This site invites conversations about meaning and connection in the work and personal lives of health care providers. Awareness of our purposes and sources of support can build compassion for others, and compassion for ourselves. If we can purposefully resist callousness when dealing with the suffering inherent in patient care (callousness is the loss of compassion), patient care can become more meaningful and less difficult.
Patient care is the heart of health care, and “Know me, care for me, ease my way” (*) could be a motto to aspire to. We don’t live up to aspirations when we become parts of a machine, accepting productivity, mastery and survival as adequate goals. Too easily we can callous ourselves to the importance of compassion, growth and meaning.
The privilege of patient care provides (it forces) experiences of loss and struggle – patients and their families face it; health care workers encounter it. Do we respond with compassion or callousness? Callousness is a useful defense, but we must resist it becoming a habit or a virtue. Reflecting on stories, creating supportive experiences and modeling compassionate behaviors, we can build a better community for taking care of our patients, each other, and ourselves.
Compassionate change begins within oneself, and needs external supports to be sustainable. I believe we do better as persons and as communities when we share - have you noticed how love grows when it is shared, but hurts lessen?
I will present ideas about how compassionate patient care could help health care providers grow and thrive, and I invite stories and comments from others about their sources of support, meaning and purpose. We will need to be civil and constructive, discerning of ourselves more than judgmental of others. To be kind and humble is as important as being smart and expert.
I hope to encourage these discussions:
Let’s keep our sense of wonder at the amazing privilege to be entrusted with the care of others.
Care and stay curious.
A Conception of Mind
This picture (taken by one of my daughters) illustrates my conception of Mind.
Our minds create structures that are often rigid, held together by habits and memory. Structures of mind are imagined and constructed with ingenuity; they can be quite sturdy. We see the world through these constructs. Around and beyond those structures exists a marvelous and beautiful world that will always defy full understanding. We need safe havens from the forces of nature and time, but real experience comes when we do not sequester ourselves within our established structures.