An Analysis of Compassionate Care in Health and Social Care Settings

This essay delves into the multifaceted concept of compassionate care within health and social care contexts. It begins by defining compassion as a core value and examining its historical roots, tracing its origins in religious ideologies and the contributions of figures like Florence Nightingale. The essay then explores the importance of compassion in fostering patient satisfaction, emphasizing the roles of empathy, altruism, and trust. It discusses the principles of compassionate care, including equality, rights, and confidentiality, while also highlighting the unique needs of vulnerable populations such as children, the elderly, and those with physical or mental limitations. The assignment critiques the 6Cs framework for compassionate care, examining its strengths and weaknesses. It further analyzes the barriers healthcare professionals face, emphasizing the importance of self-compassion and the role of organizational culture. Finally, it discusses policy drivers and the responsibility of healthcare professionals in challenging poor practices and ensuring safeguarding, ultimately advocating for the development of positive, compassion-based practices.

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Compassionate care can be explained as a fundamental aspect of
health and social care and is an essential value that is embedded in the
professional standards as well as codes of practices (Finlay et al. 2015). It
is a necessary attribute in the care of vulnerable people. Being
compassionate is mainly seen to involve effective recognition as well as
responding to a susceptible individual with empathy while maintaining the
dignity of both the receiving care and providing care (Acosta and Hall
2018). In another perspective, it can be described as intelligent kindness
and is found to be central to how the people perceive in their care (Bickford
et al. 2019). This assignment will be mainly discussingthe various concepts
of compassion and how compassion is found to be intricately associated
with patient satisfaction in health and social care. It would be talking about
the history of compassion followed by a detailed discussion of the
importance of compassion in health and social care. It would be speaking
the parameters of compassion followed by the study of the vulnerable
population who require compassion. This would be then followed by the
critique of the concept of the 6cs put forward to ensure compassionate care
in healthcare. The famous policies in the nation who follows this would be
discussed. This would be followed by the barriers that professionals might
face while providing care. Self-compassionate care would be explained as

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well as supporting the contributions of the healthcare organizations in
developing a climate that influences compassion. This assignment would
discuss the responsibility of healthcare professionals to develop a positive
practice based on compassion and would also shed more lght on the
causes aboyut why some people and groups become vulnaerble within
health and social care services. It would show how policy drivers have
infleuned the practices of healthcare professionals along with their roles in
in challenging poor practice and ensuring that safeguarding takes place.
The concept of compassion is both advocated as well as translated
into practices throughout history. Its original root can be found to be
somewhere around in the 19th century rooted religious ideologies of Great
Britain which stated that all Christian adherents should always act
compassionately (Durkin et al. 2018). Not only in Christian doctrines but is
the concept of compassion also found to be present in the Islam where a
chapter is entirely dedicated in the Quran called the AL-Rahman which
means “most (Homan and Sirois 2017).” Historically, within the context of
the nursing profession, it was Florence Nightingale that was found to have
contributed to the profession by advocating her Christianity-inspired
compassionate beliefs and promoted them with the health and social care
services (Dowd et al. 2017). Compassion can be explained as the perfect

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combination of that of empathy as well as the altruism. It is seen to involve
the inherent embodiment of the feelings of another person in conjunction
with that of the desire to help (Selman et al. 2018).
Compassion can be described as the act of providing care that remains
based on empathy, respect as well as dignity (Sinclair et al. 2018). To
provide compassionate care, healthcare professionals need to create trust
between the service users and that of themselves. The healthcare
professionals can achieve this by effectively responding morally through
their suffering as well as vulnerabilities and ensuring ethically sensitive care
(Durkin et al. 2018). They also need to empower people to have as much
control over their health, their lives and on themselves. Trust can
successfully be developed when healthcare professionals are transparent,
open andhonest (Kang et al. 2018). One of the famous philosophers
namely Annette Baier had thoughtthat cardinal features of the trust are a
risk, power, vulnerability as well as care. Healthcare professionals-patient
relationship is found to be based on a sacred as well as privileged trust and
when this forms of the basis of healthcare services, it becomes essential
for both to mutually feel the bond between the nurse and the patient (Finlay
et al. 2015).

