Aims and Objectives: To identify and synthesise empirical evidence on the perspectives of nurses regarding factors that enable and/or obstruct the delivery of compassionate care. Methodological Design and Justification: A scoping review was chosen for its capacity to perform a broad exploration of the available literature. Ethical Issues: This scoping review raises no ethical issues. Research Methods: This review includes studies that report enablers and barriers of compassionate care. Both qualitative and quantitative designs were included. The quality of each study was assessed using the Mixed Method Appraisal Tool (MMAT). A narrative synthesis was employed to summarise the results. Instruments: A search was conducted in the electronic databases of MEDLINE and CINAHL (1975–2021). Outcome Measures: Barriers and enablers to compassionate care from nurses' perspectives. Results: Fifteen empirical studies were included in this review. Four themes of enablers and barriers to compassionate care emerged: (1) personal characteristics, (2) professional characteristics, (3) patient-related factors, and (4) workplace-related factors. Main facilitators were a strong motivation to deliver compassionate care, the managements' support of compassion as a nursing value and operating in a healthy team culture. Main barriers were the absence of education and/or role models for compassionate care, heavy workloads, and the managements' prioritisation of task-centred care. Study Limitations: This study is limited by the inclusion of qualitative studies with small samples and the absence of data from Northern Europe and North America. Conclusions: The findings indicate that policymakers, healthcare leaders, and nursing management play an important role in nurses' ability to provide compassionate care. Through leadership that centralises compassion as a core nursing value, nurses receive greater support in prioritising compassion in patient care. This support is further enhanced by ensuring adequate staffing and manageable schedules, offering comprehensive training in compassionate care skills, and providing resources to support nurses' wellbeing. Trial Registration: PROSPERO: CRD42022324955 https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/display_record.php?RecordID=324955.
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To meet the care needs of the rapidly ageing patient populations, the cultivation of a compassionate patient-centred healthcare culture has become central in the value-based healthcare discourse. A participatory music practice, ‘Meaningful Music in Healthcare’ employs a person-centred approach to music-making in Dutch hospitals. A grounded theory analysis on ethnographically collected data suggests that music-making serves as a social change agent and cultural resource for catalysing compassionate contact between healthcare professionals and patients. Processes of experiential growth and shared values in music-making and healthcare help to enrich care relationships and allow the emotional dimension of nurses’ professional performance to be explored.
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Objective: In the context of a programme to improve people-centered care, launched by the Tanzanian Ministry of Health, an international project (HEALCARe) was initiated to enhance the health literacy (HL) and respectful compassionate care (RCC) competencies of Bachelor’s nursing and midwifery students. Part of the project involved exploring the perceptions of different stakeholders regarding what facilitates these students’ competencies. This paper specifically reports the perceptions of faculty lecturers and clinical instructors. Methods: We conducted nine focus groups with lecturers and instructors from three Tanzanian universities and their teaching hospitals, with a total of 65 participants. Results: Through thematic analysis, seven themes were identified: ‘knowledge of HL,’ ‘knowledge of RCC,’ ‘modules with clear key components in the curriculum,’ ‘expert teaching in the faculty classroom,’ ‘priority of supervision in the clinical setting,’ ‘learning methods, materials and resources,’ and ‘evaluation tools and monitoring the transfer from theory to practice.’ Conclusions: The findings show that students need to be supported in transferring the theory taught in class to clinical practice in patient care. The curricula of all universities and corresponding hospitals should specifically address the training of HL and RCC competencies. This will facilitate the improvement of students’ competencies, contributing to better health outcomes in Tanzania.
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As the Dutch population is aging, the field of music-in-healthcare keeps expanding. Healthcare, institutionally and at home, is multiprofessional and demands interprofessional collaboration. Musicians are sought-after collaborators in social and healthcare fields, yet lesser-known agents of this multiprofessional group. Although live music supports social-emotional wellbeing and vitality, and nurtures compassionate care delivery, interprofessional collaboration between musicians, social work, and healthcare professionals remains marginal. This limits optimising and integrating music-making in the care. A significant part of this problem is a lack of collaborative transdisciplinary education for music, social, and healthcare students that deep-dives into the development of interprofessional skills. To meet the growing demand for musical collaborations by particularly elderly care organisations, and to innovate musical contributions to the quality of social and healthcare in Northern Netherlands, a transdisciplinary education for music, physiotherapy, and social work studies is needed. This project aims to equip multiprofessional student groups of Hanze with interprofessional skills through co-creative transdisciplinary learning aimed at innovating and improving musical collaborative approaches for working with vulnerable, often older people. The education builds upon experiential learning in Learning LABs, and collaborative project work in real-life care settings, supported by transdisciplinary community forming.The expected outcomes include a new concept of a transdisciplinary education for HBO-curricula, concrete building blocks for a transdisciplinary arts-in-health minor study, innovative student-led approaches for supporting the care and wellbeing of (older) vulnerable people, enhanced integration of musicians in interprofessional care teams, and new interprofessional structures for educational collaboration between music, social work and healthcare faculties.
Training nurses and midwives to treat their patients well There are some specific factors facilitating the modification of the nursing and midwifery bachelor curriculum The development of health literacy and respectful and compassionate care competences among bachelor nursing and midwifery students in Tanzania
