Delivering Compassionate Care

Over the last decade there has been several public inquiries, across the UK, highlighting the shameful neglect and maltreatment of health and social care users.  In addition to the findings from these inquiries, there is a growing body of evidence indicating that there has been decline in care generally and compassionate care specifically.  This may, in part, be explained as being a consequence of the increasing demands on health and social care services due to higher levels of activity, higher throughput, shorter hospital stays, an ageing staff and population and staff shortages in some services.

In 2016 the Scottish Government published the Health and Social Care Delivery Plan outlining changes in health and social care services in Scotland to meet future challenges and demands, promising a service where health and social care users are at the centre of decisions that affect them.

Building on this postive note, this module seeks to enable health and social care professionals from different professional backgrounds and settings to develop the ability to understand compassionate practice; have the knowledge and confidence to respond to and challenge poor practice; and be an agent for change at an individual, team and organisational level. 

The above skills acquisition, also contribute to the development of the UWS Graduate Attributes:

• Universal: critical thinking, analytical, inquiring, culturally aware, emotionally intelligent, ethically minded, collaborative, research-minded and socially responsible;
• Work-Ready: knowledgeable, digitally literate, problem solver, effective communicator, influential, motivated, potential leader, enterprising, ambitious; and
• Successful: autonomous, incisive, innovative, creative, imaginative, resilient, driven, daring and transformational.

On successful completion of this module the student will be able to:

• Critically understand the concept of delivering compassionate (*including spiritual) care.
• Critically review and contextualize the attitudes, values and beliefs which may impact upon the delivery of compassionate care.
• Systematically analyse and review strategies designed to assist in the creation of a culture of compassionate care.
• Critical analyse the range of tools and specialist techniques which facilitate the effective delivery of compassionate care.

This is an SCQF Level 11 module and upon successful completion, participants will be awarded 20 credits.

Delivery

This is an online course with timetable to be confirmed.

Course presenter

This module will be delivered by Di Douglas.

NOTE: This is a university module and upon approval of your application, you will be invited to register and then supported to complete enrolment. To enrol on the university system, the first step involves security set-up using the Microsoft Authenticator app; you will need to ensure that you have a compatible smartphone.

Further information is available at the Student Information Portal.

To access this module via the CPD route, individuals should be ordinarily resident in Scotland.  If you do not meet this criteria, please enquire here.