title: Why and how is compassion necessary to provide good quality healthcare?
abstract: Recent disclosures of failures of care in the National Health Service (NHS) in England have led to debates about compassion deficits disallowing health professionals to provide high quality responsive care. While the link between high quality care and compassion is often taken for granted, it is less obvious how compassion - often originating in the individual's emotional response - can become a moral sentiment and lead to developing a system of norms and values underpinning ethics of care. In this editorial, I argue why and how compassion might become a foundation of ethics guiding health professionals and a basis for ethics of care in health service organisations. I conclude by discussing a recent case of prominent healthcare failure in the NHS to highlight the relationship between compassion as an aspect of professional ethics on the one hand, and values and norms that institutions and specific policies promote on the other hand.
authors.affiliation: Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK.
authors.forename: Marianna
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Fotaki
keywords: Compassion; Ethical Training; Ethics of Care; Healthcare Organisations
references.citation: Soc Sci Med. 2012 Feb;74(3):340-7
references.pmid: 21501913
references.citation: Nurs Times. 2013 Feb 19-25;109 (7):12-4
references.pmid: 23513933
references.citation: J Med Ethics. 1992 Sep;18(3):148-52
references.pmid: 1404282
references.citation: J Med Ethics. 2007 Oct;33(10):617-20
references.pmid: 17906063
references.citation: Ann Intern Med. 1993 Jun 15;118(12):973-7
references.pmid: 8489112
references.citation: Sociol Health Illn. 2014 Mar;36(3):383-99
references.pmid: 24117523
references.citation: Sociol Health Illn. 2014 Nov;36(8):1276-94
references.pmid: 25470326
references.citation: JAMA. 2000 Sep 13;284(10):1290-6
references.pmid: 10979117
references.citation: Psychol Sci. 2013 Jul 1;24(7):1171-80
references.pmid: 23696200