Building empathy: Acceptability and effectiveness of the In Your Shoes (IYS) app to students

Empathy is important to therapeutic relationships and patient-centred care where patients’ preferences and needs are met. We have developed a web browser app called In Your Shoes (IYS) that runs on any browser and has potential to provide empathy training experiences in any situation requiring perceptual understanding of what others are thinking and feeling. The intervention’s goal is to improve perspective-taking skills and perceptual accuracy (accurate understanding of another person’s thoughts and feelings). Our research purpose is: (a) to capture potential future user feedback from students who use the app and (b) to conduct an evaluation of the app’s impact on student empathy and perceptual understanding. The goal is to seek validation by potential health science student users who use the online training portal app in their own environments.

Faculty Supervisor:

Michelle Lobchuk

Student:

Partner:

North Forge

Discipline:

Sociology

Sector:

Education; Management of companies and enterprises; Professional, scientific and technical services

University:

University of Manitoba

Program: