BACKGROUND: There was a substantial documented call for healthcare professionals to provide compassionate care during the COVID-19 pandemic and significant criticism voiced when it was lacking. This study aimed to explore perspectives on compassionate care among healthcare professionals providing care during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study focuses on healthcare professionals who participated in a wide range of COVID-19 measures, including testing, quarantine, diagnosis, and care provision (patients with COVID-19 or patients with other illnesses and comorbid with COVID-19). METHODS: A qualitative design with an interpretative phenomenological analysis approach was used. Twenty frontline healthcare professionals (15 nurses and five physicians) who had worked in COVID-19 facilities in China were interviewed individually. RESULTS: Participants stated that a commitment to 'offering oneself' and 'balancing the advantages/disadvantages' in providing care during the pandemic were key to alleviate population-level suffering. On a personal level, they described a desire for obtaining 'mutual support' and improving 'professional competencies' to safeguard their physical and mental well-being. Two professional competencies were notable: coping with grief and implementing infection control across the organization. Additionally, they emphasized the importance of receiving support from the health care organization, the public, and leaders in creating an 'environment conducive to fostering compassionate care.' CONCLUSION: Healthcare professionals recognized the centrality of compassionate care during the pandemic which entailed a commitment to offering themselves, the balancing of advantages and disadvantages in order to find the best solution, as well as the need to safeguard themselves using professional competencies. Such findings can enrich the contemporary understanding of compassion, including when it is lacking. Support from the healthcare organization, the public, and leadership were crucial in fostering compassionate care in healthcare professionals during the pandemic and in moving the field forward in the future.

Department of Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation Faculty of Medicine Masaryk University Brno Czech Republic

Department of Rehabilitation University Hospital Brno Brno Czech Republic

Elaine Hubbard Center for Nursing Research on Aging School of Nursing University of Rochester Medical Center Rochester NY USA

School of Journalism and Communication Shanghai University Shanghai China

School of Nursing The Hong Kong Polytechnic University Kowloon Hong Kong SAR China

See more in PubMed

Tehranineshat B, Rakhshan M, Torabizadeh C, Fararouei M. Compassionate care in Healthcare System: a systematic review. J Natl Med Assoc. 2019;111(5):546–54. PubMed

Sinclair S, McClement S, Raffin-Bouchal S, Hack TF, Hagen NA, McConnell S, Chochinov HM. Compassion in Health Care: an empirical model. J Pain Symptom Manag. 2016;51(2):193–203. doi: 10.1016/j.jpainsymman.2015.10.009. PubMed DOI

Compassion. in practice: nursing, midwifery, and care staff our vision and strategy, [https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/compassion-in-practice.pdf].

Francis R. Report of the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust public inquiry: executive summary. In., vol. 947; 2013.

Su JJ, Masika GM, Paguio JT, Redding SR. Defining compassionate nursing care. Nurs Ethics. 2020;27(2):480–93. doi: 10.1177/0969733019851546. PubMed DOI

Malenfant S, Jaggi P, Hayden KA, Sinclair S. Compassion in healthcare: an updated scoping review of the literature. BMC Palliat Care. 2022;21(1):80. doi: 10.1186/s12904-022-00942-3. PubMed DOI PMC

Zhou YM, Callejas MLA, Li YW, MacGeorge EL. What does patient-centered communication look like? Linguistic markers of provider compassionate Care and Shared decision-making and their impacts on patient outcomes. Health Commun. 2023;38(5):1003–13. doi: 10.1080/10410236.2021.1989139. PubMed DOI

View the code. of ethics for nurses [https://www.nursingworld.org/practice-policy/nursing-excellence/ethics/code-of-ethics-for-nurses/].

