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Shari Bookstaff
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Empathy superstar
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Join date: Sep 8, 2025
About
This course is created by Shari Bookstaff, founder of Impact of Empathy marine biology professor, and survivor of brain surgery, stroke, paralysis, and long-term hospitalization.
Shari has spent years on both sides of the healthcare experience —❌ as a critically ill patient unable to speak, move, or breathe✔️ and as an educator teaching thousands of professionals how small actions dramatically change patient outcomes
Her real stories show exactly what helps patients feel safe — and what doesn’t.
You’ll see empathy not as a theory, but as something patients feel instantly.
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Empathy superstarCompleted Empathy Edge Mini-Course AND Signed up for Empathy Boost emails
Posts (41)
Apr 6, 2026 ∙ 2 min
When Patients Feel Seen, They Stay: A Lesson in Empathy and Compliance
I once saw a specialist who seemed to have given up on me before I even walked through the door. He told me my left cornea was irreparably damaged. His only hope, he said, was that I wouldn’t lose the eye altogether. There was no sense of partnership in that conversation—no curiosity, no reassurance, no effort to help me understand what came next. Just a quiet closing of the door. At my second visit, he couldn’t even find my chart. He wasn’t able to tell me whether anything had changed,...
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Mar 24, 2026 ∙ 2 min
No “4th and 22”: Finding Comfort Before the Unknown
The moments before something life-changing often don’t feel the way you expect them to. One of the most powerful examples comes from a deeply personal moment in my own life—midway through my career, when I was diagnosed with a life-threatening brain tumor. Before my surgery, my dad and I weren’t sitting in silence or speaking in hushed, serious tones. We were joking. Laughing, even. We started comparing the upcoming surgery to a football game. We made a deal— No “4th and 22” situations. No...
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Mar 17, 2026 ∙ 2 min
Confessions of a Non-Compliant Patient
My disagreements with medical professionals had to be temporarily put on hold when a more urgent health issue arose. One evening, I went to an urgent care center after taking a spectacular fall. My hip had swollen to impressive proportions and was decorated with bruising dramatic enough to qualify as modern art. At the front desk, the receptionist asked for my name and told me to wait. After a few minutes she led me to an exam room. She didn’t look at me long enough to notice that I was...
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