Is empathy something that’s just nice to have or is it essential to providing quality care? That’s the question Karenna Thatcher ’17MSN asked a few years ago at the start of her doctoral program at UCF.

The answer, she found out, is that not only is empathy essential to quality care, it also can be learned and improved upon, which was the basis of her quality improvement project for the Nurse Executive Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) program at UCF’s College of Nursing.

When Thatcher walks across the stage at UCF commencement on Friday, her UCF project will be taking the next step too — as it’s currently contributing to a potential new systemwide learning experience at AdventHealth.

A Critical Component

“There are no empathy experts,” says Thatcher, who is the director of experience learning for consumer experience at AdventHealth. “We should all be on a continual journey to be more empathetic to each other.”

“We should all be on a continual journey to be more empathetic to each other.”

Empathy, according to Merriam-Webster, is “the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts and experience of another.”

Research shows that patients who receive empathetic care from their healthcare providers have lower anxiety and distress, are more empowered to take better care of themselves, follow up with their providers more, and can have better outcomes.

Nurses and providers also benefit as studies show burnout goes down when empathy and compassion are an integral part of interactions with patients.

“Nurses already excel at being empathetic,” says Thatcher. “So how can we amplify that to ensure we are providing a consistent and exceptional experience for every person, every time?”

“It should be an intentional check-in,” she says. “Because as a nurse, I can have high empathy and compassion behaviors in one room. Then go to another room where maybe the patient has behaviors that are a personal trigger for me, and not show as much empathy and compassion.”

That’s where her project comes in.

An Empathy Experience

Thatcher looked at studies on how to teach empathy, how to communicate empathetically with people who are suffering, and how to communicate with fellow team members more empathetically.

Then, leveraging knowledge she gained in her DNP program and previously in UCF’s healthcare simulation program, she developed a pilot program for a unit in one of AdventHealth’s Central Florida hospitals  to give team members the tools and tactics to enhance empathy in their interactions.

The blended learning program included web-based training on empathy essentials and an in-person simulation using patient actors.

Feedback from staff was positive and provided insights on how the team members preferred to learn. “They wanted the learning to come to them in easy to access and immersive ways,” she says.

The empathy learning also contributed to positive feedback from patients about how nurses communicated with them. “It showed that we were on the right track with the program,” says Thatcher. “Empathy is very often first shown by the words that we say to others.”

 “We work as a network of caregivers, and we need also to show empathy to one another so we can be our best selves for those we serve.”

Thatcher is working with AdventHealth’s consumer experience team to redesign the program into a potential microlearning series using the same empathy framework.

“Experience” is the key word according to Thatcher. “It’s about investing in our team members and providing them with a worthwhile experience while learning, so they can turn around and create special moments and experiences for our patients.”

“We work as a network of caregivers, and we need also to show empathy to one another so we can be our best selves for those we serve.”

A Patient Perspective

Thatcher brings a unique perspective to her role at AdventHealth and to the design of the program. She was a bedside nurse before moving into consumer and patient experience. She also was a patient.

At 20 years old, the Orlando, Florida, native’s lung spontaneously collapsed. “I was forced to learn about a new scary world: healthcare,” she says of the experience. After that 30-day hospitalization, she changed her major to nursing.

In the new empathy learning experience, Thatcher pulls from her own health story.

“I know exactly what it feels like to feel helpless, to not be certain of the future, and to really need somebody to listen.”

“I know exactly what it feels like to feel helpless, to not be certain of the future, and to really need somebody to listen and allows you to share that ‘this is scary,’ and not feel like they necessarily have to fix the emotions I’m feeling, just be present with me in them,” she says.

Thatcher says empathy itself can be the fix.

“Sometimes it’s as simple as just not saying the wrong thing, and listening to what somebody else is expressing and validating those emotions that can be healing,” she says.

Consumer experience is a passion for Thatcher, who also loved patient care at the bedside — and still uses her clinical skills annually as a medical clinic leader for mission trips to Honduras.

With her doctoral degree, Thatcher hopes to develop more interactive learning for AdventHealth’s 93,000 team members. “I truly believe this work is making a difference for our communities.”

“The DNP program helped me to think larger about healthcare strategy, how teams can work optimally together, to think differently in how people want to learn — looking at training not just as a singular event, but something that needs momentum,” she says.