Transforming learning: teaching compassion and caring values in higher education

Abstract

As a result of reported failings in the care of people in the health and social care sector in the UK, HE providers who produce professionals to work in these areas being challenged to address caring values in the student body. As values are subjective and affective, this requires the learning environment to not only promote critical thinking and the development of professional competencies, but to facilitate personal growth and change within students at cognitive, emotional and spiritual levels. As the latter dimensions are frequently ignored in education, this is very challenging: it requires a curriculum that supports students to understand, reflect on and, if necessary, restructure their own caring values in order to develop a transcendent lens i.e. the ability to put others before their own self interests and that of the organisation in which they work. It also requires students to develop the skills to challenge others in situations were caring values are not achieved or sustained. This can only be accomplished as a coproduced phenomenon, as it requires students who are prepared to engage in the process and educators, in both HE and practice settings, who are able and willing to role model appropriate skills and facilitate a learning relationship in which students can grow. However, if the true wisdom of caring values is to be realised in everyday practice, then this kind of transformational learning has to be supported at wider structural levels, and this just may be its achilles heel.

Cultivating awareness of sexual and gender diversity in a midwifery curriculum

“…Faculty focus group members hinted that there may be some discomfort or lack of readiness for teaching LGBTQ+ focused material due to lack of experience and knowledge as demonstrated in other existing research about healthcare for LGBTQ+ people (Carabez et al 2015;Lim et al 2015;McCann & Brown 2018). A collaborative approach to learning in healthcare creating specific content with LGBTQ+ students and parents may facilitate a 'deep reflective level of learning' (Clouston 2018(Clouston , 1017. This type of learning makes demands on educators to be critically engaged and self-reflective, and to be open to dialogue with students (Moony & Nolan 2006).…”

Análisis y validación de un Test para medir Valores (TVA_ Adaptado)

“…Los valores son hoy un tema tan antiguo, como de permanente actualidad. Así lo demuestran estudios recientes (INJUVE, 2016;Fujihara & Ishida, 2016;González-Anleo & López-Ruiz, 2017;Abella, Lezcani, Casado, 2017;Amador, Mateos & Esteban, 2017;Pérez-Jorge, Barragán-Medero & Molina-Fernández, 2017;Gómez, Sánchez & Pérez, 2017;Chowdhury, 2018;Yigit, 2018;Clouston, 2018;Roy, 2019;Griffiths et al, 2020;Mausethagen, Prøitz & Skedsmo, 2020;Singh, 2020). Y ello es así, porque el ser humano, en cuanto humano, no puede vivir sin valores, aunque es preciso distinguir entre el valor en sí y la interpretación de las diversas valoraciones, como manifiesta el siguiente hecho:…”

Pearls of wisdom: using the single case study or ‘gem’ to identify strategies for mediating stress and work-life imbalance in healthcare staff

“…As purveyors of emotional labour nurses not only give of themselves therapeutically to patients but orchestrate emotions in order to meet workplace demands (Freshwater and Cahill, 2010). Consequently, these kinds of work-based pressures can significantly increase psychological distress and conflict (Mahon et al, 2017;Morley, 2016) and ultimately, this will impact on the ability to give a meaningful quality of compassionate care to patients (Ball et al, 2013;Beardsmore and McSherry, 2017;Clouston, 2017Clouston, , 2018Firth-Cozens and Cornwell, 2009;Morley and Jackson, 2017).…”

“…175). Burnout is born of ongoing stress marked by emotional exhaustion, a reduced sense of personal accomplishment and depersonalisation, that is, the inability to feel emotionally for self or others (Clouston, 2015, 2018). Thus, it is closely linked to compassion fatigue, which is the inability to empathise or be caring or compassionate towards others due to emotional and psychological exhaustion (Mahon et al., 2017).…”