Reclaiming compassion as a core value in occupational therapy

Abstract

The current drive to promote values within all health care professions invites a review of compassion within occupational therapy, to reclaim this as both a core value and an observable behaviour in our professional practice. Compassion has been largely neglected in occupational therapy literature although it lies at the heart of professional relationships and person-centred practice. While compassion is generally accepted as a motivation for people choosing occupational therapy as a career, there is virtually no mention of it in the literature. Since 2013, interest in compassion within nursing, medicine, and midwifery has increased, defining its meaning, exploring service users’ perceptions of compassionate care, and identifying organisational supports and barriers to compassion in health care services. In comparison, occupational therapy literature rarely discusses compassion as the basis for care (Stoffel, 2013). Compassion can be viewed as both a core virtue and an emotional response which is acknowledged in action (Blane and Mercer, 2011). While there are many different definitions in the literature, these definitions commonly imply a sense of connection to another human, illustrating a significant difference between care, as a physical action, and compassion, which involves ‘an awareness of, or sensitivity to, the pain and suffering of others that result in taking verbal, nonverbal or physical action to remove, reduce, or alleviate the impact of such affiliation’ (Crawford et al., 2014: 3591). Simply put, it is possible to care for either an inanimate object, such as a car or a plant, or for a person without experiencing compassion. Unlike compassion, the concept of empathy is frequently identified as the basis of the therapeutic relationship, and is more widely acknowledged in the literature and in education. Taken from the psychotherapeutic frame of reference, empathy is the ability to recognise and understand a person’s experience, but does not necessarily involve a response to that experience. Developing empathy does not necessarily result in better health care. One can be empathic to a client without converting the awareness into a positive action. Indeed, an awareness of a patient’s distress or fear could be used negatively to assert power over that person. Therefore, compassion plays a pivotal role in the provision of occupational therapy. Compassion may be seen as the fuel for occupational therapists’ interventions, including the verbal, non-verbal and physical actions that make