Providing compassionate healthcare: challenges in policy and practice

This book aims to address the basic concepts surrounding the notion of compassion and we hope that it will contribute to broader discussions of such, within a wider setting whereby various socio-cultural contexts may have an impact on the definition and understanding of Compassion. Within this book, we have attempted to draw together a number of pertinent issues related to compassionate health care, within four key sections: introducing the concept of compassion; theoretical and therapeutic approaches to compassion; implementation and impact of compassion in health care; organizational issues, plus a concluding section where ‘teaching compassion’ is discussed.