Empathy

What to look out for during work experience

When reflecting on empathy for this station, think about a specific moment where you genuinely connected with someone on a personal level — for example, volunteering at a care home, and building rapport with residents by listening carefully to their concerns and showing patience during interactions that may have been more challenging.

Learning points

• Empathy helps to build trust, and there’s real evidence that it can improve patient outcomes, not just patient experience.
• Genuine empathy involves active listening and approaching people in a non-judgemental way, rather than assuming you already understand their situation.

How to develop this further

• Practise empathy in everyday situations — for example, when resolving a disagreement with a friend or peer, consciously try to understand their perspective before responding.
• Read about patient perspectives directly, or attend workshops focused on compassionate care, to deepen your understanding beyond your own experience.
• Reflect on past interactions to identify moments where empathy genuinely made a positive difference, helping you recognise what effective empathy actually looks like in practice.

Relevance to medical school, being a doctor, and MDTs

• Medical school — Empathy is essential for understanding patient perspectives, both during clinical placements and in assessments like OSCEs, where communication and patient-centred care are directly evaluated.
• As a doctor — Empathy improves communication, helps build strong doctor-patient relationships, and can genuinely enhance clinical decision-making, since patients who feel understood are more likely to share relevant information openly.
• Within MDTs — Empathy isn’t only relevant to patients — showing empathy toward colleagues supports respect for their perspectives too, and helps maintain positive team morale.

Suggested structure for this question

• Describe a specific example from your work experience where you demonstrated or observed genuine empathy.
• Explain what made this interaction empathetic — active listening, patience, or a non-judgemental approach.
• Reflect on what you personally learned from this experience.
• Explain how you’re actively developing your own empathy, giving a genuine example if possible.
• Link this back to medical school, life as a doctor, and the role of empathy within an MDT, showing you understand this as an ongoing skill to keep developing, not something that’s simply innate or fixed.