Is compassion innate and part of our evolutionary path of human beings working together as a collective? Researchers at the The Greater Good Scientific Center at the University of California Berkley believe so and target their ongoing studies and research to argue that compassion is instinctual and hard-wired in our brain.

Perhaps that is why we "just know" when someone is demonstrating compassion but we can't directly describe or articulate what we are seeing when we are with a compassionate person. Compassion could be in the facial expression of oblique eyebrows and a concerned gaze. Dacher Keltner's research indicates humans can interpret various types of touches without actually seeing the touch in progress. Recent findings indicate the most identified behavior or activity research participants signaled as compassionate actions was the sound of  ---- "ahhhh."

The research begs the questions:

If compassion is innate or intuitive, how do maintain our compassionate state?

How do we prevent falling off the compassion "wagon" in our personal and our professional lives?

How do we insure we do not evolve out of compassion? 

Is compassion a "given" in healthcare delivery?  In a recent study of 800 recently hospitalized patient and 510 physicians, researchers reported only 53% of patients and 58% percent of physicians said that the health system generally provides compassionate care.

One of our primary focuses on improving the patient experience has been providing tips and tools to script and standardize the dialogue and interaction between the caregiver and the patient. Therefore, we can potentially script our way through registration, room admission, hourly rounding as well as daily tasks to care for the patient. It could be possible to regurgitate a script without ever looking at a patient and showing care, concern, empathy, kindness and encouragement through a facial expression.

Read more...

"If compassion was fun, everyone would do it. So how do we make compassion fun?" A year ago this month, Chad- Meng Tan, a Google engineer, shared his insight regarding the results of organic compassion within his organization. Through his TED presentation, Tan discussed how developing compassion can create highly effective leaders and positively impact conditions in the workplace. As individuals combine the three components of empathy with action, organic compassion facilitates social action competitions creating contagious compassion in the organization.