Outcomes from a Compassion Training Intervention for Health Care Workers

Debbie Ling, John Olver, Melissa Petrakis

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Outcomes from a Compassion Training Intervention for Health Care Workers

Debbie Ling, John Olver, Melissa Petrakis

Medailon autora:

Debbie Ling is a senior clinician social worker, meditation and mindfulness teacher, teaching
associate in the Department of Social Work, Monash University and part of the Epworth Monash
Rehabilitation Medicine Unit. Debbie is a member of the Australia21 Mindful Futures Network
Advisory Group. Debbie is a member of the Australian Compassion Council, Charter for
Compassion Australia. She is completing a PhD on compassion at Monash University.

Professor John Olver is currently Director of Rehabilitation, Mental Health and Chronic Pain
Clinical Institute and the Director - Smorgon Chair of Rehabilitation Medicine - Monash
University. His main areas of clinical and research interests in Rehabilitation Medicine are
managing people with traumatic brain injury and stroke.

Dr. Melissa Petrakis is Senior Lecturer at Monash University, Department of Social Work,
Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences. She has worked in mental health services for
over 20 years, the first decade as a clinician and the second as a practice-based researcher (PBR),
engaged in health services research on the implementation of evidence-based practice (EBP). For
the last 10 years she has been Chief Investigator of a longitudinal cohort study into evidencebased
public mental health early psychosis treatment with St Vincent‘s Hospital (Melbourne).

Abstrakt:

OBJECTIVES: To investigate how compassion training may help support health care workers do their jobs well, maintaining positive states of mind without being overloaded by empathic distress. THEORETICAL BASE: Recent findings from neuroscience suggest that compassion is a positive mind state and can be trained. Compassion is found to be different from empathy which, unlike compassion, can lead to empathic distress and burnout. This finding has led to the development of a range of compassion training programs. METHODS: A single session compassion training intervention including: (i) information defining compassion, (ii) research information from neuroscience demonstrating that compassion is a positive mind state and different from to empathy, (iii) scenarios emphasising common humanity and (iv) a slogan for health care workers to use to help them hold a compassionate stance towards their patients. OUTCOMES: The compassion training intervention was delivered to 100 health care workers at a major inner city private healthcare organisation in Australia in October 2017. A survey administered post-training session indicates that the health care workers found the compassion training useful and further training would be beneficial. SOCIAL WORK IMPLICATIONS: As a result of the positive findings from this research, a web-based compassion training module is being developed for all staff at the healthcare organisation.