University Nursing Assignment: Compassionate Care in Healthcare

This nursing assignment explores the critical role of compassionate care in healthcare, emphasizing its impact on patient well-being, especially in mental health settings. The assignment analyzes the importance of empathy, understanding patient concerns, and fostering trust between nurses and patients. It references the NHS England's 15-step challenge as a tool to assess and improve patient experiences, highlighting the significance of caring and involving practices. The report examines case studies and research to illustrate how compassion, communication, and patient-centered approaches enhance healthcare outcomes, reduce stigma, and support patient recovery. It underscores the need for nurses to create environments where patients feel heard, valued, and supported, leading to improved adherence to treatment and overall health improvement. The assignment also references several studies and reports to support its claims and conclusions.

Running head: NURSING ASSIGNMENT
NURSING ASSIGNMENT
Name of the student
Name of the university
Author note

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Answer 1
In the recent world, healthcare is not only about assessing patient condition and providing
them intervention for their speedy recovery, but also about understanding their mental concerns,
showing empathy and compassion so that their mood and mental health could be improved
(World Health Organization, 2018). Compassion has become the centre of every stream of
healthcare as patients require support and care in their vulnerable condition and as per Sinclair et
al. (2016), showing compassion could help them to connect to the healthcare process effectively.
Especially in the mental health aspect, compassion, concern and sympathy for patients plays an
important role and in this specialty area of nursing, this personality trait becomes very crucial.
As per Ledoux (2015), mental health is the most crucial aspect of holistic and cumulative
health of any individual and low mood, depression and stress related mental concern could affect
this aspect of health, due to which, such patients are mostly vulnerable to human behaviour,
responses and communication as well as discrimination. Hence, in such condition, lack of
empathy and compassion could affect them negatively and they would not be able to share their
concerns to the nursing professional. Hence as per the evidences collected by Sinclair et al.
(2017), nursing professionals should be able to implement compassion and empathy for patient
and their concerns so that a connection between the nurse and patient could be developed. This
would eventually help to build the trust of patient on the healthcare facility and they would be
able to accept the intervention applied by the professionals, hence recovery would be achieved.
Further, another evidence that indicated that in NHS England, compassionate in determined as
the most crucial aspect that helps to develop healthcare management, develop policies for
effective care and include in the active process for helping patients with mental health
complications (Barron, Deery & Sloan, 2017).

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Answer 2
The 15 step challenge developed by the NHS England (2019), is an effective
observational approaches that helps the service users to understand the type of service is
provided to the patients while they seek healthcare in any hospital. It mentions about the
experience any service user or healthcare professional develops while working in or seeking
healthcare in any organisation. Despite the fact that there are 15 aspects that has been mentioned
in this tool that is observed by the healthcare service users in healthcare facilities , the caring
and involving nature is the most important aspect that helps the service users to develop
experience about the process (Andersson et al., 2015). As mentioned in the case study of Kyran
day and his parents, where due to the lack of proper communication, fluent coordination and the
lack of involvement the baby Kyran has to lose his life, it was also seen that nursing
professionals were not providing vast detail to Naomi and Grant who are mother and father of
baby Kyran respectively (Lim & DeSteno, 2016). Further, it was seen that despite of
deteriorating health condition of Kyran, the nurse did not informed the patient condition to the
doctor and asked Naomi to wait till morning as the doctor will come for the visit at morning.
Hence, it was clearly evident that the healthcare facility lacked caring and involving nature that
affected the care process of the child. Further the lack of compassion for the child makes them
ignorant to assess his actual health condition and it was seen that they assessed his health
condition twice and different ailment was found (Kelly, Runge & Spencer, 2015). Hence, this
clearly indicate that the care professionals lacked involved and caring nature due to which after
30 hours of struggle the children died. Hence, in this condition the 15 step challenge developed
by NHS England (2019) was an important strategy.

