We are delighted to introduce our lineup of keynote speakers for this year’s conference: 

Dr Andy Ward   

Dr Andy Ward is an Associate Professor in Medical Education and Honorary Senior Academic GP at the Stoneygate Centre for Empathic Healthcare, Leicester Medical School. He develops innovative, evidence-based approaches to embed and sustain empathy across medical curricula and has presented his work internationally. He works clinically as a GP providing healthcare to people experiencing homelessness. 

https://le.ac.uk/people/andy-ward 

Plenary Presentation: 

Empathy in Healthcare: Evidence, Connection, and Transformative Practice

Empathy lies at the heart of meaningful healthcare communication, improving patient experience, clinical outcomes, and practitioner wellbeing. This plenary explores robust evidence demonstrating the benefits of therapeutic empathy for both patients and clinicians, clarifies what therapeutic empathy means in clinical practice, and outlines simple, actionable ways to enhance empathic interactions. It also examines the role of empathy within healthcare teams and considers how empathy can be effectively taught and sustained within clinical education to support compassionate, human-centred care.

Rachael Roberts

Rachael Roberts is a teacher educator, speaker and business mentor with more than 35 years’ experience in English language teaching. She has worked across teaching, teacher education, publishing and materials writing, and now supports freelance language professionals in building sustainable, specialised businesses.

Plenary Presentation:

What English for Healthcare already knows about the future.

At a time when language support is increasingly automated, instant and widely accessible, where does that leave English for Healthcare?In this plenary, Rachael Roberts explores why highly contextual, purpose-driven communication teaching may be unusually well positioned for the future. The session reflects on the growing importance of relational and deeply situated communication, and considers why this kind of expertise can be both highly valuable and surprisingly difficult to articulate or make visible from the outside. The plenary also explores the implications this has for professional identity, sustainability and the future of specialist communication teaching.