Carolyn Cleveland

Carolyn is an NHS England Approved Trainer under the National Framework for Lot 2 - Training programmes and Lot 4c - Patient and staff involvement in patient safety incidents. She has a background in psychology and counselling, and conceived C&C Empathy Training from her direct experience of a patient safety and compassionate communication failures in the NHS complaints process and inquest system. Carolyn specialised in loss, bereavement and vulnerability and following the loss of a child herself. she found many of the systems did not grasp the emotional experience, motivations and needs, losing sight of empathic communication, and causing further unnecessary harm. 

Carolyn is passionate about taking empathy and wellbeing out of the textbook and into real life, exploring communication, complaints, leadership, and psychological safety through the lens of empathy. Carolyn uses emotive real-life material, interspersed with neuroscience, perspectives and all important humour, to recognise the vital part emotional awareness and personal wellbeing plays in growing confidence in using, understanding, and using our own empathy to create psychological safety.

At the core of Carolyn work sits an emotive and thought provoking narrative, used to explorethe complexities of emotionally focused outlooks and work. She works with many health care organisations, NHSE/I, civil servants, legal teams, charities and corporate organisations. She was also part of the National Coroner’s Officers Training Programme 2019.

• BE HUMAN Model – Developing Emotional Resilience and Guarding Against Compassion Fatigue
• A Journey Through Complaints and Incidents Using Empathy to Compassionately Engage – Linking to PSIRF and the Complaints Standards Framework
• A Journey Through Leadership using Empathy
• Psychological Safety and Civility – Using empathy and emotional awareness to get to the root cause
• Empathy in communication