Marguerite Schumacher Memorial Alumni Lecture 2022: Compassion is the glue of the entire patient experience

Compassion is one of the most important factors behind patient satisfaction: it’s the glue of the entire patient experience, says Dr. Shane Sinclair, PhD’09.

On Oct. 1, as part of Alumni All-Access, UCalgary Nursing held its 2022 Marguerite Schumacher Memorial Alumni lecture, the first in person since COVID-19. Sinclair shared his research on compassion and the work his Compassion Research Lab has done around the Sinclair Compassion Questionnaire (SCQ).

Sinclair developed the SCQ to address a gap in research and patient care. The SCQ is a valid and reliable patient-reported compassion tool to advance compassion science by routinely measuring and improving patients’ experience of compassion.

There were nearly 80 people in attendance at The Ranchmen’s Club. 

Sinclair is professor at UCalgary Nursing and an adjunct associate professor in the Cumming School of Medicine’s Department of Oncology. He’s the director of the Compassion Research Lab and one of the world’s pre-eminent global leaders on compassion in health care.

“Think for a moment about some of the most impactful health-care experiences you’ve had. Whether as a health-care provider or as a recipient of compassion as a family member or patient, what made those experiences so memorable?” he asked during the talk. “If you’re like most people, compassion is a central ingredient that traverses all our experiences.”

Sinclair says the clinical evidence shows that compassion is associated with positive patient health outcomes, satisfaction, quality care ratings, quality of life, improved patient experience and improved health-care provider well-being.

If you create the conditions for compassion to flourish and empower nurses to do what originally motivated them to pursue a health-care career in the first place, compassion flows naturally and is not simply a sustainable resource, but, the evidence suggests, is actually a renewable resource.

Sinclair stressed that compassion is something that is innate and can be nurtured in health-care education and ongoing professional practice by not only making health-care providers aware of the virtues they bring into practice but by also providing them practical skills and knowledge in their education.

Kate Wong, BN’12, vice-president and vice-chair of the UCalgary Alumni Association, was the host and MC for the night. Nursing Dean Sandra Davidson brought opening remarks from UCalgary Nursing.

This was the ninth year for the annual  lecture named for Marguerite Schumacher, the first dean of the nursing faculty at the University of Calgary (1974–1979).