Compassion is central to the purpose of medicine and the care of patients and their families. Compassionate healthcare begins with compassionate people, but cannot be consistently provided without systemic changes that enable clinicians and staff to collaborate and to care. We propose seven essential commitments to foster more compassionate healthcare organizations and systems: a commitment to ...

compassion is central to the purpose of medicine and the care of patients and their families. compassionate healthcare begins with compassionate people, but cannot be consistently provided without systemic changes that enable clinicians and staff to collaborate and to care. we propose seven essential commitments to foster more compassionate healthcare organizations and systems: a commitment to ...

compassion is a complex process that is innate, determined in part by individual traits, and modulated by a myriad of conscious and unconscious factors, immediate context, social structures and expectations, and organizational “culture.” compassion is an ethical foundation of healthcare and a widely shared value; it is not an optional luxury in the healing process. while the interrelations betw...

Background: From 2007 until 2012 Edinburgh Napier University’s School of Nursing Midwifery and Social Care in conjunction with NHS Lothian, collaborated on a programme of action research entitled, the Leadership in Compassionate Care Programme. One strand of this research focused on learning and teaching about compassionate care within the undergraduate curriculum. This debate article focuses o...

What does Islam have to offer health-care ethics that cannot be found elsewhere? I do not mean to suggest that there is only one answer to this question, because there are many. However, I will focus on the elevated status of the patient as the recipient of compassionate care. Today, the primary medical ethical issue is no longer a quandary such as “Should we withdraw artificial nutrition and h...

this comment on professor fotaki’s editorial agrees with her arguments that training health professionals in more compassionate, caring and ethically sound care will have little value unless the system in which they work changes. it argues that for system change to occur, senior management, government members and civil servants themselves need training so that they learn to understand the effec...

there is an emerging consensus that caring and compassion are under threat in the frenetic environment of modern healthcare. enabling and sustaining compassionate care requires not only a focus on the needs of the patient, but also on those of the care giver. as such, threats and exhortations to health professionals are likely to have limited and perverse effects and it is to the organisational...

this is a short commentary to the editorial issued by marianna fotaki, entitled: “why and how is compassion necessary to provide good quality healthcare.” it introduces the necessity of a more cognitive approach to explore further the determinants of behavior towards compassionate care. it raises questions about the importance of training towards a more patient-care and values driven healthcare...