A Guide to Compassionate Healthcare looks at how to maintain wellbeing in today’s challenging healthcare environments, enabling practitioners to make a positive difference to the care environment whilst providing compassionate care to patients. This practical guide focuses on strategies to maintain health and wellbeing as health care practitioners, in relation to stress management, resilience and positivity. Health and social care practitioners have been challenged over and above anything they have faced before due to the Covid pandemic. These situations have caused extreme trauma and stress to patients, their loved ones and those who have been struggling to care for them. The book highlights why resilience and good stress management are crucial, and how they can be achieved through a focus on wellbeing and positivity, referring to her RESPECT toolkit: Resilience, Emotional intelligence, Stress management, Positivity, Energy and motivation, Challenge and Team leadership. This is essential reading for all those working in healthcare today who are passionate about compassionate care and want to ensure that they remain positive and well, particularly newly qualified staff.

Written by a leading healthcare academic and an accredited international business coach, this book takes a new approach to one of the most crucial issues in healthcare – how to care for patients appreciatively, responsively and compassionately. In the light of the findings of the Francis Report (2013), and at a time when healthcare services are under enormous pressure, there is a clear and urgent need for such a book. Despite the challenges of ill health, the authors demonstrate that the opportunity is there for any healthcare practitioner to draw out what the patient needs and desires, in line with the patient’s own values, purposes and beliefs. This approach seeks to alleviate suffering and allows the patient to be more empowered and motivated to change, discovering choice and possibility in times of adversity. In this way, the practitioner can help the patient increase their own resilience and resourcefulness. At the same time, the practitioner discovers their own ability to self-care and self-manage. Aimed at healthcare students and practitioners at all levels, Appreciative Healthcare Practice will provide a valuable and supportive learning resource for a wide range of individuals involved in caring. Contents include: Introduction Carers’ stories Compassionate and dignified care Professionalism – on becoming a professional Applying appreciative inquiry in practice and education Creativity and care Applying the three-eye model to healthcare Mindful healthcare practice The appreciative care worker and coach

The pursuit of excellent compassionate care should be at the heart of all practice. However, it can be challenging for practitioners to deliver this day after day in a context of tight budgets and targets, which can erode the passion with which they entered their professions. Supporting Compassionate Healthcare Practice encourages healthcare professionals to look after themselves in order to maintain and develop their compassionate practice. This book considers how stress management, resilience, wellbeing and positivity can help all health professionals remain close to the values, attitudes and attributes that brought them into the caring professions. It presents and critiques the evidence base for these key concepts, bringing them to life with numerous case studies and examples, and develops a framework - RESPECT - for practice. This innovative volume is essential reading for all healthcare students, academics and professionals interested in improving both the quality of care and the wellbeing of patients and practitioners alike.

This book provides a practical guide on the art and science of compassionate care in an era of healthcare crisis due to the COVID-19 pandemic that is inflicting long-lasting financial and psychosocial trauma on an unprecedented scale. A new approach to compassionate care is presented based on the overarching concepts of empathy, person and family centeredness, therapeutic relationship, kindness, gratitude, spirituality, communication skills, shared decision making, positive psychology, adversity-activated development, self-care, compassion fatigue, spirituality which are more than ever critical in successfully managing the pandemic adversity in front of us. This book draws on clinical experience, educational activities and evidence-based knowledge from academic physicians (primary, secondary and tertiary care), nurses, psychologists, health economists, healthcare managers, health policymakers, medical professionals students and patients. It provides skills and knowledge that can be implemented in daily clinical practice based on all levels of healthcare on a whole-person approach. An array of clinical cases, patient journeys, published evidence and practical experience is combined to deliver in a practical way unique guidance and advice. The target audience is all healthcare professionals, health policymakers, healthcare managers and patient associations. This approach of Compassionate Care is of great importance and can save lives and money in these unprecedented times of global healthcare care system challenges.

