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Cultivating Compassion Within
The internal work: neuroscience and the practices that sustain sustainable caring.
What fatigues caregivers is not compassion. What fatigues us is empathy held too long without the protective frame of compassionate intention.
NeuroscienceSelf-CompassionPractice
Dr. Russ L'HommeDieu, DPT8 min read
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Self-Compassion Is Not Self-Indulgence
The most common objection to self-compassion is also the one with the clearest empirical answer.
Self-compassion is associated with greater motivation to improve after failure, more accurate self-assessment, and lower fear of failure. It is the protective foundation that makes genuine compassion for others sustainable, not a license for laziness.
Self-CompassionEducationPersonal Reflection
Dr. Russ L'HommeDieu, DPT7 min read
The Forty-Second Intervention
One of the most cited findings in the compassion literature is also one of the most overlooked.
Forty seconds of compassionate communication, watched on videotape, was sufficient to measurably reduce anxiety in cancer patients. The cost is forty seconds. The benefit is real. The objection that "we don't have time" deserves to be answered with this study.
PracticePatient ExperienceNeuroscience
Dr. Russ L'HommeDieu, DPT4 min read
Why I Stopped Using the Word Burnout
The language we use locates the problem. It is time the language located it correctly.
Burnout, as a word, locates the failure inside the worker. Occupational Distress Syndrome locates it where the evidence puts it: in the system that produced the failure.
Personal ReflectionSystems
Dr. Russ L'HommeDieu, DPT5 min read
Building a Culture of Compassion
The organizational work: what compassionate organizations look like.
Compassion is not a trait people either possess or lack. It is a specific, trainable skill, sustained by neural circuits distinct from empathy, that becomes organizational only when structures legitimize, propagate, and coordinate it.
LeadershipSystemsOrganizational
Dr. Russ L'HommeDieu, DPT10 min read
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New essays are published periodically. Each explores a different facet of compassion in healthcare, from neuroscience to organizational change.
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