This month I am pleased to welcome François Beausoleil, Co-Founder and Lead Trainer, of the Empathic Leadership Institute (ELI), www.empathicleadershipinstitute.com. ELI is committed to supporting organizations to embrace empathic leadership responses, mindsets, habits and structures. ELI’s experience leading corporate change shows that empathic responses create a fundamental cultural shift where everyone in the organization feels empowered and accountable. Adelman Law Firm partners with Francois and the ELI to offer consulting and programming to our clients with the goal of improved quality of care, enhanced employment culture, mitigation of financial losses and risk avoidance. That’s the Adelman Advantage.
I am participating in the first ELI program for Healthcare and I am gaining valuable insights that are making me a more compassionate and emotionally intelligent leader, teammate and parent/friend/communitarian. I am incorporating the skills from the program into my business and personal cultures and am especially tuned into the feelings and needs of those in my ecosystem. The next course for Healthcare begins next month and the November / December session will run for six consecutive weeks on Tuesdays from November 9th to December 14th, 6 - 7:30 pm EST.
Here I welcome Francois into a conversation about ELI and Healthcare:
Rebecca: I am participating in the ELI program focused on healthcare. What considerations were at the center of why ELI designed a program specific for healthcare providers, administrators and others in the healthcare ecosystem?
Francois: The decision to design a specific program for healthcare providers, administrators and others in the healthcare ecosystem came out of several conversations with Paige Hector, a social worker working in the PALTC space for decades, whom I met during an intensive communication program in the summer. She shared how beneficial an infusion of empathic leadership would be in healthcare but particularly in the PALTC settings. The main considerations that led us to move forward in this direction were our deep interest to contribute to people in healthcare settings in the COVID context, our belief that our expertise could make a significant difference, and a sense that healthcare practitioners were interested in our work (based on several conversations).
Rebecca: The “Compassion Crisis” has been in the conversation especially since the pandemic changed the course of history in healthcare. How does empathy offer a “cure” for this crisis?
Francois: I see empathy as a highway to compassion; when empathy is present it generally leads to a genuine desire to help or act compassionately. In this way, I see empathy as a crucial ingredient to decrease the compassion crisis. That said, to achieve this. I believe that it is required to see empathy in a more sophisticated way than simply putting ourselves in someone else's shoes. At ELI we teach empathic leadership through a combination of principles, skills, tools, mindsets and personal reflection. Becoming more empathic often also involves a personal shift, or transformation; this is an important part of our work.
Rebecca: In my work with long-term care leaders and providers and formal “Expectations Management” programs, I discuss how understanding resident and family needs and proactively redefining and managing expectations can lead to fewer professional liability claims. How does empathic leadership affect bottom-line goals?
Francois: There's rarely a week when the link between a culture of empathy and bottom line goals is not present in the leadership literature, so luckily there's a lot of evidence around these questions nowadays. Here are a few examples:
Healthcare Providers (HCP) who are able to maintain empathy for patients and consistently practice with compassion have less burnout, more resilience, and superior well-being, indicating that compassion may in fact be protective. (StephenTrzeciak, Brian W.Roberts, Anthony J.Mazzarelli, Compassionomics)
The foundation for providing sustainable, quality care is simple: compassion. If we want to keep healthy people out of hospitals, support the most vulnerable of patients or those with long-term issues, and lower health care costs, compassion must be at the heart of all these interactions. (Jeffrey Brenner, MD, senior vice president of integrated health and human services at UnitedHealthcare Community & State).
A stronger culture of compassion could create physiological effects that reduce employees’ absenteeism. (Barsade, Oneil, What’s Love Got to Do With It? Administrative Science Quarterly)
There is also compelling data that the absence of compassion, manifested by depersonalization, emotional exhaustion, and compassion fatigue among HCPs, is associated with lower quality of care and increased risk of harm to patients through medical errors. (Trzeciak, Roberts, Mazzarelli, Compassionomics)
Empathetic and compassionate care has been demonstrated to be associated with improved clinical outcomes for patients, therefore, empathy and compassion training curricula may be an effective therapy to reduce physician burnout. (Patel, Pelletier-Bui, Smith, Roberts, Kilgannon, Trzeciak3, Robert, Curricula for empathy and compassion training in medical education: A systematic review)
Compassion not only improves clinical quality, motivates better patient self-care, and confers all the other benefits discussed so far, but it actually drives revenue in health care organizations that excel in compassionate care (...) Researchers found that hospitals with a “compassion culture”—they rewarded employees who practiced compassion and even supported struggling employees with pastoral care—were more likely to be rated higher by patients, and patients were more likely to recommend the hospital to others. These compassion practices translated directly to top ratings by patients on the federal HCAHPS. (Trzeciak, Roberts, Mazzarelli, Compassionomics)
In a study that analyzed cost data for three thousand U.S. hospitals, researchers found that better patient experience in the hospital was associated with lower health care spending per episode of care. (...) Do you know what they found mattered most when they considered all the factors that could account for stronger financial performance based on patient experience survey ratings? It was the nurse-patient relationship. One of the key ingredients to communicating effectively with patients is, of course, the ability to genuinely express compassion. Health care providers are frequently surprised that when patients are surveyed, time and again, they say that they value their doctors’ interpersonal skills even more than any of the items on their résumé. (Trzeciak, Roberts, Mazzarelli, Compassionomics)
Three times the number of patients value human connection and caring from their physician more than the prestige of the institution where the physician was trained. (...) One online marketing company’s survey showed that 84 percent of patients said they consult online reviews before selecting a provider. (....) Compassion accounted for 65 percent of the variation in how patients rated their satisfaction with their health care provider. (Trzeciak, Roberts, Mazzarelli, Compassionomics)
In 2013, Dignity Health, one of the top five largest health systems in the U.S., released findings from a survey that showed when choosing a health care provider, 87 percent of Americans feel kindness is more important than any other consideration…even wait time, how far the provider is from their home, or cost. (Trzeciak, Roberts, Mazzarelli, Compassionomics)
Nearly three-quarters of patients in the survey said they would pay more for a physician who placed an emphasis on kindness. Nine out of ten said they would feel like switching health care providers if they were unkind. (Trzeciak, Roberts, Mazzarelli, Compassionomics)
A perceived lack of caring—rather than negligence—is frequently what gets a doctor sued. In one study of plaintiff depositions for malpractice lawsuits that were settled against a large metropolitan medical center, researchers found that, in general, patients and families decided to litigate because they perceived their doctors didn’t care. (Trzeciak, Roberts, Mazzarelli, Compassionomics)
Rebecca: How can an organization begin to build a culture of empathy?
Francois: Although there are many avenues to start building a culture of empathy, I would suggest starting by creating structures in which leadership can, in person, truly listen (and only listen) to the problems that people in the ecosystem have, and also ask them what kind of culture people want.
A second step would be to come to the community with a report of what's been heard and a proposal for how to move forward, and once again listen for input and concerns.
Leadership might need some training and support during these phases, so that's certainly something to consider as well.
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Consider leader and staff training on compassion and empathy specific to healthcare and you’ll experience the culture change and improved outcomes in your organization.
If you have questions or need assistance related to the training and education, please contact Rebecca Adelman can be reached at rebeccca@adelmanfirm.com.
If you have questions or think your facility and residents could benefit from ELI, please contact François Beausoleil at francois@empathicleadershipinstitute.com.
