When things go wrong in health and social care many reports are  produced making recommendations to improve practice. In most cases there is a common theme that runs throughout these reports and that is often around a failure in communication. In health and social care  we are expected to take risks on a daily basis but we also need to reflect more on how we make those decisions around risks and how we communicate them. If you read these reports  in detail you will see how a failure to listen is a common theme in some very tragic cases resulting multiple deaths or injury. We could say then that listening to and communicating information is not a option in compassionate care as it is a way of demonstrating that we  really are being compassionate. More recently we are hearing the term “trauma informed care” which in reality is about learning to listen.

A failure to listen can occur on many levels –

Staff fail to listen to patients/ clients/ customers

Staff fail to listen to each other

Managers fail to listen to staff

Organisations fail to listen to managers

Governments  fail to listen to organisations

Time is not wasted listening to someone in fact it can prevent a tragedy happening.  In many of the references I have provided within the blog site taking the time to listen is often suggested as a way of demonstrating compassionate care.  By this I mean really listening with your mind and body focusing all your attention on the other person and reflecting upon what they have said.  Patricia Benner a leading nurse philosopher, calls this type of reflective listening  “perceptual acuity” .

Bramley & Matita (2014)  looked at compassion from the patient perspective  and in their research found that people are aware of how much time we give them to listen to their diverse needs. If we appear too busy they may not even ask for some time. Time is also needed to develop a therapeutic or compassionate relationship where we can get to know our shared universal goals ,without time we cannot even do this. The authors do not discuss how time  is needed to help people recover  instead they become distracted by attitudes around compassion and whether it can be taught. It would have been useful to explore how using time to help people recover can improve care and prevent or minimalise risk of harm. In nursing we will be required to focus much more on minimising risk in the future as people become more aware of their basic human rights to be listened to and for compassionate nursing care.