About Us

Compassion in Healthcare.

Compassion is the humane quality of understanding suffering in others
and wanting to do something about it.

The Compassion in Healthcare Trust no longer exists as a legal entity. The Trust was dis-established in 2011 and remaining funds were donated to the Christchurch EarthQuake Appeal. 

This site is sponsored by HeartsInHealthcare.com and remains as a resource for collaboration and sharing between different organisations and individuals concerned with the re-humanisation of healthcare.

The Trust had a Maori name, “Waiatawhai”, which reflects the spiritual nature of the work we are doing to strengthen the heart and soul of healthcare. The Maori people of New Zealand have a holistic framework for health and wellbeing that incorporates four dimensions: “taha tinana” (bodily health), “taha hinengaro” (mental health), “taha whanau” (relationship and emotional health), and “taha wairua” (spiritual health). This framework serves as an antidote to the Western emphasis on clinical detachment and objectivity, where the technical quality of clinical care might be excellent but the human needs and emotional experience of the patient and family are often neglected.

The Maori word “atawhai” has connotations of kindness, succour, mercy and tender-heartedness. ‘Wai’ means water or waves. The name “Waiatawhai” therefore translates as something akin to "healing waters of kindness". The name and the logo arose out of a long process of dialogue with kaumatua and whaea (Maori elders) who are cultural advisors at Waitemata District Health Board.

The artist who designed the logo is a courageous young woman, Chloe Youngson, whose experience of long-term hospital care with a spinal injury served as an inspiration for the founding of Compassion in Healthcare. Her story has already resonated around the world and is told in papers available on this site. The logo incorporates traditional Maori symbols of growth, new life, the heart, protection and of healing waters. The name is pronounced ‘why-ata-fai’.

Background to the movement

There is a growing movement to make compassion a keystone in healthcare. Waiatawhai, the Compassion in Healthcare Trust, became a focal point for a widespread network of both health professionals and health consumers around the world. From small beginnings in New Zealand, an international dialogue and network started to take shape. Dr Robin Youngson, a British trained anaesthetist who has made New Zealand his home, has taken up the challenge of restoring compassion as a core value and daily lived practice for all health professionals and institutions.

Several years ago a devastating car accident to his daughter Chloe brought Dr Youngson face to face with the healthcare like he had never seen it before – as a father nursing his seriously injured daughter. This cathartic experience gave him a unique consumer/patient perspective and has since challenged and motivated him to initiate change i.e. strengthening compassion in healthcare.

Chloe’s story is told in a policy debate paper commissioned by the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) Confederation, “Compassion in healthcare - the missing dimension of healthcare reform”. This powerful paper has already been influential in shaping government health policy in the UK. You can access this paper from the Downloads section.

In 2006 Dr Youngson with several like-minded people set up the Compassion in Healthcare Trust in New Zealand. Trustees came from a diverse range of backgrounds and are all passionate about making a difference. Compassion in Healthcare was not a place to take our patients in for care but was a virtual meeting place for those who seek to connect with others striving to strengthen compassion in healthcare.

The Trust raised charitable funds and gathered resources to support programmes in our hospitals that begin to put the heart back into caring. 

Compassion in Healthcare was supported by the West Auckland Health Services Foundation, the charitable foundation connected with Waitakere Hospital in west Auckland. At an inaugural charity dinner, in excess of $30,000 was raised to launch the new Centre.

Our aim was to repeat the success of the Kenneth B. Schwartz Center in the USA, which is dedicated to strengthening the relationship between patients and caregivers. The Schwartz Center supports programmes in more than a hundred hospitals including: Multidisciplinary compassion rounds; Annual compassionate caregiver awards; Seminars on "difficult conversations"; and a speaker programme, Promoting the Practice of Apology. Further information about the Schwartz Center is here.

Pioneers in a number of countries are starting to connect and there is a powerful sense of a growing movement in many parts of the world. We believe the leaders we need are already in place to support this change in many different places. If we align our efforts we can transform healthcare from within. 

If you would like to be in touch, please click here for the Contact form.

Alternatively, you can visit www.heartsinhealthcare.com to learn more about the new organisation taking this work forward.