Patient-centered care retreats as a method for enhancing and sustaining compassion in action in healthcare settings

Background: Compassion, and its close counterparts empathy and kindness, are increasingly being recognized as essential dimensions of a quality health care experience, with further evidence demonstrating that they can be developed behaviors. This has spurred the creation of a number of curricula and tools for teaching empathy and compassionate communication, however many of these curricula approach this work from a task orientation, neglecting to address the important dimension of organizational culture. Case description: The Planetree patient-centered care retreat, first delivered in 1985, combines skill-development with inspiration and team-building to support staff in connecting to their deeper motivations for being a caregiver. It offers tools and support for nurturing compassion among all caregivers and leaders, and for embedding compassionate human interactions into organizational processes and practices. Though there is ample room for customization of the retreat curriculum to meet specific organizational needs, common elements of the Planetree patient-centered care retreat include: In-person delivery to promote team-building and human connections Experiential in nature Facilitated by peers from within the organization Attended by a co-mingled staff group from a variety of departments/sectors of the organization. Discussion and Evaluation: The experience of health care organizations that have committed to sending a critical mass of employees through the retreat process suggests that the dual focus on inspiration and skills-building drives improved outcomes related to both the patient and employee experience. Conclusions: These outcomes result from a curriculum and program structure specially designed to cultivate change agents within an organization. The retreat is a collective experience, binding employees who perform a variety of functions from different sectors of the organization around a common purpose and vision for how care is to be delivered. Optimally, as a critical mass of employees participates in this shared experience the momentum to bring about the change envisioned during the retreats builds until providing compassionate, patient-centered care is no longer the exception, but the expectation within the organization.