clearly show that patient experience was now at the forefront of health strategy. As she puts it: ‘It was no longer just nurses saying that care really should be delivered in a compassionate way, and that patients deserved to be treated with respect.’


Changing values Now, four years on, and with attention shifting to the launch of a new strategy, scheduled for spring 2016, what – if anything – has changed? Compassion in Practice: Two Years On, published in 2014, talks of a shift in culture and attitude and of more concrete changes, with some trusts adopting the 6Cs as a basis for commissioning and for developing their own sets of values. A ‘Culture of Care Barometer’ has been piloted, and will give trusts a tool for evaluating and improving their culture. For teaching organisations – including


LSBU – there has also been a shift. While the curriculum here has always emphasised the importance of dignity and compassion, at the same time as imparting technical knowledge and skills, there is now more


suffering. We’re also looking at so-called “muscular” compassion – the idea that only the deserving should be treated with compassion. The second paper will look at how narratives can be used to educate and raise awareness. ‘The research has identified


a wide range of thought- provoking examples, both positive and negative. ‘In A Little Princess by


Frances Hodgson Burnett, a little girl called Sara Crewe sees an Indian servant with a monkey at a neighbour’s house. He looks “sorrowful and homesick” and so she smiles at him as “she


had learned to know how comforting a smile, even from a stranger, may be”. ‘In Anthony Minghella’s


film of The English Patient, the horribly disfigured patient asks the nurse for water. As she gives it to him, she smiles and makes eye contact. There is no revulsion at his appearance, merely kindness and compassion. ‘In Invictus, Nelson Mandela works constantly to remember details that will help him engage with the people around him. We see him ask his bodyguard about his mother, and memorising the line-up of the South


‘ I think the question of whether you can teach compassion is a moot point, but you can certainly make people more aware of the elements that go to make up quality care’


focus on recruiting students who can demonstrate the right values from the start. ‘Values-based recruitment is about ensuring we take on students whose values and behaviours align with those set out in the NHS Constitution,’ says Gary Francis, Associate Professor and School Lead for Practice Skills Learning and Simulation. ‘We need to start by recruiting people who genuinely want to make a difference, but we also need to work hard to nurture that side of them by working closely with our practice partners and ensuring that we’re using all the teaching tools at our disposal – including simulation – to strengthen those skills. I think the question of whether you can teach compassion is a moot point, but you can certainly make people more aware of the elements that go to make up quality care.’ LSBU has played a significant role in the


debates leading up to the launch of the strategy that will replace Compassion in Practice from spring 2016, provisionally entitled Our Vision. For Lesley Baillie, implementation will be key. ‘To succeed, the strategy must be based on evidence and


African rugby team so he can wish them luck by name: “To him, no one is invisible.” ‘By contrast, in Jean- Dominique Bauby’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, we see the harsh impact of a lack of compassion: “The bath I am given bears more resemblance to drawing and quartering than to hydrotherapy.” Later, a nurse wakes the author up with her flashlight to tell him that she has brought his sleeping pill: “Do you want it now or shall I come back in an hour?” ‘But for me, the most


powerful example comes from Havi Carel, a philosophy


lecturer who wrote her book Illness after being diagnosed with incurable lung disease. In it she writes how “the ill person may be reduced to her illness…Nothing frightens me more than being ‘the woman with the oxygen’, memorable for her deficiency.” The thing that sounds the simplest – to see the person, not the condition – may be the hardest of all to get right.’


Louise Terry will present her research on ethics and compassion on 22 June. Look out for an email with registration details.


lsbu.ac.uk/alumni | South Bank_17


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