The Compassion in Healthcare Trust was registered as a charitable entity under the Charities Act 2005 on 30th June 2008 (Registration Number CC27095). Details of the Trustees are here.
The Centre for Compassion in Healthcare is established in Auckland, New Zealand. Our pilot programmes are based at Waitakere Hospital in west Auckland where the founder of the Trust, Dr Robin Youngson, is a practising clinician.
Our Centre has 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 the Centre for 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’.
Our connection to Maori deepens through work we did with a group of parents who have all tragically lost children to serious illness. These parents all work in the TV and film world and they donated their time and expertise to make a short film about compassion in healthcare. Cameron Duncan is a young Maori film maker whose life was tragically cut short by cancer. In his last few months he made an extraordinary short film about his experience of being ‘imprisoned’ in hospital. His work features in our short film and we have dedicated the “Cameron Duncan Compassion Rounds” to his memory.
Background
There is a growing movement to make compassion a keystone in healthcare. Waiatawhai, the Centre for Compassion in Healthcare, has become 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 is starting 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 2008 Dr Youngson with several like-minded people set up the Compassion in Healthcare Trust in New Zealand. Trustees come from a diverse range of backgrounds and are all passionate about making a difference. The Centre for Compassion in Healthcare is not a place we take our patients in for care but is a virtual meeting place for those who seek to connect with others striving to strengthen compassion in healthcare.
The Trust is raising charitable funds and gathering resources to support programmes in our hospitals that begin to put the heart back into caring. Eventually, we want to be able to make grants to small programmes in many hospitals across New Zealand, that seek to raise awareness, that create safe places for health professionals to talk about their own vulnerability, and to explore issues of caring and compassion.
The Centre for Compassion in Healthcare is 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.
We aim 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.
The NZ pilot programmes will soon begin at Waitakere Hospital. We have a number of inspiring speakers lined up for the “Humanity in Healthcare" public lecture series - see Upcoming Events. Hospital compassion rounds (the "Cameron Duncan Compassion Rounds") will begin when the arrangements for the facilitator are finalised. Another project will explore ways to get the 'voice' of the patient and family into the contemporary clinical record.
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 part of this movement, please register on our website as a ‘Friend’ of the Trust. Membership is free. We will not share your details with any other organisation.
You can also go to the on-line discussion forum to take part in dialogue about issues of caring, compassion and professionalism (or any other subject you'd like to raise).
Please join us in this endeavour
If you would like to be in touch, please click here for the Contact form.
Charitable objectives from our Trust Deed:
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To raise the public profile of compassion in healthcare
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To raise a campaign among health professionals and the general public for the Code of Rights for consumers of health and disability services (Health and Disability Commissioner Act 1994) to be amended to include: “the right to be treated with compassion”
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To foster and develop the practice of compassion by health care professionals for the purpose of improving the quality of health and disability services, thereby advancing the health and wellbeing of the people of New Zealand
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To foster and develop a humanistic and holistic approach to healthcare that includes consideration of emotional, psychological, social, spiritual and cultural needs of people
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To promote or engage in research into health systems and the personal experience of health consumers of the health and disability services as it relates to compassion in healthcare
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To organise or promote conferences or other meetings that support shared learning and education about compassion in healthcare
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To make available appropriate stories and/or information related to compassion in healthcare by means of a website, newsletters, periodicals, journals, books or video films
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To develop and promote education resources including training courses, written material and electronic media to foster compassion in healthcare
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To make grants to individuals or healthcare organisations for specified activities to foster compassion in healthcare in different locations in New Zealand (including education, meetings, research and surveys)
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To recognise, by whatever means, examples of compassion in healthcare
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To do any other lawful things as may be incidental or conducive to the promotion or carrying out of the foregoing charitable objects
