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A social neuroscience‐informed model for teaching and practising compassion in health care
Author(s) -
Lown Beth A
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
medical education
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.776
H-Index - 138
eISSN - 1365-2923
pISSN - 0308-0110
DOI - 10.1111/medu.12926
Subject(s) - psychology , empathy , compassion , personal distress , distress , context (archaeology) , empathic concern , prosocial behavior , psychological intervention , feeling , acknowledgement , psychotherapist , cognitive psychology , social psychology , developmental psychology , perspective taking , paleontology , psychiatry , political science , law , biology , computer security , computer science
Context Empathy and compassion are important catalysts for the healing process, but some research suggests their decline during training and practice. Compassion involves recognition, understanding, emotional resonance and empathic concern for another's concerns, distress, pain and suffering, coupled with their acknowledgement, and motivation and relational action to ameliorate these conditions. Compassion, Altruism and Reward Neuroscientists have identified neural networks that generate shared representations of directly experienced and observed feelings, sensations and actions. When shared representations evoke empathic concern or compassion for another's painful situation, humans experience altruistic motivation to help. The resulting behaviours are associated with activation of areas in the brain associated with affiliation and reward. Compassion Modulators Activation of these neural networks is sensitive to multiple inter‐ and intrapersonal influences. These include the ability to focus one's attention, the ability to receive and accurately interpret input about distress, the perspective one adopts in order to understand another's experience, self‐other boundary awareness, the degree to which one values another's welfare, the ability to recognise and regulate one's own emotions, the ability to attend to one's own wellbeing through self‐care and self‐compassion, effective communication skills, reflection and meta‐cognition. Conclusions Current research suggests that compassion can be modulated through education and training and is associated with positive emotions, a sense of affiliation, reward and prosocial behaviours. A compassion process model and framework with examples of educational goals, interventions and resources for curriculum development are described. However, education must be aligned with changes in clinical practice to sustain compassionate care.

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