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Answer 3
Compassion is the human nature that helps people to understand pain, grieves and agony
of other individual and then helps them to overcome their concern by listening to their issues
(van der Cingel, 2014). Hence a feeling of heard works psychologically in the patient suffering
from mental health condition and this feeling helps them to gain confidence and overcome their
mental health condition rapidly (Dewar et al., 2014). Similarly it is also important for the
nursing professionals to be able to make their patients feel heard and values so that they can
share their all issues to the care professional and overcome their stigma, concern and other
limiting aspects (Gramling et al., 2016). Hence, making the patients feel heard or valued is an
important aspect that should be included for the development of care process.
Compassion on the other hand is the aspect that helps the nurses to understand the
ailment of patients, their associated mental issues and the limiting factors that prevent them to
achieve health improvement. Hence, compassionate nature and thought process are important for
the nurses to be able to connect to the patients and understand the concerns that are deteriorating
their health condition. Further, as per Pomey et al. (2015), if the patients are provided with
values and their concerns are heard properly, it has been seen that they provide complete support
to the nursing and healthcare professionals for application of healthcare intervention. Hence,
compassion and empathy helps the nurses to become kind and soft heartened due to which while
communicating, patients develop strong bond with nurses (Sinclair et al., 2016). Hence, nursing
professionals that make patients feel heard of their concern and ailments are provided with
extended hand of support so that they could implement effective intervention for the health
improvement of the patient (Gramling et al., 2015). Further, it was seen that mentally ill patients
that are vulnerable to social discriminations, isolation and other stigma, are able to accept

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healthcare intervention because nursing professionals are able to implement compassionate and
cooperative care where each of the patients are heard and valued. Hence, these are the important
aspects of health care that are interlinked with each other.

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References
Andersson, Å., Frank, C., Willman, A. M. L., Sandman, P. O., & Hansebo, G. (2015). Adverse
events in nursing: a retrospective study of reports of patient and relative
experiences. International nursing review, 62(3), 377-385. DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1111/inr.12192
Barron, K., Deery, R., & Sloan, G. (2017). Community mental health nurses' and compassion: an
interpretative approach. Journal of psychiatric and mental health nursing, 24(4), 211-
220. DOI: 10.1111/jpm.12379
Dewar, B., Adamson, E., Smith, S., Surfleet, J., & King, L. (2014). Clarifying misconceptions
about compassionate care. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 70(8), 1738-1747. DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1111/jan.12322
Gramling, R., Stanek, S., Ladwig, S., Gajary-Coots, E., Cimino, J., Anderson, W., ... & Garner,
K. K. (2016). Feeling heard and understood: a patient-reported quality measure for the
inpatient palliative care setting. Journal of pain and symptom management, 51(2), 150-
154. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpainsymman.2015.10.018
Kelly, L., Runge, J., & Spencer, C. (2015). Predictors of compassion fatigue and compassion
satisfaction in acute care nurses. Journal of Nursing Scholarship, 47(6), 522-528. DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1111/jnu.12162
Ledoux, K. (2015). Understanding compassion fatigue: understanding compassion. Journal of
advanced nursing, 71(9), 2041-2050. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/jan.12686

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Lim, D., & DeSteno, D. (2016). Suffering and compassion: The links among adverse life
experiences, empathy, compassion, and prosocial behavior. Emotion, 16(2), 175. DOI:
https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/emo0000144
NHS England. (2019). NHS England » 15 Steps Challenge. Retrieved from
https://www.england.nhs.uk/participation/resources/15-steps-challenge/
Pomey, M. P., Hihat, H., Khalifa, M., Lebel, P., Néron, A., & Dumez, V. (2015). Patient
partnership in quality improvement of healthcare services: Patients’ inputs and challenges
faced. Patient Experience Journal, 2(1), 29-42. Retrieved from:
https://pxjournal.org/journal/vol2/iss1/6/
Sinclair, S., Beamer, K., Hack, T. F., McClement, S., Raffin Bouchal, S., Chochinov, H. M., &
Hagen, N. A. (2017). Sympathy, empathy, and compassion: A grounded theory study of
palliative care patients’ understandings, experiences, and preferences. Palliative
medicine, 31(5), 437-447. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0269216316663499
Sinclair, S., Norris, J. M., McConnell, S. J., Chochinov, H. M., Hack, T. F., Hagen, N. A., ... &
Bouchal, S. R. (2016). Compassion: a scoping review of the healthcare literature. BMC
palliative care, 15(1), 6. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12904-016-0080-0
van der Cingel, M. (2014). Compassion: The missing link in quality of care. Nurse education
today, 34(9), 1253-1257. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2014.04.003
World Health Organization. (2018). Continuity and coordination of care: a practice brief to
support implementation of the WHO Framework on integrated people-centred health

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services. Retrieved from:
https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/274628/9789241514033-eng.pdf