About Empathy

Dr Daphna Grossman is a palliative care physician at North York General Hospital in Toronto ON. Describing her journey to palliative care, Daphna speaks about the role of mentorship. Her care is rooted in kindness and compassion to alleviate any possible suffering for patients. Daphna believes the impact on health care providers is two sided: enriching or exhaustive. In order to provide the best possible care, Daphna describes the practices that keep her centred and mitigate stress. Daphna wants to spread the message that palliative care is about helping with suffering along the journey with life-limiting illness - not just end-of-life.

The doctors discuss how to recognize compassion fatigue and burnout. Giovanna, Irene, and Dori, share their personal strategies for emotional self-care. The episode concludes with a round table about the benefits of the mentoring relationship.

Susan shares her experience of taking care of her Dad as his cancer progressed. She learned the strong will he had. He was a person who didn’t complain, and appreciated the little things in his final days. In hindsight, Susan shares what was helpful for her as a caregiver.

Irene, Dori and Giovanna, have a conversation about paying attention to non-verbal cues of a patient and the difficulty when a person doesn’t open up. The doctors talk about their own experiences with caregiving for long-term illness and how that shapes their healthcare practice.

Aviva describes both the relief and fear of completing active treatment for marginal zone lymphoma. Survivorship, life after disease, has been an emotional journey that Aviva manages using writing, humour, meditation, and outreach as a patient advocate. Aviva talks about perceiving hope as relational - something she can move towards through interactions with others. She hopes that health care providers will hear her story and see patients as a whole person. Aviva’s memoir is titled “Lost and Found in Lymphomaland”.

Dori, Giovanna, and Irene talk about the concept of Survivorship and what kinds of physical and psychosocial issues can arise post treatment. The doctors discuss how hope can be framed and re-framed to be realistic at each stage of life, with or without disease. The pressures of the patient is included, when the hosts describe how to be helpful to a patient. The whole person approach is important to gauge the well-being of each and every patient.

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On their 22nd wedding anniversary, Sholom discusses the palliative care of his late wife, Erminia. Erminia made the graceful decision to transition to end of life care - motivated by spirituality. Sholom appreciates the care for his wife and talks about his gratitude practices.

Giovanna, Dori and Irene discuss whether empathy can be taught and how it can enhance therapy. Gratitude is talked about as a response to grief, and as a recognition for the lessons learned. The three doctors have a conversation about the lasting impact patients have when a personal connection is made.