November 11, 2025
By: Nicole Jones-Gerbino, President
In healthcare leadership, the focus is often on strategy, financial performance, and operational outcomes. After twenty years in the business of radiology, I know how much these matter. They keep organizations stable and patients cared for.
But the longer I’ve led, the more convinced I’ve become that the culture holding it all together rests on something quieter. It rests on how leaders choose to show up for their people. That is why I am writing about engaged empathy. It is not a soft skill, it is a leadership practice that builds trust, strengthens teams, and ultimately shapes how organizations weather stress.
In the current radiology industry, where the demands are constant and the pressure unrelenting, engaged empathy can be the difference between teams that endure and teams that fracture.
Sympathy is easy. We have all offered it at some point. A brief word. A polite pause. A simple, “I’m sorry to hear that.” It is appropriate, but it rarely asks much of us.
What Engaged Empathy Looks Like
At its core, engaged empathy is a practice. It is more than a feeling. It is a choice to stay connected to someone’s story even after the moment has passed. It is the kindness of remembering. It is recalling a conversation weeks later and asking how the situation turned out. It is noticing the tension on someone’s face and choosing not to walk past it. It is following up again when everyone else has already moved on.
I have been living this lesson in a personal way. One of my closest friends recently faced a sudden, heartbreaking medical crisis. What struck me most was not the initial outpouring of sympathy, but the people who remembered to check in later. A text message on a Sunday evening. Taking a project initiative off my shoulders. A link to an article about stroke recovery. A thoughtful question about her well
being, and mine. That is engaged empathy.
Engaged empathy makes people feel not just seen, but remembered. It says, “You still matter. I have not forgotten you. I am still here.” In a healthcare world that runs at relentless speed, remembering someone may be the rarest act of kindness we can offer.
The Cost and the Power
This kind of empathy costs something.
It takes energy to keep track of someone else’s story. It requires time to check back in when your own plate is full. It asks for emotional presence in the middle of metrics, meetings, and deadlines. Sometimes it asks us to show up without being asked. Sometimes it asks us to carry something quietly alongside someone else. That is what makes it powerful.
Some of the most meaningful leadership I have seen did not come from the person with the best plan or the loudest voice. It came from the leader who remembered.
The one who circled back. The one who held space for someone long after others had moved on. Think about the last time someone remembered something you were carrying. Not because you reminded them, but because they chose to hold onto it. That kind of care can dissolve isolation in an instant. It reassures people that their pain did not disappear into the noise of the day.
Engaged empathy says, “I still see you. You are still on my mind.” These leaders did not just say, “Let me know if you need anything.” They did something. They showed up. They covered a meeting. They sent a note. They took the weight off for a moment. Engaged empathy is empathy with agency. It does not just feel. It acts.
Leading with Engaged Empathy in Healthcare
If you are leading in healthcare today, this practice matters more than ever.
Our people are carrying more than they show. Radiologists are balancing patient care with shrinking reimbursements. Imaging technologists are coping with long hours and rising burnout. Administrative staff are navigating denials, patient complaints, and endless system changes. Leaders themselves absorb stress from every angle.
Stress, grief, and fatigue do not clock out when the workday ends. If we want to build cultures where people are not only surviving but able to contribute with energy and trust, we cannot rely on one-time kindness.
We need to choose empathy that stays. This does not mean solving everything. It does not require fixing every struggle. It means refusing to treat someone’s pain as a passing moment. It means remembering. It means staying close.
In a culture that rewards speed, efficiency, and constant progress, the decision to
stay relationally aware may be the most countercultural act of leadership we can take.
The Quiet Practice That Builds Trust
Engaged empathy will not show up in a financial report. It is not measured in KPIs. But it is remembered. When people feel remembered, they trust more. When they trust more, they contribute differently.
Culture does not shift only through big initiatives. Sometimes it shifts because someone in organizational leadership cared enough to remember, and cared enough to act.
So ask yourself:
• Who trusted you with something hard last month?
• Who do you need to follow up with now?
• Where could a quiet gesture make someone feel less alone?
You cannot do everything. You do not need to.
But you can do something. And for the people you lead, that may be what they carry with them the longest.
This full article can also be read on the RBMA Bulletin here.
Nicole Jones-Gerbino sees around corners and asks questions that bring continuous improvement for our clients. She brings over two decades of experience in practice management, revenue cycle leadership, and operations across radiology practices and health systems to PBS. Nicole’s tenure in radiology includes 5 years leading revenue cycle and outpatient operations for a leading multi-site imaging practice in Southern California. Her years of revenue cycle management in the national arena working with some of the largest radiology practices in the country position PBS to deliver industry-leading results. Most recently, Nicole worked in a senior leadership role at UC San Diego Health where she managed strategic growth and client development of large multi-specialty networks, helping providers navigate regulatory and quality programs and improve their financial outlook. She has served on various compliance and state regulatory boards, including the executive committee of the California RBMA.