Dr. Helen Riess is passionate about human connection and its positive impact on healthcare. She has created a remarkable way to teach empathy, and is doing it in a scalable way through Empathetics, the company she founded. 

With a blend of science and soft skills, Dr. Riess has found a way to connect to those in healthcare, starting by teaching them self-empathy.  The results are impressive, and telling. Those who go through Empathetics training have a 17x retention rate, at a savings of $18-million dollars! 

In this fascinating conversation, Dr. Riess shares the difference between empathy and compassion, talks about boundaries, how empathy training works, and much, much more! 

Dr. Helen Riess is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Founder and Chief Medial Officer at Emapthetics, Author of The Empathy Effect, and her TedTalk called The Power of Empathy has more than 800,000 views (link further down). 

She’s also featured in the PBS series: Untold, a Brief History of the Future. Her episode airs on April 24th, 2024. 

Connect with Dr. Helen Riess: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helen-riess/

Learn more about Empathetics: https://www.empathetics.com  

Watch Dr. Riess’ TedTalk: https://youtu.be/baHrcC8B4WM?feature=shared 

Trailer for the PBS series: https://www.pbs.org/video/preview-jokjzt/ 

Purchase Dr. Riess’ book, The Empathy Effect: https://a.co/d/cS2oqUY 

Topical time codes: 

00:00 - interview begins

1:17 - Interest in psychiatry

3:00 - Teaching empathy and founding Empathetics

5:56 - Empathy vs compassion 

9:24 - Ranges of empathy and setting boundaries

12:18 - Empathy training, connecting to purpose

16:52 - Institutionalizing empathy, resilience, patient experience

20:11 - The Empathetics way

22:15 - Toggling between technical and clinical aspects