Matos M, McEwan K, Kanovsky M, Halamova J, Steindl SR, Ferreira N, Linharelhos M, Rijo D, Asano K, Marquez MG, et al. Compassion protects Mental Health and Social Safeness during the COVID-19 pandemic across 21 countries. Mindfulness (N Y) 2022;13(4):863–80. doi: 10.1007/s12671-021-01822-2. PubMed DOI PMC

Horsburgh D, Ross J. Care and compassion: the experiences of newly qualified staff nurses. J Clin Nurs. 2013;22(7–8):1124–32. doi: 10.1111/jocn.12141. PubMed DOI

Devik SA, Enmarker I, Hellzen O. Nurses’ experiences of compassion when giving palliative care at home. Nurs Ethics. 2020;27(1):194–205. doi: 10.1177/0969733019839218. PubMed DOI

Cameron RA, Mazer BL, DeLuca JM, Mohile SG, Epstein RM. In search of compassion: a new taxonomy of compassionate physician behaviours. Health Expect. 2015;18(5):1672–85. doi: 10.1111/hex.12160. PubMed DOI PMC

Wiljer D, Charow R, Costin H, Sequeira L, Anderson M, Strudwick G, Tripp T, Crawford A. Defining compassion in the digital health age: protocol for a scoping review. BMJ Open. 2019;9(2):e026338. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2018-026338. PubMed DOI PMC

Cartolovni A, Stolt M, Scott PA, Suhonen R. Moral injury in healthcare professionals: a scoping review and discussion. Nurs Ethics. 2021;28(5):590–602. doi: 10.1177/0969733020966776. PubMed DOI PMC

Sinclair S, Raffin-Bouchal S, Venturato L, Mijovic-Kondejewski J, Smith-MacDonald L. Compassion fatigue: a meta-narrative review of the healthcare literature. Int J Nurs Stud. 2017;69:9–24. doi: 10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2017.01.003. PubMed DOI

Hofmeyer A, Taylor R, Kennedy K. Fostering compassion and reducing burnout: how can health system leaders respond in the Covid-19 pandemic and beyond? Nurs Educ Today 2020, 94. PubMed PMC

Lake ET, Narva AM, Holland S, Smith JG, Cramer E, Rosenbaum KEF, French R, Clark RRS, Rogowski JA. Hospital nurses’ moral distress and mental health during COVID-19. J Adv Nurs. 2022;78(3):799–809. doi: 10.1111/jan.15013. PubMed DOI PMC

De Rosis S, Gilmore KJ, Nuti S. Reverse compassion: value-in-use and value-in-context of healthcare services during crisis. Tqm J. 2023;35(9):332–51. doi: 10.1108/TQM-12-2022-0339. DOI

Renzi S, Fallanca F, Zangrillo A, Tresoldi M, Landoni G, Angelillo P, Pepe G, Pajoro U, Maestranzi G, Yacoub MR. Caring with compassion during COVID-19. Palliat Support Care. 2020;18(4):403–4. doi: 10.1017/S1478951520000577. PubMed DOI

Chu XR, Jaggi P, Louis JS, Sinclair S. Initial validation of a patient-reported Compassion measure in a Mandarin-speaking Long-Term Care Patient Population. J Nurs Meas 2023. PubMed

Egan H, Connabeer K, Keyte R, Tufte-Hewett A, Kauser S, Hussain M, Regan H, McGowan K, Mantzios M. I didn’t feel like I was a doctor’: a qualitative interview study exploring the experiences and representations of healthcare professionals’ capacity to deliver compassionate care and to practice self-care during the Covid-19 pandemic. Psychol Health 2023. PubMed

Petrocchi N, Ottaviani C, Couyoumdjian A. Dimensionality of self-compassion: translation and construct validation of the self-compassion scale in an Italian sample. J Ment Health. 2014;23(2):72–7. doi: 10.3109/09638237.2013.841869. PubMed DOI

Guiding Opinions on Establishing a System for Evaluating the Medical Ethics of Healthcare Professionals. [http://www.nhc.gov.cn/jcj/s7692/200903/58597e2f0e5140d9b5767949de409e89.shtml].

