BACKGROUND Working in healthcare is increasingly challenging for nurses, physicians, and other health professionals. Ongoing high stress takes a toll on clinicians and interferes with the quality of their patient care. Fostering clinician wellbeing needs to be a priority; if not, the human and financial consequences are significant. OBJECTIVE To describe the University of Virginia (UVA) Schoo...

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...

Home health care is a compassionate, cost-effective, and practical alternative for some individuals who require long-term or constant care. However, the coverage of home health care costs is far from comprehensive under the Medicare, Medicaid, and private pay systems. A uniform and comprehensive coverage system is necessary.

It is essential for staff to feel supported in their jobs if they are to continuously provide high quality compassionate care to patients. One way of supporting staff, of showing them that their health and wellbeing matter, is to offer them opportunities for compassionate dialogue about their experiences of delivering care--its rewards, frustrations and challenges--and their resulting thoughts ...

Humans have a deeply rooted, existential fear of death that lurks suppressed in their unconscious most of the time. Dr. Balfour Mount, a palliative care specialist, thinks this is one of the factors preventing the health care system from providing good and compassionate care for the dying.

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 article outlines crucial elements of Hospice care ~ stressing Hospice philosophy, types of care provided, the Interdisciplinary approach to patient and family support, specific experiences with dying patients, and the responsibility of Hospice to the care of Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome patients. Most of I the information was based on experiences of St. Anthony’s Hospice and Life Enr...

In 1982, the author attended a lecture by Professor Joseph Civetta dealing with the concept that, at times, the goal of care should be comfort rather than cure, and that inappropriate care prolonged dying and suffering. Efforts to improve end-of-life care subsequent to this had effects on care at a local level and at a state level. Intensive care providers should be leaders in the provision of ...

Background: Person-centred practice, which includes compassion, needs to be well facilitated in order to flourish in healthcare settings. Facilitation is known to be complex and requires expert knowing and skills. The importance of adequate facilitator support is recognised. The literature however is unclear about the nature of this support and how it can be offered to facilitators while engagi...