Compassionate care: Engaging the spirit in care

In recent years, catalysed by public exposure of failures in care and neglect, health systems around the world have renewed an undertaking to provide compassionate care. Implementing the undertaking however is less than straightforward. This study argues that an adequate understanding of compassion has profound implications not only for everyday behaviour of health practitioners but also for reforming health systems and for transforming the societies they serve. It suggests that palliative care offers experience and insights that are important to this undertaking, and that renewed attention to compassion throughout the health system will also support palliative care in regaining aspects of its original mission, including its understanding of dying as a spiritual quest.