 August 2025

Yesterday's Empathy Centre journal club explored how the Medical Research Council's updated framework for developing and evaluating complex interventions applies to empathy research in healthcare settings. Jeremy Howick's presentation highlighted both the potential and challenges of treating empathy as a "complex intervention" requiring rigorous evaluation.

Why empathy needs different evaluation methods

The 2021 MRC framework represents a significant evolution from traditional clinical trial approaches. Unlike simple drug interventions, empathy involves multiple components: communication skills training, behavioral change techniques, contextual factors, and stakeholder engagement across different healthcare settings. The framework's four-phase structure—development, feasibility assessment, evaluation, and implementation—provides a roadmap for researchers tackling these multifaceted interventions.

Learning from smoking cessation research

The presentation used smoking cessation support for people with severe mental health problems as a paradigmatic example. This case study demonstrated the framework's emphasis on early stakeholder engagement, combining systematic reviews with primary research involving patients and healthcare professionals. The researchers identified key barriers (nicotine dependence, smoking as self-medication) and facilitators (health concerns, cost concerns) through focus groups before designing their intervention.

Practical applications for empathy research

The framework's core elements—considering context, developing program theory, engaging stakeholders, identifying uncertainties, refining interventions, and evaluating economic consequences—directly apply to empathy interventions in medical schools and clinical settings. Rather than assuming empathy training works universally, researchers must now consider how interventions interact with specific contexts and what mechanisms drive effectiveness.

Critical perspective

While Howick praised the framework overall, he offered constructive criticism about its unnecessarily complex presentation. His simplified summary—"find an intervention, understand what stakeholders think, then evaluate it properly"—captures the essence more accessibly than the formal guidance documents. Also, the way it was developed risks being accused of having used what Trish Greenhalgh labelled the “GOBSAT” (good old boys sat around a table) method.

The framework represents progress in intervention science, moving beyond simple "does it work?" questions to examine how, why, when, and for whom complex interventions succeed. For empathy research, this means more rigorous development processes and better evidence for real-world implementation—ultimately improving patient care through scientifically grounded compassionate practice.