Our mission is to humanise healthcare. We believe high quality care is compassionate towards patients and their families, and we work with organisations and care teams to find ways to improve the quality of care. But we also recognise that there needs to be compassion towards staff within the health and care system. Evidence shows that staff face intense pressures at work, and need to be well supported if they are to provide compassionate care.
Compassionate care
because patients are always anxious and vulnerable, so small acts of kindness often make the biggest difference to them
View all news and blogs
Latest news and blogs
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Blog 24 May 2018
Dying matters: Living well to the very end
Our Head of Improvement Bev Fitzsimons wrote a blog for NHS England in support of Dying Matters Week (14-18 May) in which she described the work of our end-of-life care collaborative 'Living Well to the Very End'.
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Blog 08 May 2018
What is human healthcare?
Jocelyn Cornwell reviews some of the key questions arising at our conference on ‘making healthcare more human’, and the solutions identified.
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Blog 30 April 2018
Enabling and supporting staff to care well
Jill Maben writes about her research into the challenges of working in healthcare and how these can be overcome to help staff to care well for their patients.
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Working in healthcare is challenging
Healthcare staff work in an environment where untreatable and terminal illness, disfigurement, suffering, and the pain of loss for patients and families can result in staff distancing themselves as a means of self-protection, which makes it more difficult to feel and show compassion
08 January 1988 Book -
Professionals are trained to be emotionally detatched from their patients
Professional training emphasises the importance of developing an ability to detach oneself from the patient’s distress and personal circumstances
01 April 2009 Paper -
Stress and burnout limit compassion
Stress, and at its extreme, burnout, produces a lowered sense of personal effectiveness, emotional exhaustion, and depersonalisation of others which can limit compassion, and at its most extreme cause cruelty towards patients.
02 February 2015 Paper -
Support from colleagues boosts compassionate care
There is agreement that role modelling by colleagues is a powerful way of learning how to behave compassionately.
01 May 2006 Paper -
Reflective practice supports compassionate care
Staff who use reflective practice, such as Schwartz Rounds, find it easier to provide compassionate care
26 January 2016 Report -
Good teamwork enables compassionate care
11 September 2011 Paper
View all evidence