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The term compassion can be described as “co-suffer.” Studies think that
the component of empathy is significant in the health and social care as it
helps by alerting professionals to the needs of the patients and helps them
in motivating and meeting the needs of the patients (Kotsou et al. 2016). To
ensure that each of the patients is receiving appropriate care for the
improvement of the quality of life, these three principles need to be followed
for providing compassionate care services (Homan and Sirois 2017). The
first one is fostering equality and diversity which is supported by the second
one which talks about cultivating the rights as well as responsibilities, and
the third one is confidentiality of information.
Studies think that the act of compassion is a significant contributor in
ensuring high-quality care and the innate ability of the healthcare
professionals in empathizing and demonstrating passion is similarly
valuable as that of the academic training that they also uphold (Pfaff et al.
2017). Researchers have stated that the act of working with different types
of vulnerable people may impose high levels of risks (Kourakos et al.
2018). Therefore, they also have the immense responsibility in
demonstrating genuine compassion irrespective of this being leaned or
innate (Kang et al. 2018).

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Vulnerable service users are also seen to require greater compassion
from the healthcare professiona;s because of their incraesed suffering due
to emotional, physical or financial issues in their lives (Pfaff et al. 2017).
One of the studies had described the term vulnerable as “the ability to be
physically, mentally or emotionally hurt, influenced or attacked without
difficulty” (Kim and Gray 2018, pg:1099 ). Vulnerable groups might
comprise of children, elderly, ethnic minorities, homeless people, pregnant
women and people who suffer from different types of mental as well as
physical limitations (Homan and Sirois 2017). These are seen to include
the time during childhood where vulnerability can arise due to
underdeveloped cognitive, language, social and physical development
(Kotsou et al. 2016).
Some of the critical stages of low-level self-reliance are infancy as well as
old age. In such cases, an individual to develop into a healthy and
independent adult, they need to have proper experiences of the correct
level of compassion as well as care during the period of infant dependency
(Homan and Sirois 2017). Studies have discussed the consequences of
poor nurturing taking place during the crucial stages, and they have found
that it can be detrimental to both the individuals and even to the society
(Kourakos et al. 2018). Compelling exhibition of high-quality care, as well

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as compassion, can successfully promote healthy development as it is
essential for such vulnerable individuals to have an awareness of the ability
to facilitate empathy (Homan and Sirois 2017).
The relationship present between that of the child and that of the
caregiver is known as the attachment theory. When such attachment is
weak, it can be described by the psychologists as poor attachments (Rabb
2014). This has been found to have negative impacts on their mental health
and well-being, relationships that they share with people throughout life,
brain development and level of compassion towards their children (Mills
and Chapman 2016). Compassion can ehnahce the feelings of attachment
and children should always be shown and exhibited compassion so that
they develop successfully in all the diamins mentioned.
Palanica et al. (2018) have talked about the vulnerable issues that
prevent the people of the vulnerable groups in gaining access to health and
social care services in the nation. The help-seeking behavior of an
individual might get affected by the way he or she is treated as a result of
how the system works. It can be found that access of the vulnerable people
towards the health and social care services are impacted mainly in the
cohorts of the low socio-economic groups as well as the people from the
deprived circumstances as well as the elderly (Rykkie 2019). They might

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feel disadvantaged in their access to that of the resources due to
complexity in needing to know about the information and social, language
and even in support services (Pfaff et al. 2017). It has been found that in
such situation, the role of the healthcare professional is considered to be
that of the expert one and that of the service user is that of the compliance,
and hence it becomes essential for the healthcare professionals to maintain
a balance of this power through the efforts of compassion (Selman et al.
2018). This is mainly because patients rely entirely on professionals
regarding their technical skills and knowledge of the providers (Rabb 2014).
Service users are found to be more likely to be in a vulnerable position and
therefore, it becomes essential for the professionals to use their power and
expertise with the correct balance so that they can not only advocate for
the individuals but also empower them through development of therapeutic
relationship based on effective communication, compassion and empathy
(Homan and Sirois 2017).
A number of framework in healthcare has used the attribute of
compassion as one of their main components for delivering quality care.
The quality framework published by Jane Cummings in the year 2013 was
called the 6 C’s. Jane was the chief nursing officer, and she had outlined
six crucial elements that were required by all healthcare professionals for

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ensuring the enduring values of compassionate care that needs to be
provided for the service users. These can be specified as care,
competence, courage, communication, compassion and even commitment
(Bradshaw, 2016). Care can be referred to the caring services that
professionals need to provide to people to ensure the health and well-being
of people are helping them to recover (Rykkie 2019) gradually.
Compassion refers to the aspect of the development of the relationship
between service users and professionals based on empathy, dignity, and
respect. Courage helps in enabling professionals to perform the right thing
for the people and speaking for them and advocating their needs for
ensuring them safe future and quality life (Selman et al. 2018).
Commitment helps professionals to be dedicated to not only the clients but
also the populations for improving their care, taking actions for their well-
being, overcome challenges and others to provide high-quality care. These
six attributes of healthcare services were put high significance in the policy
named Compassion in Practice – one year on and were published by NHS
(Sinclair et al. 2017). The policy had successfully implemented these
principles of compassionate care and with the help of these parameters or
attributes; they had proposed six action plans in their policy to encourage
professionals to apply compassion in their practices (Singh et al. 2018).

