Is kindness a cure for our sick health system?

The news seems to be full of stories of violence, abuse, and staff burnout in healthcare settings, including hospitals.

However, a group of doctors is convinced that many issues for patients and staff in our hospitals can be improved and even solved. With, money? No. With a little kindness!

For a decade these doctors have met at what they call a “gathering of kindness”, to highlight the benefits for patients and healthcare staff and providers of gentler medical care.

The Gathering of Kindness is an initiative led by the Hush Foundation, focusing on transforming healthcare cultures by prioritising kindness, respect, and well-being.

This movement seeks to build and nurture a culture of kindness throughout the healthcare system, recognising that kindness is essential for effective care and collaboration among healthcare professionals.

They seek practical outcomes, including greater collaboration, a reduction in errors, and overall improved quality of care.

University researchers have taken a closer look at the concept, including coming up with a definition of kindness through a structured analysis of published research papers. They found it was action-oriented, positively focused and purposeful in nature. 

“The foundation of kindness is civility and choosing actions that show respect, generosity, openness, and inclusion,” said Nicki Macklin, a doctoral candidate in the School of Population Health at the University of Auckland.

“When we get into conflict, which happens a lot in healthcare but also in the wider world, it's a mindset and an approach where you are actively maintaining that other person's respect through the ways you are choosing to respond.”

It’s common to conflate kindness with compassion and empathy.

Macklin says kindness exists regardless of other people’s emotional states and can be taught in medical education.

Empathy is an internal, emotional response of wanting to share another’s feelings or situation, whether suffering or joy, and informs action, rather than being an action itself.

Compassion is responding to others’ suffering with a desire to alleviate that suffering, but that may or may not result in outwards action.

Kindness is a set of actions in response to a desire to help others flourish, informed by either an empathetic response or proactively chosen.

On the flip side, unkindness in healthcare teams – rude manners, and unclear or abrasive communication – has been shown in large studies to be the root cause of three out of four patient harm events in hospital settings.

Macklin says organisations need to create environments and cultures that encourage individuals and teams to sustain kindness, before they can expect it from employees.

Gathering of Kindness founder, Professor Catherine Crock, says kindness behaviour can deliver big gains in the quality and safety of healthcare, with minimal investment, just by everybody focusing on kindness and respect.

“It’s an empowering thing to think that, with kindness and respect between everyone in the system, we can be more productive,” she said.

“Our teams function better. Performance drops off hugely if there is incivility and rudeness – even if patients are rude to the people caring for them – and the safety of patients’ care is reduced.”