This document discusses the link between compassion, patient safety, and quality of care in nursing. It defines each concept and argues that compassion, safety, and quality are interlinked. Compassion requires time, empathy, and responsiveness from caregivers. Patient safety involves preventing errors and minimizing adverse events through a culture of safety and systems approaches. Quality of care has dimensions of access and effectiveness of both clinical and interpersonal care. The document concludes that many attributes required for compassionate care, like listening and patient-centeredness, also support safe, high-quality care delivery.

1. What is the link between
compassion, patient safety and
quality of care?
Anne Matthews,
Associate Professor,
School of Nursing,
Dublin City University

2. Main questions
• What are the contexts for these discussions in
nursing in Ireland in 2016
– Patient safety and quality of care concerns
– Nursing & Midwifery Values Initiative
• What is compassion?
• What is safety?
• What is quality of care?
• How are they linked?

3. Values Initiative 2016
• Renewed focus on core values of nursing &
midwifery

4. Examples of Core Values

5. Impact
• Contribute towards a culture of safe patient
care
• How?

6. Compassion
• Sympathy, empathy, sadness for and kindness towards
the suffering or bad luck of others- and a wish or
desire to act to help them
• What is needed?
– Time
– Getting to know someone
– Listening
– Paying attention
– Empathy- being in someone else’s shoes
– Responsiveness
– Kindness
– Action/ doing (even a small thing)

7. Quality and Safety
• Unsafe care cannot be of good quality
• Safe care does not guarantee quality
• So safety as a requisite part of quality
• Two terms interlinked
QualitySafety

8. Patient Safety (WHO)
• The simplest definition of patient safety is the
prevention of errors and adverse effects to
patients associated with health care.
– While health care has become more effective it has
also become more complex, with greater use of new
technologies, medicines and treatments.
– Health services treat older and sicker patients who
often present with significant co-morbidities requiring
more and more difficult decisions as to health care
priorities.
– Increasing economic pressure on health systems often
leads to overloaded health care environments.
http://www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/Health-systems/patient-safety

9. Patient Safety
• Moving from blaming culture to systems approaches
to minimise adverse events
– Culture of safety
– What conditions or systems allow errors to occur
• Systems approach
– Open disclosure and reporting
Patient and community engagement and empowerment
are key. People’s experience and perspectives are valuable
resources for identifying needs, measuring progress and
evaluating [safety] outcomes (WHO).

10. Dept Health 2008
http://health.gov.ie/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/en_patientsafety.pdf

11. Quality of care
• Two principal dimensions:
• Access
– Do users get the appropriate and safe care they need?
• Effectiveness
– Two components: Of clinical and inter-personal care- based on an
appreciation of an individual’s personal experience of illness
(Cambell et al 2000 Defining Quality of care, SSM, 51: 1611-1625)

12. Compassion- Quality- Safety
• Many of the requirements for compassionate
care are required for safe and high quality
care:
– Listening, paying attention
– Patient/client-centredness and
– Patient/client involvement in healthcare
processes

13. Conclusions
• Listening is a safety and quality of care issue
• Acting is a safety and quality of care issue
• Compassion supports safety which enables
high quality of care
• Small things matter
• Every interaction matters

14. “The care we’d want…. “

15. Thank you
• Questions or comments are welcome
• anne.matthews@dcu.ie