Shame and Pride; Pity and Sympathy: No Match for Wholehearted Empathy

I'm forever grateful to David Aspy, EdD, now a mentor from heaven, who taught me empathy and more.  He had directed the National Consortium for Humanizing Education in the 1970's and wrote Kids Don't Learn from People They Don't Like with Flora N. Roebuck, EdD in 1977, among other works.  I was looking for teaching strategies to help resident physicians improve their teaching skills as head of a workgroup for the AMA Resident Physician Section.  

Al Vastyan, PhD in the Humanities faculty at Penn State-Hershey gave me an article about by Dr. Aspy.  I liked it and called him at Eastern Kentucky.  We talked a good while.  He sent me a packet of books including the one above.  I was hooked.  And excited about others of his writings such as Toward a Technology for Humanizing Education.

He invited me to Richmond, KY to learn more.  Dave spent two days teaching me about empathy, congruence and genuineness as applied to audio and video-tape analysis of teacher-learner situations.  He showed me the work of Robert Carkhuff, PhD about teaching and helping.  The Art of Helping, The Skills of Teaching:  Interpersonal Skills and the Carkhuff Interpersonal Skills Scale were included.

Two key pieces of the training were included in the Cognitive Functioning Categories Training Module by Dr.'s Aspy and Roebuck.  Listen in for more.  What about using these strategies for humanizing healthcare?