Smith JA. Beyond the divide between cognition and discourse: using interpretative phenomenological analysis in health psychology. Psychol Health. 1996;11(2):261–71. doi: 10.1080/08870449608400256. DOI

Smith JA. Evaluating the contribution of interpretative phenomenological analysis: a reply to the commentaries and further development of criteria. Health Psychol Rev. 2011;5(1):55–61. doi: 10.1080/17437199.2010.541743. DOI

Smith JA, Fieldsend M. Interpretative phenomenological analysis. American Psychological Association; 2021.

Khoury B. Compassion: embodied and embedded. Mindfulness. 2019;10(11):2363–74. doi: 10.1007/s12671-019-01211-w. DOI

Kobakhidze MN, Hui JI, Chui JI, Gonzalez A. Research disruptions, New Opportunities: re-imagining qualitative interview study during the COVID-19 pandemic. Int J Qual Meth 2021, 20.

Hennink M, Kaiser BN. Sample sizes for saturation in qualitative research: a systematic review of empirical tests. Soc Sci Med. 2022;292:114523. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.114523. PubMed DOI

de Witt L, Ploeg J. Critical appraisal of rigour in interpretive phenomenological nursing research. J Adv Nurs. 2006;55(2):215–29. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2648.2006.03898.x. PubMed DOI

The proportion of. people fully vaccinated with the COVID-19 vaccine reaches 88.01% [https://www.gov.cn/xinwen/2022-03/26/content_5681691.htm].

Blomberg K, Griffiths P, Wengstrom Y, May C, Bridges J. Interventions for compassionate nursing care: a systematic review. Int J Nurs Stud. 2016;62:137–55. doi: 10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2016.07.009. PubMed DOI

Chadwick R. Compassion: hard to define, impossible to mandate. Bmj-Brit Med J 2015, 351. PubMed

Su JJ, Paguio JT, Masika GM, Wang MA, Redding SR. Learning compassionate care: experiences of nursing students. Nurse Educ Pract 2021, 53. PubMed

Bramley L, Matiti M. How does it really feel to be in my shoes? Patients’ experiences of compassion within nursing care and their perceptions of developing compassionate nurses. J Clin Nurs. 2014;23(19–20):2790–9. doi: 10.1111/jocn.12537. PubMed DOI PMC

Tierney S, Seers K, Tutton E, Reeve J. Enabling the flow of compassionate care: a grounded theory study. Bmc Health Serv Res. 2017;17(1):174. doi: 10.1186/s12913-017-2120-8. PubMed DOI PMC

Tracy SJ. Let’s talk: conversation as a defining moment for the Communication Discipline. Health Commun. 2020;35(7):910–6. doi: 10.1080/10410236.2019.1593081. PubMed DOI

Lu H. Exploring the role of Incidental and Integral Compassion and Anger in Health Communication about Pollution. Health Commun. 2020;35(6):675–84. doi: 10.1080/10410236.2019.1582313. PubMed DOI

Pavlova A, Paine SJ, Sinclair S, O’Callaghan A, Consedine NS. Working in value-discrepant environments inhibits clinicians’ ability to provide compassion and reduces well-being: a cross-sectional study. J Intern Med. 2023;293(6):704–23. doi: 10.1111/joim.13615. PubMed DOI

Sinclair S, Kondejewski J, Jaggi P, des Ordons ALR, Kassam A, Hayden KA, Harris D, Hack TF. What works for whom in compassion training programs offered to practicing healthcare providers: a realist review. Bmc Med Educ 2021, 21(1). PubMed PMC

Sinclair S, Kondejewski J, Raffin-Bouchal S, King-Shier KM, Singh P. Can Self-Compassion Promote Healthcare Provider well-being and compassionate care to others? Results of a systematic review. Appl Psychol-Hlth We. 2017;9(2):168–206. PubMed

Caldwell-Harris C, Kronrod A, Yang J. Do more, say less: saying I love you in Chinese and American cultures. Intercult Pragmat. 2013;10(1):41–69. doi: 10.1515/ip-2013-0002. DOI

Real-World Mobile Health Implementation and Patient Safety: Multicenter Qualitative Study