Joined in 2023 
82 
63 About this deal
One is to see compassion as the outcome of a path that can be cultivated and developed. You do not in reality cultivate compassion, but you can cultivate, through investigation, the qualities that incline your heart toward compassion. You can learn to attend to the moments when you close and contract in the face of suffering, anger, fear, or alienation. In those moments you are asked to question what difference empathy, forgiveness, patience, and tolerance would make. You cultivate your commitment to turn toward your responses of aversion, anger, or intolerance. With mindfulness and investigation, you find in your heart the generosity and understanding that allow you to open rather than close. (pp. 141-142)” (Hoffman, Grossman, & Hinton, 2011).
Compassionate leadership must be at the heart of local, regional and national efforts to nurture cultures that provide high-quality, continually improving and compassionate care for people and communities.Is it hard to find empathy for someone accused of killing a person? Yes! It feels like an impossible task. Can we grow as people by doing this impossible exercise? I believe we do. Those brave enough to open their hearts and homes to abused, neglected and abandoned animals are grateful for the invaluable help from volunteers, and the much-needed donations. And they also find tremendous satisfaction in the simple things like being in a position to accept one more animal in need of love and attention and going to sleep at the end of a tough day knowing all those in their care are safe and healthy.
Without going into the "guilty/not guilty" mindset, what I liked about this book was the invitation to see each suspect as a human first. It is really hard to think about someone as a person when all you can think of are the deeds that person is accused of. The health and wellbeing of nurses and midwives are essential to the quality of care they can provide for people and communities, affecting their compassion, professionalism and effectiveness. Lilius, J., Worline, M., Maitlis, Kanov, J., Dutton, J., & Frost, P. (2008). The contours and consequences of compassion at work. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 29, 193-218.
Overview
People who work in supportive teams with clear goals and good team leadership, have dramatically lower levels of stress ( West et al 2015). Compassionate leadership increases staff engagement and satisfaction, resulting in better outcomes for organisations including improved financial performance ( Dawson and West 2018). Research shows that compassionate leadership has wide-ranging benefits for both staff and organisations. For staff
The Courage of Compassion was published in September 2020, and sought to identify solutions to the issues which contributed to poor mental health and well-being across the professions. The report recommended the use of a framework called the ‘ABC of nurses and midwives core work needs.’ This aims to facilitate well-being and motivation at work and to reduce workplace stress. The ABC of core work needs involves:What does courage actually mean? Brené Brown, shame and vulnerability researcher, explained that courage comes from the Latin word ‘Cor’ which means ‘Heart’ and stands for the ability to open your heart and show what lives inside. In the good or the bad. Just you as you are. In today's society courage is associated with standing in the frontline, being a superhero. I would appeal for the old style ‘Latin courage’ where you show yourself. That’s what being a real hero is about nowadays. Even before the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, the health and social care workforce across the United Kingdom was struggling to cope. One of the greatest challenges is in nursing, with 43,590 NHS nurse vacancies in England; 3,607 nurse and midwife posts vacant in Scotland; 2,488 nursing, health care assistant and nursing assistant vacancies across health and social care in Northern Ireland; and an estimated 1,651 nursing vacancies in the Welsh NHS. This review, from the Kings Fund, investigated how to transform nurses’ and midwives’ workplaces so that they can thrive and flourish and are better able to provide the compassionate, high-quality care that they wish to offer. Compassion “In Western culture, compassion has mainly been understood in terms of concern for the suffering of others (Goetz, Keltner, & Simon-Thomas, 2010). As defined by Webster’s online dictionary, compassion is “the humane quality of understanding the suffering of others and wanting to do something about it.” In many Buddhist traditions, however, it is considered equally important to offer compassion to the self (Brach, 2003; Feldman, 2005; Salzberg, 2005). To give compassion to others but not the self, in fact, is seen drawing artificial distinctions between self and others that misrepresent our essential interconnectedness (Hahn, 1997). From this point of view self-compassion is simply compassion directed inward” (Neff &Pommier, 2012).
The RCN Foundation have once again linked up with the King's Fund to launch an exciting new project Follow your (Com)Passion. Let’s talk about that. Let’s enlighten that little flame and see what we can do for the people around us and then… on a larger scale, what can we do for our countries and, even larger, for the world. The reasons why I publish this article here is that I have put all my hope and strength on my generation and those generations that will follow us up. We are the fertile ground where we can build on. And that’s the root we need to cure to improve, empower and enlighten this beautiful world. How do compassionate leaders behave? They empathise with their colleagues and seek to understand the challenges they face; they are committed to supporting others to cope with and respond successfully to work challenges; and they are focused on enabling those they lead to be effective and thrive in their work. Compassionate leaders don’t have all the answers and don’t simply tell people what to do, instead they engage with the people they work with to find shared solutions to problems. How would it be if we set the intention that we only love them and want to open their eyes and their hearts towards new goals and new development? No communication about fighting, blowing, smashing or whatsoever. Just be there. And to be, is very challenging in this era. We want to understand how the ABC Framework and Compassionate Leadership is working for early career nurses and midwives across health and social care within the UK. We will also be exploring the experience of senior nursing and midwifery leaders of Compassionate Leadership and their understanding of the early career nurses / midwives experiences of this. Get involvedMany of us are aware our ‘justice’ system does not always serve the people it vows to protect. This book gives us a glimpse of what that looks like from the inside, a first hand account of a public defender and how she, along with others, navigated the system while advocating for those at disadvantage in their fight for justice. That said, I also agree with the author this book is not just about our justice system but rather a book on what it means to be human, to see others through the lens of our shared humanity. Nurture and sustain just, fair and psychologically safe cultures and ensure equity, proactive and positive approaches to diversity and universal inclusion. Key recommendation 3: Work conditions and working schedules Time pressure is clearly a powerful factor in health and care environments but Trzeciak and colleagues ( 2019) stress that the quest for efficiency and a focus on the important human side of health care are not mutually exclusive: ‘You can go through your daily activities with brusque efficiency and let people know how busy you are, or you can go through your day valuing human connection and showing compassion and it actually doesn’t take any longer.’ Our research explored the causes and consequences of poor mental health and wellbeing among nurses and midwives, and sought to identify solutions to these issues and examples of good practice. The scope of the review covered all nursing and midwifery staff and students, including health care assistants and nursing associates, across the UK. Transforming the working lives of nursing and midwifery staff, and thereby the quality and sustainability of the care they provide, requires that we implement an integrated, coherent and comprehensive strategic approach. Key recommendation 1: Authority, empowerment and influence
Great Deal 
New Comment