Table 5 Category 2 – Cultivating compassion: Recommended essential skills for developing compassionate care providers

Theme 1: Building a relationship

“Look at (your patient) as someone you want to build a relationship with. If you don't know the answer, don't pretend to know the answer. Because the minute you pretend to know the answer, there goes the relationship right out the window” (Participant 40).

“Try to create as much as possible for the time that they’re in here, a relationship” (Participant 51).

Theme 2: Understanding the patient as a human being: Seeing the person behind the disease

“Appreciate all of the different facets and parts of a person’s life that are affected, not just the illness. Let’s look at the whole picture. Their love life, their family life, their supports, their job, and the huge financial loss” (Participant 19).

“You’re dealing with human beings and everything else, not case files and or anything else, that these are actual human beings with families and children. Try to understand that and put aside what you know in medical school, what you've learned about these diseases and everything else and not treat people as a case files they’re actually human beings” (Participant 43).

“See each person as an individual and make it known to that person that they see them as an individual” (Participant 48).

“I just think you have to take time to realize each individual patient is different. Each person is an individual and we all should be treated individually. Just take a breath and realize that they're human and they're sick. I think the health care providers need to realize that you're here for a reason” (Participant 45).

Theme 3: Emotional resonance: Developing a human connection

“They have to learn how to be in tune with people in the moment” (Participant 48).

“Before your actions, before you speak, before you do something, I would rerun it in your head. Put yourself in that person’s position” (Participant 50).

“Feel the feeling of the sick person, just be familiar with whom you are serving” (Participant 49).

“Part of your job as a doctor, is to sit down with people when you’re giving them whatever diagnosis it might be, to ask them if they have any questions, to ask them if there’s anybody that they can call, ask what can we do for you now, where are we going to go now, and if you don’t have the answer as a doctor, you have your colleagues of doctors that you can go to” (Participant 5).

“Nurses are dealing with people, they should be able to read people and understand people and talk to people and of course, the worst thing of all is dealing with really aggravating people, to even get over that hump and try to help where they can” (Participant 9).