Cognition and the compassion deficit: the social psychology of helping behaviour in nursing

Nursing Philosophy 15 (4):274-287 (2014)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

This paper discusses compassion failure and compassion deficits in health care, using two major reports by Robert Francis in the UK as a point of reference. Francis enquired into events at the Mid Staffordshire Hospital between 2005 and 2009, events that unequivocally warrant the description ‘appalling care’. These events prompted an intense national debate, along with proposals for significant changes in the regulation of nursing and nurse education. The circumstances are specific to the UK, but the issues are international.I suggest that social psychology provides numerous hints about the mechanisms that might have been involved at Mid Staffs and about the reasons why outsiders are blind to these mechanisms. However, there have been few references to social psychology in the post‐Francis debate (the Francis Report itself makes no reference to it at all). It is an enormously valuable resource, and it has been overlooked.Drawing on the social psychology literature, I express scepticism about the idea that there was a compassion deficit among the Mid Staff nurses – the assumption that the appalling care had something to do with the character, attitudes, and values of nurses – and argue that the Francis Report's emphasis on a ‘culture of compassion and caring in nurse recruitment, training and education’ is misconceived. It was not a ‘failure of compassion’ that led to the events in Mid Staffs but an interlocking set of contextual factors that are known to affect social cognition. These factors cannot be corrected or compensated for by teaching ethics, empathy, and compassion to student nurses.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,616

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Character Traits, Social Psychology, and Impediments to Helping Behavior.Christian Miller - 2010 - Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 5 (1):1-36.
Measuring nursing care and compassion: the McDonaldised nurse?A. Bradshaw - 2009 - Journal of Medical Ethics 35 (8):465-468.
On the Social Dimensions of Moral Psychology.John D. GreenwooD - 2011 - Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 41 (4):333-364.
Rousseau and the education of compassion.Richard White - 2008 - Journal of Philosophy of Education 42 (1):35-48.
Varieties of Social Cognition.Eric Luis Uhlmann, David A. Pizarro & Paul Bloom - 2008 - Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 38 (3):293-322.

Analytics

Added to PP
2014-01-23

Downloads
31 (#445,444)

6 months
1 (#1,042,085)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

References found in this work

Inattentional Blindness.Arien Mack & Irvin Rock - 1998 - MIT Press. Edited by Richard D. Wright.
Cognitive maps in rats and men.Edward C. Tolman - 1948 - Psychological Review 55 (4):189-208.
Ethical Blindness.Guido Palazzo, Franciska Krings & Ulrich Hoffrage - 2012 - Journal of Business Ethics 109 (3):323-338.

View all 10 references / Add more references