Teaching empathy to healthcare professionals: CARE approach adaptation to the Brazilian context

The aim of this work was to adapt the CARE Approach to the Brazilian context. The CARE Approach is a Scottish tool for teaching empathy to healthcare professionals that includes a textbook available both in print and online, and 34 videos with examples of health interactions between patients and healthcare professionals. Three stages of cross-cultural adaptation were performed: initial translation by a health professional proficient in English and supervised by two senior healthcare professionals; evaluation of translation by a multiprofessional committee formed by a representative of each category (nursing, medicine, nutrition, speech therapy, physiotherapy, psychology, and occupational therapy); review of the translated version with the committee modifications, performed by two specialists in the linguistic area capable of back-translation and grammatical review. Despite the difficulty of finding publications to reference this type of cross-cultural adaptation, it was based on literature recommendations, considering the relevant steps for the type of material (textbook). In any case, it is already known that program adaptations must follow clear and specific stages, based on theoretical models and cultural contexts to qualify scientific progress. Most of the committee's evaluations were considered Very Good or Good, both for the text and the videos. There were accepted changes suggested for better representing the context of health care. The cross-cultural adaptation was concluded resulting in the CARE Approach - Brazilian version with the future perspective of evaluating its viability for training healthcare professionals.