Patients have told us compassion requires action, says nursing professor

Almost a decade ago, Dr. Shane Sinclair (PhD) and his team in the Compassion Research Lab asked the question: what is compassion….really? On Saturday, Oct. 1, Sinclair will share his findings in person at The Ranchmen’s Club for the 2022 Marguerite Schumacher Memorial Alumni Lecture.

Here is a taste, in advance, of what you may hear.

How has your research into compassion evolved over the last 10 years? 
“Based on answers to the question (what is compassion?), we developed an evidence-based definition of compassion, differentiated it from sympathy and empathy, and generated a conceptual model of compassion that served as the blueprint for our subsequent studies. We then moved to the question of ‘how can we measure compassion?’ This produced a patient-reported compassion measure that is being used in research and in clinical practice to assess patients experiences of compassion and to modify the care we provide accordingly. Currently, we have embarked on answering the question of learning compassion — how can we train current and future nurses to provide compassion?

As a non-nurse, have you made any special observations around nursing and compassion that are different from other health-care professions? 

“As a non-nurse, I think nurses occupy a preferential position in the delivery of compassion in health care. Beyond being the profession that engages patients and their suffering most frequently, the holistic approach to attend to the physical, emotional, social and spiritual needs is the modus operandi of compassion."

What will you be talking about at the Schumacher lecture “Compassion is a Verb: From Nursing Theory to Practice” – why will people want to be sure to attend, including non-nurses? 
“While compassion continues to be a hot topic in society and in nursing in general, much of the conversation is about compassion as an idea, a goal, a vision statement or an emotion. While these are excellent starting points, patients have told us that compassion requires action. This lecture will highlight current evidence on the nature and impact of compassion from multiple studies we have conducted over the last decade in order to expand our understanding, and importantly, our practice of compassion.”