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Posts for Families & Loved Ones
Perspectives on family caregiving, self-compassion during difficult times, and understanding what compassionate care looks like.
The Family in the Hallway
Family bereavement trajectories are shaped, decades later, by minutes of clinician presence during the worst week of their lives.
Family lived experience during admission, decision-making, and bereavement is shaped by clinician compassion in concentrated and consequential ways, with effects that persist for years.
CompassionFamily ExperienceBereavementEnd of Life Care
6 min read
Self-Compassion Is Not Self-Indulgence
The research is clear: being kind to yourself makes you more effective, not less.
Self-compassion is not weakness or self-pity. The research shows it is associated with greater motivation, better performance, and increased capacity to care for others.
Self-CompassionResearchPractice
7 min read
What Compassion Does to a Patient You Will Never Meet
Compassion is not adjunctive to clinical care. It changes hemoglobin A1c, immune function, and mortality in patients you will never meet.
Patient experience of compassionate care is not adjunctive to clinical effectiveness. It is part of clinical effectiveness, with documented effects on hemoglobin A1c, immune function, adherence, and mortality.
CompassionClinical EffectivenessEvidence-Based Practice
7 min read
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
8 min read