Learning to Care: Faculty Perspectives on Developing Empathy and Inclusive Mindsets in Biomedical Engineering

Abstract

While we all have our own circumstances and experiences, being able to empathize is critical to recognizing injustice and considering the viewpoints of others in the community. In the human-centric field of biomedical engineering (BME), empathy is imperative to creating inclusive devices or equipment that are equally accessible to all who need them. To learn more about the importance of empathy in the discipline and the learning activities that can be used to promote it, we leveraged qualitative methods and interviewed six BME instructors and course coordinators. We applied Zaki’s framework of empathy as the theoretical foundation for our investigation and analysis, which considers cognitive, emotional, and motivational factors. In this study, we sought to address: (1) The need of empathy for BME students; (2) The need of empathy for BME educators; and (3) How specific learning activities can be used to appreciate and imbue empathy. The analysis resulted in six themes, and the findings illustrated that empathy was considered important for students’ personal and professional development. It can promote intercultural awareness, leadership, and may drive students to think and care about others and take action. Faculty perceived empathy as necessary for themselves as well and they described developing it over the course of their careers as they interacted with students and learned about the issues they faced. In turn, they mentioned how their own empathy served to strengthen their approach as educators, their interpersonal relationships, and their awareness of students in distress. We identified multiple learning activities which can foster empathy in students. Examples include writing personas to enhance perspective-taking or allowing students to share their own narrative to strengthen communication for the speaker and active listening and compassion from those hearing the stories. Requiring students to shadow physicians or conduct interviews with those that will use their products can serve to build compassion and help students to think about others. However, to impact values and mindsets such activities should not just be inserted at a single time point, but instead, should be considered throughout the BME curriculum. The findings from this work not only encourage professional development of BME students and their ability to solve problems addressing the needs of real people, but they also speak to the value of empathy for individual growth and considering diverse perspectives.