“For someone to develop genuine compassion towards others, first he or she must have a basis upon which to cultivate compassion, and that basis is the ability to connect to one’s own feelings and to care for one’s own welfare. Caring for others requires caring for oneself” (Dalai Lama 2003:125)
The Cultivating Compassion Toolkit.
A Toolkit to generate discussion with colleagues on the expression of compassionate care in our everyday working lives. The tool kit was developed through collaborative working with health care colleagues in Sussex and Surrey.
A Toolkit is a set of resources that enables people to do their work more effectively. This Cultivating Compassion Awareness Toolkit is designed to help enhance compassion in practice by undertaking activities which will support practitioner ability to respond in everyday care situations in ways that make patients, families and colleagues feel cared for and respected.
Research Abstract
Title of study: Compassion Awareness Training: An appreciative enquiry into the development and evaluation of a “train the trainers” approach towards raising compassion awareness in the three partner healthcare organisations across Kent, Surry and Sussex.
Background:
This research has been generated and funded as part of the Health Education Kent Surrey Sussex (HEKSS) Compassion Awareness Training (CAT) programme which aims to develop a sustainable programme of compassion awareness training workshops that will engage with healthcare staff to encourage and facilitate the expression of compassionate values in the workplace. The project is led by the University of Brighton and will be implemented in collaboration with the University of Sussex and the University of Surrey and three NHS organisations. The nature and purpose of this research is to generate an evidence base for the implementation and evaluation of this project.
Objectives:
- To generate compassion value indicators from the healthcare workforce to contribute to a toolkit of resources for compassion trainers and project evaluation.
- To generate digital stories to represent compassion narratives that will form part of the compassion toolkit of resources for compassion trainers
- To evaluate the impact of the CAT project training programme
- To disseminate learning from the project through a research report, publications and a research informed toolkit
Design:
This research adopts a mixed method approach (qualitative and quantitative) informed by Appreciative Inquiry (AI). Data collection will involve focus groups for the purposes of:
- the development of digital stories for the toolkit
- the identification of compassion values based indicators in healthcare for the toolkit of resources for compassion training workshops
- the evaluation of the toolkit and the project itself.
Semi Structured Interviews with compassion leads will explore the compassion lead role as it develops and matures, and to document the compassion activities that emerge from it.
The quantitative component will focus on an additional evaluative tool the Professional Quality of Life Scale (ProQOL) before and after the project in order to determine the impact of the project.
For more information, visit the Cultivating Compassion project blog.
