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The following issue briefs highlight the importance of compassionate healthcare, the impact of compassion on health outcomes, best practices and recommendations for creating a healthcare environment where caregivers, patients and families can benefit from compassion for themselves and each other.
June 28, 2024
Artificial intelligence (AI) is here and evolving quickly. This presentation will discuss the opportunities, promises and challenges of AI hosted by Schwartz Center Chief Medical Officer Beth Lown, MD, moderated by Karl Swanson, MD, co-founder and head of data science at Quench, and panelists Michael Lesh, MD, CEO and founder of Quench, Ashwin Nayak, MD, MS, clinical assistant professor of medicine at Stanford University, and Vivek Rudrapatna, MD, PhD, gastroenterologist and assistant professor at University of California, San Francisco. Our panelists described how AI is being used in healthcare now, and what we can expect in the near future and long-term. We discussed how this may affect compassionate patient care and healthcare workforce well-being, and what we can do collectively to shape this future. The discussion followed with Q&A.
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June 13, 2024
In line with our efforts to build more compassionate cultures within healthcare, our Chief Medical Officer Dr. Beth Lown, will be joining Dr. Stephen Beeson, CEO and Founder of Practicing Excellence, for a live discussion this 25th of June at 12 PM PT/3 PM ET. In this live discussion, they will shine a light on building compassionate cultures in healthcare and the benefits of the human development journey to enhance everyone’s ability to connect with patients, collaborate with peers, and lead in ways that inspire meaningful change. Visit the episode page to find out more.
May 10, 2024
Join us for a fireside chat with Stephen W. Trzeciak, MD, MPH, and Schwartz Center Chief Medical Officer Dr. Beth Lown. Dr. Trzeciak is chairman and chief of the department of medicine and medical director of the Adult Health Institute at Cooper University Health Care. He is also a professor of medicine at Cooper Medical School of Rowan University. Drs. Lown and Trzeciak will discuss how we create and, conversely, can erode compassionate cultures and how to demonstrate empowered compassion for ourselves and others. You will also learn about research that highlights the benefits of compassion, including its positive impact on patients, healthcare workers, and organizational culture and profitability.
April 1, 2024
We published a paper in “Healthcare Management Forum” describing early results of the Schwartz Center’s Healing Healthcare Initiative (HHI) pilot program. As we know, the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated burnout, highlighted health inequities, and increased staffing shortages. In particular, it intensified psychological stress injuries and mental health issues among healthcare workers and leaders.
March 14, 2024
For decades, interventions for clinician distress have been less effective than hoped. By expanding our understanding of the clinicians’ experience to include moral injury, we can create organizations with thriving practitioners who can offer better care for their patients. Join us for this special webinar, hosted by Schwartz Center Chief Medical Officer Dr. Beth Lown, as we learn from Dr. Wendy Dean, CEO and co-founder of The Moral Injury of Healthcare. Dr. Dean is the author of “If I Betray These Words: Moral Injury In Medicine” and “Why It’s So Hard For Clinicians to Put Patients First,” and cohost of the “Moral Matters” and “43cc” podcasts.
January 30, 2024
In this webinar, Dr. Ken Epstein explains the characteristics of organizations that induce and perpetuate trauma through inequitable practices and policies, hierarchical decision-making, and reactivity rather than intentional reflection. Becoming a Trauma-Informed System (TIS) and ultimately a healing organization requires systemic change that promotes connection, coherent meaning making, and inclusive collaboration to address and prevent the ways organizations can induce stress and harm on its employees and the community.
June 17, 2021
The COVID-19 pandemic has thrown into sharp relief long-standing inequities in the American healthcare system. Black and brown communities have experienced a disproportionate number of coronavirus cases and deaths. For example, at the height of the pandemic in New York City, age-adjusted mortality rates for Blacks and Latinos were double those of whites and Asians. The pandemic’s economic devastation has been unevenly experienced as well. In a national survey conducted in July and August of 2020, 72% of Latino, 60% of Black, and 55% of Native American people reported they were experiencing serious financial problems. In contrast, 37% of Asian and 36% of white people said the same.
Despite our scientific understanding of addiction as a chronic disease whose sufferers are prone to relapses, many health professionals and the public still believe that addiction is a choice or a moral failing. Furthermore, common everyday language and slang stigmatizes individuals with SUD and creates cognitive bias towards punitive judgment rather than compassion.
At the Schwartz Center for Compassionate Healthcare’s recent New York Thought Leadership Breakfast, in partnership with NewYorkBIO and held at the New York Genome Center, a panel of experts representing diverse perspectives came together to discuss the impact of healthcare cost containment on the patient-caregiver relationship, with a specific focus on so-called “step therapies” to contain prescription drug costs
Compassion is not a panacea for what ails the U.S. healthcare system, but it can be the foundation for improving patients’ care experiences, patient and caregiver satisfaction, and a hospital’s bottom line.
At a recent panel discussion in Boston, four thought leaders who work at the intersection of medicine and technology discussed how new healthcare technologies are affecting the patient-caregiver relationship.
Compassion is essential for effective collaboration among healthcare professionals, staff, patients and families. But despite evidence supporting the importance of compassionate healthcare, the concepts and skills related to empathy and compassion, and that are needed to provide person-/family-centered and relationship-based care, are not routinely taught, modeled and assessed across the continuum of learning and practice.
In our increasingly complex healthcare environments, collaboration is essential if we are to progress toward the “Triple Aim” of creating positive patient and family experiences and better health at lower cost.
Between October 2013 and April 2014, the Schwartz Center for Compassionate Healthcare and the Conference of Boston Teaching Hospitals (COBTH) held eight special Schwartz Center Rounds® sessions for hospital staff , first responders and medical volunteers who treated those injured in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings.
Despite the current focus on patient centeredness, healthcare professionals face numerous challenges that impede their ability to provide compassionate care that ameliorates concerns, distress, or suffering.