Maura Minsky, director of The Empathy Project at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, spoke about the importance of storytelling and empathy in diversity, equity and inclusion work during the Diversity and Inclusion Office’s Centering the Margins event on April 26.
In her previous roles at ABC News Productions, Disney and Warner Brothers, Minsky told fictional stories.The Empathy Project creates short films that train health care providers to be more humane and help empower patients to be effective participants in their own care.
“I’m able to reflect real people’s lives back to them in a meaningful way,” Minsky said.
Tiffany Cook, MA, director of diversity, equity and inclusion integration and education, and assistant professor of medicine at UMass Chan Medical School, worked with Minsky to develop the six-minute film The Elephant in the Waiting Room when Cook worked at NYU. Shown to first-year medical students in the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, the six-minute film features an elephant named Denise the Empathy Elephant, voiced by Whoopi Goldberg.
“This film focuses on the interplay between implicit bias and empathy,” said Cook. “It tells the story of a Black female patient and a white male provider, a physician whose encounter illustrates that medical care is more than a diagnosis; it’s personal. Empathy shows up as a literal elephant in the waiting room who helps mitigate the implicit bias that each hold for the other.”
“We’re talking about bias and empathy and the students have more language around being marginalized,” said Minsky. “I feel like this was a real lesson for the faculty. You don’t have to go in there as a full expert. You can learn from students who’ve been steeped in this much longer.”
