Empathy as an Essential Skill of Interprofessional Collaboration in Healthcare: A Narrative Review

TL;DR

Empathy plays a key role in interprofessional healthcare collaboration, influencing communication, teamwork, and ethics, but its full impact depends on organizational factors.

Contribution

This paper bridges empathy and interprofessional collaboration by analyzing its influence across four core competencies in healthcare.

Findings

Empathy supports humanitarian values and ethical decision-making in interprofessional settings.

Empathy enhances communication and team dynamics through conflict resolution and leadership.

Evidence for empathy's role in roles and responsibilities remains limited.

Abstract

Background/Objectives: Despite growing recognition of empathy as a cornerstone of high-quality care, its role within interprofessional collaboration remains underexplored. While the Interprofessional Education Collaborative explicitly references empathy only under the Values and Ethics domain, emerging evidence suggests its potential relevance across all four core competencies. This study aimed to explore the influence of empathy on each of the Interprofessional Education Collaborative core competencies and to highlight its role in the contemporary interprofessional healthcare environment. Methods: A narrative literature review was conducted to identify articles published in English between 2014 and 2025, through searches of PubMed and Scopus. The sub-competency statements of the Interprofessional Education Collaborative framework were used to guide keyword selection and map concepts that empathy may influence. Results: Seventy-two articles were included in this narrative review. According to the literature, evidence suggests that empathy may support humanitarian values and ethical decision making (Values and Ethics), but the mechanisms underlying this remain to be considered. Empathy has also been discussed in relation to therapeutic and team communication (Communication), as well as to processes such as conflict resolution, supportive leadership, team cohesion, and staff well-being (Teams and Teamwork). The evidence regarding the Roles and Responsibilities domain remains relatively limited, preventing definitive conclusions about the potential influence of empathy in this domain. A clear distinction emerges between clinical and interprofessional empathy, with evidence suggesting that both are essential for collaborative practice. Conclusions: Empathy appears to be linked with several domains of interprofessional collaboration and may represent an important relational component in collaborative healthcare practice. However, the influence of empathy may depend on structural and organizational conditions and may vary across different interprofessional healthcare contexts. These findings offer a conceptual bridge between empathy and interprofessional collaboration, providing actionable insights for educators, leaders, and policymakers involved in healthcare training.