BioMed Focus Track and CEL Capstone Students Learn from NYU’s Empathy Project Experts

Students from the SCH Biomedical Focus Track and CEL Social Impact Studio recently collaborated with experts from NYU’s Empathy Project. Explore the highlights of their session in this piece by Lisa Queeno, BioMed program coordinator.

The Empathy Project works to create more empathetic, compassionate, and effective healthcare providers by centering patient narratives as academic tools. Medical students, perhaps surprisingly, learn about empathy on their first day of school at NYU’s Langone Health Center. Empathy isn’t just a touchy-feely topic. It provides a measurable return on investment, improving patient outcomes as well as practitioner wellness. Eighty percent of a patient’s diagnosis is determined during their conversation with the doctor, meaning only about 20 percent comes from lab results. Teaching doctors to be better listeners improves the accuracy of diagnoses. It also helps patients connect and feel seen by their healthcare provider. 

Primary care doctor and professor Jennifer Adams uses narrative storytelling to teach empathy at NYU. She collaborates with Empathy Project director Maura Minsky to study provider empathy and develop ways to assess it. Tenth-grade CEL Capstone students in the Social Impact Studio and Biomedical Focus Track students met with Adams and Minsky to both hear about their work and to pick their brains; who better to critique your medical-related Capstone project than real-life healthcare professionals? The conversation was coordinated by Narrative 4, an organization that SCH has partnered with through its facilitators’ program and, more recently, through a civic engagement pilot undertaken by students in the “Social Impact” Capstone studio.

BioMed Focus Track students are required to incorporate biomedical science into their Capstone projects. Some have already completed their projects, such as Nolan Gibson, who built a veterinary prosthetic, and Adam Lane, who designed an insulated EpiPen case. Others are in the midst of brainstorming, using this opportunity with Langone Health to ask for project advice. Gray David is considering a project that targets a Philadelphia-specific health problem through an artistic campaign. Maura Minsky’s advice centered the patient: “The first step is to ask the experts: your audience.” Heeding this advice, Soleil Bynum plans to connect with veterinarians and speak with pet owners as part of her project. Her goal is to provide them with emotional support (gifting them a handmade crochet piece) while educating them about their animal’s specific illness. Fellow BioMed-er Anna Gauvin is still in the planning phase of her Capstone project. She’s brainstorming ways to apply what she learned from The Empathy Project to her favorite branch of science, neurology. The beauty of empathy is that it can be sprinkled into any project, practiced anywhere, and benefits all.

Dr. Jennifer Adams, Frankfort Family Director, Center for Empathy in Medicine
Maura Minsky, Director
Lee Keylock, Vice President of Global Impact at Narrative 4