Empathy in practice: video characters and workplace
The first half asks you to write as the character, not about them. The second half asks for a workplace failure and a strategy from the article — and the strategy has to be traceable to the reading.
Editorial process
Last reviewed · August 15, 2026
Two tasks: three characters, then the article
The first instruction is easy to read past: pick three characters and share how you would feel if you were them. That is a request to write in the first person from inside each person's situation, and the difference between doing that and describing them from outside is the difference between empathy and observation — which is precisely the distinction the video is built to teach. The Cleveland Clinic piece works by captioning strangers with what they are carrying: someone visiting a father for the last time, someone who has just learned they are going to be a parent, someone waiting on a result. Choosing three with genuinely different emotional registers, rather than three sad ones, gives you more to say and shows you noticed the range the video is demonstrating, which is that ordinary corridors are full of people in entirely different moments of their lives.
The second half is where the reading has to appear. It asks for something you learned from the empathy, sympathy and caring article, an example of poor empathy you have witnessed at work, and a strategy from the article that would have improved that outcome. The chain matters: the strategy must come from the reading and must connect to your example, so choose the example after you know which strategy you want to demonstrate. The conceptual point worth taking from the literature is that empathy, sympathy and compassion are not synonyms — sympathy feels for, empathy understands with, and compassion adds the disposition to act. Poor empathy in a workplace usually looks like a technically correct response delivered without any acknowledgement that something is happening to a person, and naming it that way is more useful than calling a colleague uncaring, and it also gives you something a strategy can actually change.
Likely learning objectives
Inferred from the brief — check these against your own rubric.
- 01Practise perspective-taking by writing from inside another person's situation.
- 02Distinguish empathy from sympathy and compassion using the assigned reading.
- 03Apply a named strategy from the literature to a real workplace failure.
Read the full question
Review every instruction before using the planning guidance that follows.
Course-wide instructions that accompany this question
You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes. Discussion: Being empathetic Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages. Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor. The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument. ADDITIONAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE CLASS Discussion Questions (DQ) Initial responses to the DQ should address all components of the questions asked, include a minimum of one scholarly source, and be at least 250 words. Successful responses are substantive (i.e., add something new to the discussion, engage others in the discussion, well-developed idea) and include at least one scholarly source. One or two sentence responses, simple statements of agreement or “good post,” and responses that are off-topic will not count as substantive. Substantive responses should be at least 150 words. I encourage you to incorporate the readings from the week (as applicable) into your responses. Weekly Participation Your initial responses to the mandatory DQ do not count toward participation and are graded separately. In addition to the DQ responses, you must post at least one reply to peers (or me) on three separate days, for a total of three replies. Participation posts do not require a scholarly source/citation (unless you cite someone else’s work). Part of your weekly participation includes viewing the weekly announcement and attesting to watching it in the comments. These announcements are made to ensure you understand everything that is due during the week. APA Format and Writing Quality Familiarize yourself with APA format and practice using it correctly. It is used for most writing assignments for your degree. Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for APA paper templates, citation examples, tips, etc. Points will be deducted for poor use of APA format or absence of APA format (if required). Cite all sources of information! When in doubt, cite the source. Paraphrasing also requires a citation. I highly recommend using the APA Publication Manual, 6th edition. Use of Direct Quotes I discourage overutilization of direct quotes in DQs and assignments at the Masters’ level and deduct points accordingly. As Masters’ level students, it is important that you be able to critically analyze and interpret information from journal articles and other resources. Simply restating someone else’s words does not demonstrate an understanding of the content or critical analysis of the content. It is best to paraphrase content and cite your source. LopesWrite Policy For assignments that need to be submitted to LopesWrite, please be sure you have received your report and Similarity Index (SI) percentage BEFORE you do a “final submit” to me. Once you have received your report, please review it. This report will show you grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors that can easily be fixed. Take the extra few minutes to review instead of getting counted off for these mistakes. Review your similarities. Did you forget to cite something? Did you not paraphrase well enough? Is your paper made up of someone else’s thoughts more than your own? Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for tips on improving your paper and SI score. Late Policy The university’s policy on late assignments is 10% penalty PER DAY LATE. This also applies to late DQ replies. Please communicate with me if you anticipate having to submit an assignment late. I am happy to be flexible, with advance notice. We may be able to work out an extension based on extenuating circumstances. If you do not communicate with me before submitting an assignment late, the GCU late policy will be in effect. I do not accept assignments that are two or more weeks late unless we have worked out an extension. As per policy, no assignments are accepted after the last day of class. Any assignment submitted after midnight on the last day of class will not be accepted for grading. Communication Communication is so very important. There are multiple ways to communicate with me: Questions to Instructor Forum: This is a great place to ask course content or assignment questions. If you have a question, there is a good chance one of your peers does as well. This is a public forum for the class. Individual Forum: This is a private forum to ask me questions or send me messages. This will be checked at least once every 24 hours. Discussion: Being empathetic
Turn the brief into deliverables
- 01Responses for three characters, written from their perspective.
