A Journey Through Empathy and Emotional Awareness in Communication

This course enables those attending to ‘feel’ empathy, analyse it, and understand it on a deeper level, to understand why it should be incorporated into practice, rather than just what it is. Supporting health and social care professionals to create psychologically safe communication, whilst exploring realistically what can get in the way, to support long term, authentic training, development, and support.

Those attending, will go on a journey of empathy and emotional awareness as they take these attributes and skills out of the textbook and into real life and explore the importance within communication, and what it can feel like when this is not present. Supporting national guidance on having an empathic and compassionate culture and recognising the Duty of Candour in preventing prolonged psychological harm, the real human factor is explored, supporting staff to recognise vulnerable people in processes, including themselves.

In an emotive, thought provoking and real way, as well as a friendly and relaxed learning environment, those attending will be supported to nurture their own existing empathic attributes and why it is difficult at times, building confidence and awareness on further incorporating and embedding empathy and emotional awareness intelligently in their practice. Weaved through the day will be recognising and building personal resilience, wellbeing, and self compassion, linking this to the importance of empathy to create a psychologically safe culture for staff, patients and loved ones, in line with ethical practice, behaviours and attitudes.

Key Learning Objectives:

• Understand & develop the human connection. Feel, analyse and explore the presence and absence of empathy and civility within life, trauma and an incident.
• Seeing perspectives and understanding emotional motivations and the emotional component. Build confidence in empathic thinking and the importance of recognising vulnerability in others and self.
• Learn how the ‘Funnel of Life’ including processes and systems can impact on our empathic communication and our wellbeing, which can influence our resilience and negatively impact on others.
• Learn what empathy is and what it isn’t, to be skilled to use it in a reasoned way understanding the emotional data.
• Identify and explore the difference between empathy, sympathy and apathy. Explore and analyse biases, judgments, uncompassionate systems to understand how lack of empathy has the potential to cause psychological harm.
• Develop understanding of Safeguarded Personal Communication (SPC ®) for psychologically safe practice and civility.
• Develop awareness on personal wellbeing and resilience.