Special Issue Care & Compassion

Nurse Education Today gaat een special issue  Care & Compassion maken! Uiteraard heb ik een artikel ingediend. De call for papers sloot uitstekend aan bij mijn proefschrift. Onderstaand abstract geeft weer waar mijn artikel over zal gaan. Nu maar hopen dat het geaccepteerd zal worden!

 

Abstract

This article discusses a PhD-study that focuses on compassion as a guiding principle for nurse education and nursing practice today. The study looks into compassion as perceived within the relationship of nurses and older persons with a chronic disease. Daily life for these patients is characterised by a long-term dependency on care because of limitations due to their illness. The aim of the study is to understand the nature and benefit of compassion and integrate compassion into contemporary theories of nursing. A literature review was done, next to a study into the history of nursing and a qualitative study in which in-depth interviews and group interviews with patients and their nurses took place. Results show that the nature of compassion is a mirroring process in response to grief. Compassion consists of seven dimensions such as attentiveness and presence, in which saliency in order to anticipate on patient’s needs is of major importance. Compassion is also perceived as an indispensable aspect of care, which helps to reveal relevant information in order to set proper outcomes of care. Compassion motivates both patients and nurses to work together in emotionally difficult times of suffering, loss and adaptation to limitations as a consequence of chronic disease. Questions on the nature and significance of compassion are related to the on-going debate about quality of care. Within this debate two seemingly opposing views on the quality of nursing care are visible. One view defines quality of care mainly as care supported by the best scientific evidence and believes the performance of care should be judged on the basis of that evidence. The other view states that good care takes place within the nurse-patient relationship in which the nurse performs professional care based on intuitive knowing. Can compassion be the (missing) link between these views?