- 02A statement of what the article taught you.
- 03A workplace example of poor empathy.
- 04A strategy drawn explicitly from the article, with APA citation.
From perspective-taking to a strategy you can name
Three characters, three registers
Select three people from the video whose situations differ in kind, not only in severity.
Write from inside each
Say how you would feel as that person and what an empathetic response would relieve.
What the article added
State the conceptual distinction the reading draws and why it matters clinically.
A workplace failure
Describe a de-identified example of poor empathy as a response pattern.
The strategy that would have helped
Name a strategy from the article and apply it to that example.
Where empathy and sympathy are actually distinguished
Recommended databases
- The assigned article via SAGE Journals
- PubMed Central
- CINAHL
- The Cleveland Clinic video
- Your course readings for this week
Search sequence
- 1.Read the assigned article properly — the second half of the post is graded on whether the strategy came from it.
- 2.Note the article's own vocabulary for the distinctions it draws, and reuse those words.
- 3.If you want a second source, search for empathy training outcome studies rather than opinion pieces.
- 4.Keep workplace details de-identified; a specific example does not require identifying anyone.
Reference shortlist
These are authoritative starting points, not a ready-made bibliography. A qualified reviewer must confirm that each source fits the assignment and supports the claim beside which it is cited.
Nothing here is cleared for citation until you have read it.
- 01
Empathy, sympathy and compassion in healthcare: Is there a problem? Is there a difference? Does it matter?
Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, via PubMed Central · 2016
The article named in the brief, reached through its open-access copy; it draws the empathy, sympathy and compassion distinctions the second half of the post must apply.
- 02
About CAHPS
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality · 2024
A model of how a care problem is defined, measured and reported, useful when framing a nursing issue as one evidence could improve.
- 03
Asking Focused Questions
Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, University of Oxford · 2024
The structure that turns a clinical issue into searchable terms, which is exactly what the 'include your search terms' half of the prompt is testing.
- 04
The association between perceived electronic health record usability and professional burnout among US nurses
Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 28(8), 1632-1641 · 2021
Evidence that empathic capacity is depleted by working conditions, which reframes poor empathy as a system problem as well as an individual one.
Review before submission
Common mistakes
- Describing the characters from outside instead of writing as them.
- Choosing three characters with the same emotional register.
- Offering a strategy from general experience rather than from the assigned article.
- Identifying poor empathy as a personal failing rather than as a response pattern.
Submission checklist
- Are all three character responses written in the first person?
- Does your post state something specific learned from the article?
- Is the workplace example concrete and de-identified?
- Does the strategy come from the reading and address that example?
Use this guide to plan and review your own work. Follow your institution's rules and read our academic-integrity policy.
Written by
Aaron Bishop
MA, Education
assignment interpretation and research-methods coaching across disciplines
Aaron leads the EssayCrackers editorial desk. He works on how assignment briefs are read — what a rubric is actually asking for, and where students most often answer a different question than the one set.
Reviewed by
Dr. Nathan Cole
PhD, Rhetoric & Composition
Argumentation and thesis development
Nathan teaches first-year composition and directs a university writing center. He reviews EssayCrackers guides for argumentative soundness and citation accuracy.