6 Months of Case For Compassion!

It’s been 6 months since I started blogging about compassionate care! I have really enjoyed the experience so far, and I have learned so much about compassion, self-compassion, burnout, and using the internet (truly!). I have stumbled into some opportunities that I’m really excited about, and I have made inspiring new connections with people who are working to make space in “the system” for compassion. On Thursday, I attended a free webinar through The Center for Compassionate Leadership with the author of Compassionomics, Dr. Steven Trzeciak. I was excited to hear about his work as an ED physician and his experience of discovering the existing research about compassion in health care. First of all, I highly recommend his book. It’s basically an extended literature review of all the research on compassion in health care in a readable format. During today's talk, Dr. Trezeciak shared about his experience as a medical student, in which his teachers instructed the class “not to care too much” about their patients. He shared stories of watching his coworkers perform their jobs with compassion during the worst of this pandemic, and about how their performance elevated his will to be more compassionate. He shared stories of patient family members who remembered compassion from their providers years after their care was over.

It was a powerful talk, and it felt even more powerful because, while there were less than 100 people present for the webinar, 30 different countries were represented in the attendees. It was eye opening for me to see that, across the globe, people are searching for ways to bring compassion research into their workplaces and lives. Connection and loving-kindness are hardwired into the human experience, and it’s a little crazy to think that we live in a time where we need hard data to prove the value of taking care of each other. It's even crazier to think that we live in a time where the hard data for compassionate care exists, but that data is somehow not widely known or accessed by the big decision makers and policy makers who determine how our world runs.

I am a big picture thinker, so my brain goes for the broadest application every time – how can we get this information in front of all the decision makers, so that they can shape our systems differently, especially in this moment which feels like a crossroads for so many professions. How can we get the people who run things to understand: in industries that exist to serve people’s most intrinsic needs, like health care, we thwart our own best efforts if we treat employees and patients as machines, who exist to produce and whose bodies work like algorithms, rather than humans who need some form of individualized connection to actually thrive and heal?? The question is so big and overwhelming. A yet-to-be-released study out of Australia[1] found that people are less likely to take compassionate action if they feel it will have no effect. And sometimes, considering those huge questions about systemic and cultural change, it feels like there is no way that our little acts of compassion could be effective. In this way, the big picture thinking can be a hindrance to actually walking in compassion in every day life.

There were two points that Dr. Trzeciak discussed today that helped me refocus from the big picture to feel more effective. His new book, Wonder Drug, is coming out next month, which details 7 steps to increasing your own compassionate action, and the information he shared was related to the research he found while working on this new book. First, he shared that small steps are enough. No major societal change hinges on the actions of one person. But, if EACH of us performs small acts of compassion in our professional lives and personal lives, subtle changes (or not so subtle changes) will happen. Every compassionate act is also a courageous act. Opening your eyes to acknowledge the suffering of others can be uncomfortable, and disengaging can be an effective defense mechanism. Every small act of compassion is a large act of vulnerability that should not be minimized because it “isn’t enough.” This leads to his next point.

Dr. Trzeciak shared that we, as health care providers, hold more power as individuals than we sometimes realize. What feels like a normal day at work for us can be comprised of life changing moments for each patient we treat. And, these moments can be life changing in a good way or in a bad way. I’m not really a number crunching person, but if you figure out how many patients you interact with every day, and then multiply that by the number of days you treat patients….that turns into an overwhelming number of times to possibly change someone’s life with a small moment of loving-kindness, especially over a long career. If we can stay in touch with the power inherent in each of us as humans to impact the experience of other humans, we can be real agents of change.

Thank you for reading, and thank you for all the comments, questions, pointers, and support over the last 6 months. I appreciate that people have found this information to be as compelling as I have, and I really appreciate everyone who has reached out to share their own stories of compassion or lack of compassion in their own health care. I really feel like there is space in the world for these conversations to lead to actual change, and I'm still trying to figure out where I fit into that as a provider and a human.

[1] Kirby et al. Beliefs About Action Efficacy Mediate The Relationship Between Self-Concept Clarity And Compassionate Action.