Enhancing System Empathy Within a UK Emergency Department: A Feasibility Interprofessional Priority Setting Exercise

Empathy in healthcare benefits patients and practitioners, yet system-level barriers inhibit empathy. The barriers include burnout-inducing administrative workloads, burdensome protocols, lack of wellbeing spaces, un-empathic leadership, and not emphasising empathy as an institutional value. A workshop aimed at enhancing empathic systems was successfully delivered in Canada but has not been tested in the UK National Health Service (NHS) setting.

This study aimed to test the feasibility of an empathic systems workshop within the UK.

We conducted an interprofessional workshop with stakeholders from an emergency department (ED). We used a modified nominal group technique to prioritise actions that enhance empathy in the ED. Satisfaction with the workshop and confidence that the workshop would lead to positive change were measured on a 10-point Likert scale.

Twenty-eight participants representing the following stakeholder groups attended the workshop: medical consultants, nurses, and porters. The group agreed to generate an improved wellbeing plan and to implement an effective secondary triage system. Seventy-three percent (73%) rated their satisfaction with the workshop as eight or higher out of ten, and 63% reported being confident that the workshop would lead to improvements in system empathy. A doctor strike limited the range of stakeholders who were able to attend, and long-term follow up was not conducted.

Participants in a UK setting were satisfied with a previously developed system empathy workshop, were able to prioritise changes that would improve system empathy, and were confident that the changes would be effective.