EmpathyLab are teaming up with the interdisciplinary team at the Stoneygate Centre for Empathic Healthcare and the School of Arts, Media, and Communication, University of Leicester for this webinar exploring how reading can make a practical difference to healthcare professionals, examining work currently taking place with University of Leicester medical students. 

For the last two years, a book group has been running as part of the core curriculum for Leicester’s foundation-year medical students, reading and discussing a shared text across a term. We’ve found firsthand how close reading together can shape a sense of belonging and increase understanding of different perspectives. Can we extend this more broadly to healthcare practitioners in their workplace? 

In this session: 

• EmpathyLab will share practical ways that reading together can be used to develop key empathy skills, drawing on ten years of work with schools and libraries across the UK to apply the science of reading for empathy to healthcare professionals 

• Leicester medical students will share their experiences of the book group and the impact it has had on them at the start of their training 

• Authors will share how empathy-building sits at the heart of their creative practice, and reflect on the responses of readers to the real-world impacts of reading 

Bringing together research in literature, medicine, and creative practice, this webinar is part of research funded through a UKRI AHRC Curiosity Award, in a project exploring how reading and writing together can help us deal with difficulty and difference. 

The research is interested in how the literary arts can have a practical contribution to creative health, researching how healthcare professionals can build empathy and resilience and improve communication through engagement with literature. Find out more: Home | Creative Curiosity