Bringing together the crucially important topics of cultural competence and compassion for the first time, this book explores how to practise ‘culturally competent compassion’ in healthcare settings – that is, understanding the suffering of others and wanting to do something about it using culturally appropriate and acceptable caring interventions. This text first discusses the philosophical and religious roots of compassion before investigating notions of health, illness, culture and multicultural societies. Drawing this information together, it then introduces two invaluable frameworks for practice, one of cultural competence and one of culturally competent compassion, and applies them to care scenarios. Papadopoulos goes on to discuss: how nurses in different countries understand and provide compassion in practice; how students learn about compassion; how leaders can create and champion compassionate working environments; and how we can, and whether we should, measure compassion. Culturally Competent Compassion is essential reading for healthcare students and its combination of theoretical content and practice application provides a relevant and interesting learning experience. The innovative model for practice presented here will also be of interest to researchers exploring cultural competence and compassion in healthcare.

This practical book suggests ways in which healthcare students and practitioners can develop their compassion strengths. Discussing what compassion is and means, it includes a new compassion strength model and a series of exercises the reader can use for reflecting on and developing their practice. A hallmark of healthcare practice is compassion, yet there is a lack of understanding as to what compassion is and how it can be developed in practice. The book begins with the challenge of defining compassion, particularly looking at healthcare contexts and making links between self-care and caring for others. It then presents a new, evidence-based holistic model that brings together key elements of compassion for self and other, along with a scale that readers can measure themselves against. Identifying eight strengths "self-care, connection, communication, competency, empathy, interpersonal skills, character, and engagement" Durkin provides the theoretical background to each, accompanied with suggestions for practice and reflective activities. It ends with a selection of vignettes that readers can use to try out their strengths. Highlighting the concept of compassion strengths, and compassion as a way of being, this is an essential read for healthcare students and practitioners, whether involved in direct patient care or management.

Despite the scope and sophistication of contemporary health care, there is increasing international concern about the perceived lack of compassion in its delivery. Citing evidence that when the basic needs of patients are attended to with kindness and understanding, recovery often takes place at a faster level, patients cope more effectively with the self-management of chronic disorders and can more easily overcome anxiety associated with various disorders, this book looks at how good care can be put back into the process of caring. Beginning with an introduction to the historical values associated with the concept of compassion, the text goes on to provide a bio-psycho-social theoretical framework within which the concept might be further explained. The third part presents thought-provoking case studies and explores the implementation and impact of compassion in a range of healthcare settings. The fourth part investigates the role that organizations and their structures can play in promoting or hindering the provision of compassion. The book concludes by discussing how compassion may be taught and evaluated, and suggesting ways for increasing the attention paid to compassion in health care. Developing a multi-disciplinary theory of compassionate care, and underpinned by empirical examples of good practice, this volume is a valuable resource for all those interesting in understanding and supporting compassion in health care, including advanced students, academics and practitioners within medicine, nursing, psychology, allied health, sociology and philosophy.

It is vital that nurses providing person-centred care understand how culture and diversity affect patients’ experience of health care. This book provides the knowledge, awareness and skills, ensuring that nursing students are able to communicate effectively with people from across the social spectrum.

While advances in medical science and disease treatments are always welcome, real transformation of healthcare requires us to focus on whole persons, not just maladies. Our responsibilities to ill people, and frail elders, including those with dementia, are not merely obligations, but also response-abilities. Beyond relieving suffering and meeting their basic biological needs, we can nurture each individual as a whole person and promote his or her wellbeing. The benefits are tangible and mutual. Helping professionals are rewarded through the deep and meaningful connections they form with the remarkable people they serve. In Return of Compassion to Healthcare the Tellis-Nayaks offer blueprints for person-centered care that can guide leaders of healthcare, aging services, government and business in building enlightened clinical programs and assisted-living communities for medically ill and otherwise vulnerable people. As Vivian and Mary Tellis-Nayak so clearly show, solutions are available. Evidence-based treatments are valuable, however, the best care is also tender and loving. Ira Byock, MD is founder and chief medical officer for the Institute for Human Caring, Providence Health & Service. His books include Dying Well and The Best Care Possible.