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The policymakers in this way have proposed the development of
compassionate practices in the health and social care by following the
achievement of the action areas successfully.
Despite the different types of positive intentions of the 6cs in the provision
of compassionate care, Bradshaw (2016) had argued about the loopholes
that he had found in this theory of compassionate care. He has thought that
this approach lacks coherence where he explained that virtue is not
naturally outcome driven and therefore, it can never be measured, and
hence 6 Cs becomes a form for him that lack logical interconnection.
Policies might look at compassion as a skill that can be measured, but
there had been many reports of common failing with the system if health
and social care that prove otherwise. Policy drivers like that of the 6Cs
have been debated when used by chief nursing officers in the same way as
that of the intentionalgrounding (Singh et al. 2018).
Different types of healthcare challenges might arise continually while
healthcare professionals tend to provide service to various clients (Sinclair
et al. 2017). . Although the number of healthcare professionals in the health
and social care settings is seen to raise demands in such healthcare
settings are also increasing at an alarming rate. Nowadays, healthcare
professionals are providing care services to people with increasingly

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complex and severe conditions, and this had resulted in changes the
healthcare needs and the preferences of the people (Sinclair et al. 2016).
Therefore, healthcare professionals are often seen to face various
challenges that impede the provision of compassionate care (Singh et al.
2018). Increased demand for healthcare services makes the
healthcare professionals feel stressed as the required services are often
found to be higher in amount than that they can provide. When healthcare
professionals are bound to provide services to more patients than they can
successfully manage can result in poor quality care that lacks empathy and
compassion.
Moreover, the greatest number of patients suffering from multiple chronic
disorders creates further pressures on healthcare professionals as
professionals must care for many diseases in patients (Sinclair et al. 2017).
. Such work-burden builds massive work-pressure on the healthcare
professionals making them suffer from stress and burnouts. They are seen
to suffer from anxiety, fatigue, headache, backache, spondylitis, metabolic
disorders and many others (Sirois et al. 2015). They are also seen to suffer
from anxiety, depression, panic attacks, and similar others. Nurses who are
themselves suffering from miserable quality lives can never engage in
providing compassionate care to service users as they would not be able to

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be physically and emotionally fit for delivering high-quality, compassionate
care to the patients (Sirois et al. 2015). Such healthcare professionals are
found to have lower job satisfaction as well as low morale. These impact
the care services they provide which are not only of poor quality but also
lacks safety and compassion (Sinclair et al., 2017).
Studies have found that such cases in healthcare sectors often result in
miserable quality life of the healthcare professionals with not only result in
low work-life balance but can also impact them physically, emotionally as
well as psychologically (Yongson et al. 2017). When healthcare
professionals must handle many patients within a short period, they cannot
allocate sufficient amount of time to each of the service users required for
effective communication and therapeutic development through the
exhibition of empathy and compassion (Sirois et al. 2015). Lack of shortage
of healthcare professionals for the significant number of patients with their
complex demands acts as one of the challenges by which the healthcare
professionals cannot provide quality and compassionate care (Raab et al.
2015). It is crucial for the health and social sectors to employ more and
more professionals so that they can successfully align with the needs of the
considerable number of patients and able to develop a therapeutic
relationship with the patients. Development of such rapports and bonds

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are associated with higher patient satisfaction, more adherence and
compliance of the service users with the treatments plans and interventions
proposed by them and with the empowering of the patients effectively
(Sinclair et al., 2017). All these can be only achieved when nurses show
compassion and empathy (Yongson et al. 2017). To help professionals
provide compassionate care, the healthcare organizations, as well as the
governmental sectors, need to undertake initiatives by which they can
manage the shortage of healthcare professionals successfully.
An essential concept of self-compassion is now considered to be extremely
important to be developed by the healthcare professionals that in a way
help them to become competent in providing compassionate services to
patients (Raab et al. 2015). Self-compassion can be described as the term
that refers to compassion towards oneself. It does not mean being selfish
as well as self-centered and does not signify that the individuals must place
its self-care at a higher priority than being compassionate towards others
(Raab et al. 2015). Sinclair et al. (2017, pg :437) had stated that “Self-
compassion acknowledges the vulnerability of all human beings because
by being compassionate towards themselves, an individual is an
acceptance that they, as well as others, can be easily harmed and that
suffering is an inherent aspect of being human.”Self-compassion has been