Education aimed at nurturing “non-cognitive abilities” that are not measured as academic skills has been garnering attention because these abilities can contribute to academic performance and life success. Empathy, one of these “non-cognitive abilities,” has been conceptualized in different ways in education, psychology and health care professional education. Therefore, this article provides an overview of the topic by combining its status as a “non-cognitive ability” with its role in health care professional education. This paper also reviews educational practices implemented to foster empathy.　First, we attempt to clarify the characteristics of empathy within the focus of different contexts. Through this, we introduce the concept of empathy in health care professional education as similar to that of psychology, in that it can be divided into two elements: cognitive and emotional. Second, regarding the elements of empathy, we review examples of educational programs that have been implemented to foster empathy among students in health care professional education, comparing them to their general education counterparts. Thus, we broaden the scope of empathy to include psychological attributes and skills, as well as empathetic environments and situations in which students and health care professionals find it difficult to empathize with others. Thus, this article can be used as a guide for overviewing the concept of empathy and developing education on empathy in health care professional education.

We developed an educational program on cultural competence for psychiatric professionals. Regarding social justice education that critically questions dominant ideologies, we held weekly 30-minute discussion groups with multidisciplinary professionals. Rather than focusing on a particular culture group, we aimed to realize through critical self-reflection, as advocated by Kumagai and Lypson, that “there is a part of the other that I cannot know,” and named this group the “Discussion Group on Otherness.” Using essays on medical culture written by researchers in the medical humanities as our main teaching material, we discussed what is (or should be) the relevant problem. This article discusses the issues that have emerged so far, the responses to these issues, and future developments.

The first author set up a study group with other members in 2014, aiming to improve multidisciplinary collaboration through reflection and discussions on discomfort ( “Moyatto” in Japanese) while focusing on group members’ experiences at work. One-hour online sessions were conducted monthly with multidisciplinary professionals from several institutions. We reflected on interprofessional collaboration based on Moyatto. This paper describes the history of the study group’s inception and development, the learning process of each session, and the theory as a framework. It also reports on the practice and changes in our study group, concluding that interprofessional collaboration requires first-order reflection within a same-profession group and second-order reflection among diverse professionals.