Abstract
ABSTRACT.Compassion—the awareness of suffering coupled with the desire to relieve that suffering—is an evolved human capacity that offers significant benefits for individuals and organizations. While the relief of suffering is central to tropical medicine and global health, compassion is more often assumed than explicit. Global health leaders participating in a compassionate leadership program recently reported that the most common personal barriers to compassionate leadership include inability to regulate workload, perfectionism, and lack of self-compassion; while the most common external challenges include excessive work-related demands, the legacy of colonialism, and the lack of knowledge on how to lead with compassion. These barriers can be surmounted. Within organizations, leaders are the primary shapers of compassionate cultures. Now is the time to bring our core compassionate values to bear in addressing the “unfinished business” of ensuring global health equity and deconstructing colonialist structures in global health and tropical medicine. Compassionate leadership offers us tools to complete this unfinished business.
Highlights
While the relief of suffering is central to tropical medicine and global health, compassion is more often assumed than explicit
Now is the time to bring our core compassionate values to bear in addressing the “unfinished business” of ensuring global health equity and deconstructing colonialist structures in global health and tropical medicine
Compassion—the awareness of suffering coupled with the desire to relieve that suffering1—is more often assumed than explicit in the fields of tropical medicine and global health
Summary
Compassion—the awareness of suffering coupled with the desire to relieve that suffering1—is more often assumed than explicit in the fields of tropical medicine and global health. Recent events have prompted an urgent reexamination of compassion in tropical medicine and global health. Recent insights from psychology and neuroscience suggest that compassion is comprised of at least three fundamental elements: 1) awareness of the suffering of others, 2) empathic understanding and concern for others, and 3) action to alleviate the suffering.[14] In tropical medicine and global health, awareness of suffering arises both from individual patient encounters and from more abstract population-level data. We derive pleasure and meaning not just from empathetic understanding but from compassionate action—and even from observing acts of compassion.[17]
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary 
Published Version (
Free)
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call