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Cultivating Empathy with NYU Medical Doctors and Students

February 28, 2024

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Narrative 4 proudly partners with NYU Langone Health and The Empathy Project in an empathy-centered fellowship and curriculum for first-year med students.

Empathy is an essential clinical skill. In sickness and in health, people are more than just the sum of their physical parts. They are human beings graced with dignity and deserving of empathy, understanding, and compassion.

For this reason, we are thrilled to help launch the NYU Langone Health Empathy Fellowship! This fellowship has been years in the making, and is the result of close collaboration with our longtime partners, Jennifer Adams, MD, Associate Professor at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine and The Empathy Project. 

The purpose of the collaboration is to lead all first-year medical students at NYU through the Story Exchange experience, and to help develop their perspective-taking and deep listening skills as part of the curriculum focused on fostering empathy.

“Empathy in medicine promotes equitable and effective care through self-awareness, active listening and observation, engaged curiosity, and attention to emotions,” said Dr. Adams of NYU. “The goal is to understand the interplay between empathy and implicit bias and recognize the impact of the lived experience of each person and how it influences the clinical encounter.”

The NYU Langone Health Empathy Fellowship kicked off Thursday, February 1, with an inaugural group of self-selected doctors from NYU who will develop their knowledge of empathy and compassion in their respective fields and implement learning and innovative curriculum for supporting empathy throughout our healthcare system. 

As part of the kickoff event, N4 Director of Global Programs, Lee Keylock, and N4 Artist Babalwa Tetyana facilitated a Story Exchange and presented on why storytelling, story listening, and empathy is fundamental to the clinical encounter.

Empathy is a powerful tool for physicians — and word is spreading! We’re thrilled to present at the Society for General Internal Medicine 2024 Annual Meeting in Boston, MA. Our address,  “Using Story Exchange to engage empathy skills in medical students,” was selected for one of the prestigious poster sessions, and will be presented on Thursday, May 16 at 10 am. 

We’re beyond excited and honored to help create a more compassionate healthcare system, one doctor at a time.