The Compassionate Practice™
What’s an Empathetic Scholar™?
Our graduates will be compassionate, empathetic and prepared to discover the latest knowledge in medical care and equipped with the tools to ask and answer the medical questions of the future. Along with the ability to “walk in a patient’s shoes,” these physicians will excel in the science of medicine. Outstanding communicators and active listeners, empathetic scholars are life-long learners and highly valued as physicians, colleagues, leaders and citizens in their community.
How are Empathetic Scholars™ created?
The Compassionate Practice™ is an interdisciplinary curriculum designed to build skills in awareness, listening, inquiry and engagement to foster exceptional connections between physicians and their patients, their teams, and their communities. We use theatre pedagogy to train doctors to improvise, build authentic connections, and take responsibility for their audience. We use journalism and narrative medicine techniques to train doctors to speak in a language appropriate to their audience’s understanding. Through the use of storytelling and written narratives, our students will learn to connect, reflect and build resilience. Bolstered by public health, psychology, diversity, communication research, and more, The Compassionate Practice™ provides an impactful foundation to prepare our students to become resilient, empathetic physicians and globally conscious leaders.
Read more about The Compassionate Practice™
- Insight Into Diversity Magazine: Teaching Communication and Compassionate Care Skills
- Fort Worth Business Press: Empathetic communication course debuts
Humanities in Medicine Series
The Narrative Medicine and Patient Communication team is happy to welcome faculty and visitors in a variety of fields to share their work and innovations with our community. If you have an idea to share, please contact our artistic director, Val Lantz-Gefroh at V.Lantz-gefroh@tcu.edu. Some of our past workshops have been:
Faculty Artist: Valeri Lantz-Gefroh
Guest Artist: Bonnie Pittman
The art of observation begins with immersing ourselves in attending to life. Explore the differences of seeing, looking and observing. Observation requires us look and listen deeply to develop an understanding of the impressions we collect. Learning to observe people, places and activities in the world makes us better storytellers, communicators, physicians, writers, and artists.
Based on works of art in the Dallas Museum of Art and with classes she teaches with medical students and physicians these sessions will develop skills for attending, connecting, analyzing, interpreting and creating. The programs will also engage participants in learning about art history, the creative process and cultures of the worlds that are selected from the DMA galleries.
WHAT’S EMOTION GOT TO DO WITH IT?
Guest Artist: Lauren Mitchell
How do you teach empathy? How do you get your medical students and residents to buy in to extra training around what they have falsely been told are “soft skills,” like patient communication?
How do you create a medical community that prioritizes humility and compassion in addition to scientific prowess? This two-hour workshop will provide skill-building steps for faculty wishing to incorporate the literary and philosophical into their medical school curricula. We will work with several short articles that demonstrate how communication skills and empathetic practice are bolstered by a cross-disciplinary approach, and enhanced by a practice of close reading and reflective writing.
Guest Artist: Terri Thornton
Art and Self
Join us at The Modern Art Museum for an introductory session that explores how we connect with art. Moving away from the desire to understand or explain it, and considering each work as a method of investigating what makes us human. This interactive workshop is an opportunity to build skills in observation, examination, self-awareness and perspective-taking.
