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The purpose of this study was to explore compassionate leadership with those involved in leading system-wide end-of-life care. Its purpose was to: define compassionate leadership in the context of palliative and end-of-life care; collect accounts of compassionate leadership activity from key stakeholders in end-of-life and palliative care; and identify examples of compassionate leadership in practice.

Four focus groups involving staff from a range of healthcare organisations including hospitals, hospices and community teams were conducted to access the accounts of staff leading palliative and end-of-life care. The data were analysed thematically.

The themes that emerged from the data included: the importance of leadership as role modelling and nurturing; how stories were used to explain approaches to leading end-of-life care; the nature of leadership as challenging existing practice; and a requirement for leaders to manage boundaries effectively. Rich and detailed examples of leadership in action were shared.

The findings indicate that a relational approach to leadership was enacted in a range of palliative and end-of-life care settings.

Context-specific action learning may be a means of further developing compassionate leadership capability in palliative and end-of-life care and more widely in healthcare settings.

This paper presents data indicating how compassionate leadership, as a form of activity, is envisaged and enacted by staff in healthcare.

The purpose of this paper is to report an evaluation of a leading-with-compassion recognition scheme and to present a new framework for compassion derived from the data.

Qualitative semi-structured interviews, a focus group and thematic data analysis. Content analysis of 1,500 nominations of compassionate acts.

The scheme highlighted that compassion towards staff and patients was important. Links to the wider well-being strategies of some of the ten organisations involved were unclear. Awareness of the scheme varied and it was introduced in different ways. Tensions included the extent to which compassion should be expected as part of normal practice and whether recognition was required, association of the scheme with the term leadership, and the risk of portraying compassion as something separate, rather than an integral part of the culture. A novel model of compassion was developed from the analysis of 1,500 nominations.

The number of respondents in the evaluation phase was relatively low. The model of compassion contributes to the developing knowledge base in this area.

The model of compassion can be used to demonstrate what compassion “looks like”, and what is expected of staff to work compassionately.

A unique model of compassion derived directly from descriptions of compassionate acts which identifies the impact of compassion on staff.

The aim of this article is to report some of the work undertaken by a nursing “think tank”, focussed on examining the causes of poor nursing care in hospitals, and potential solutions.

A “think tank” was convened which incorporated widespread discussion with national, regional and local stakeholders, a critical literature review, and a focus group of senior nurses.

It was found that there are no widespread systems of staff support that help nurses working in hospitals to cope with the emotional component of their work. This is one element that contributes to nurses providing poor care. A number of approaches to staff support have been developed that warrant further study.

If episodes of poor care are to be prevented it is necessary for hospital boards to recognise the importance of supporting nurses in managing the emotional labour of caring. The introduction of routine systems of staff support should be considered.

In addition to highlighting and condemning poor care, it is important to seek solutions. This article offers a new perspective on an enduring problem and identifies approaches that can be part of the solution.

The librarian and researcher have to be able to uncover specific articles in their areas of interest. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume IV, like Volume III, contains features to help the reader to retrieve relevant literature from MCB University Press' considerable output. Each entry within has been indexed according to author(s) and the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus. The latter thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid retrieval. Each article or book is assigned its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. This Volume indexes 29 journals indicating the depth, coverage and expansion of MCB's portfolio.