Healthcare marketers face a unique challenge: How do you communicate complex medical information in a way that connects with patients while maintaining clinical accuracy?
The answer isn’t oversimplification—it’s empathetic translation.
After decades of working with healthcare brands and their SMEs, we’ve seen the disconnect firsthand. Organizations often speak from their own perspective, using language and messaging priorities that feel natural internally but land flat with patients. Meanwhile, patients are navigating emotional terrain—anxiety, confusion, fear and often financial stress—with no roadmap. In shaping our approach to this challenge, we’ve collaborated closely with our Creative Director of Brand & Story, Brian Kelley, whose work centers on distilling complex ideas into emotionally resonant, patient-centered communication. His creative lens helped inform the Empathy Translation Framework featured in this article.
The solution lies in becoming an “empathy translator” to convert clinical complexity into human understanding without losing medical integrity.
Our three-step Empathy Translation Framework
Step 1: Feel First
Before crafting any message, put yourself in your patient’s emotional state. Are they receiving a diagnosis? Choosing between treatment options? Managing a chronic condition? Each scenario carries distinct emotional weight that requires different communication approaches.
The Feel First step means acknowledging the patient’s emotional reality before addressing their informational needs. When patients feel understood, they’re more receptive to complex information.
Step 2: Translate Second
Translating your message isn’t a language problem—it’s a meaning problem. It requires deeply understanding your audience: their emotional state, their decision-making mindset, their preferred sources of information. Are they searching late at night, overwhelmed and unsure? Or are they confidently comparing options with a family member? These insights shape the words that will mean something to them.
This is where a well-informed patient journey map becomes invaluable. It helps uncover what your audience needs to hear—not just what your organization wants to say.
Empathy-driven translation takes what matters clinically and expresses it in a way that matters personally. The message is still accurate. But now, it’s relevant. When your message reflects what patients are truly worried about, how they make decisions, and what makes them feel supported, you move from communication to connection.
We’re not just translating medical terms. We’re translating intentions. It’s about helping people see themselves in the message and trust what they find. – Brian Kelley, Creative Director, Brand & Story, JPL
Step 3: Validate Third
The final step involves validating both the emotional and informational components of your message. Does your communication acknowledge the complexity patients feel? Does it provide clear next steps? Most importantly, does it leave patients feeling more informed and empowered rather than overwhelmed?
Breaking through the sea of sameness
Many healthcare organizations fall into similar communication patterns—clinical tone, industry jargon and assumption of patient knowledge. This creates a “sea of sameness” where one health system’s messaging sounds identical to another’s.
Empathy translation differentiates your organization by demonstrating genuine understanding of the patient experience. Identify specific emotional pain points and information gaps where empathy translation can make the biggest impact. When you acknowledge that healthcare feels complicated to patients—even when it seems routine to providers—you build trust and connection.
Moving beyond complexity avoidance
Rather than avoiding complexity, successful healthcare marketing addresses it head-on with empathy and clarity. Patients appreciate honesty about healthcare’s inherent complexity when it’s paired with support and clear guidance.
The organizations that master empathy translation build deeper patient relationships and stronger community trust when they communicate more effectively.
Healthcare marketing’s future belongs to organizations that can bridge the gap between clinical expertise and human experience. Our Empathy Translation Framework provides a starting point for making that connection authentic and actionable.
