Culture of compassionate care recognised by World Health Organisation

Anthea and Lolita delivered a session entitled, Compassionate care at Timor-Leste’s National Hospital, to around 80 attendees from approximately 30 countries across the globe. 

The presentation looked at how the Nursing Development Program has helped to promote and support leadership for nurses and midwives by advocating for and supporting the appointment and professional development of the Director of Nursing and Midwifery position - a critical role for nursing and midwifery leadership in any hospital setting. 

It also examined how St John of God International Health supported the Hospital Nacional Guido Valadares to bring its four values of excellence in service, commitment, compassion and knowledge to life, by making them visible throughout the hospital. This included holding values days and creating a Health Manager Program for mid-level managers with vision, mission and values at the front of the three-week course. 

Anthea said one of the most important things they did to put the values front and centre at the hospital, was role modelling.

"St John of God Health Care really lives by its values, making them central to all aspects of our work, and this experience enabled us to support the Hospital Nacional Guido Valadares to implement a similar approach," Anthea said.

"Lolita was instrumental in showing nurses and midwives at the hospital what living the organisation’s values every day and putting the mission in action looked like."

Lolita also credits the introduction of an annual Values Day with helping to raise awareness and understanding of the importance of the hospital’s values. 

"We held our first Values Day in 2016 and focused on St John of God Health Care and the Hospital Nacional Guido Valadares’ shared value of excellence," Lolita said. 

"By the following year, we had established a Mission Formation Group to help drive the second Values Day, which focused on compassion. 

"At this event, we asked the Hospital Nacional Guido Valadares [managers] to talk with their staff about what compassion meant to them. 

"They wrote their responses on cards shaped like leaves, which were then placed on a banner with a depiction of a tree, ‘the compassion tree’, and following a prayer, we asked the [managers] to share with each other what their teams had written."

Anthea attended the day and said it was incredibly moving to hear the nurses and midwives at the hospital talking about patient care for the very first time. 

"It may seem obvious to us in Australia but this was a huge breakthrough in Timor-Leste, where the healthcare culture is very different," Anthea said. 

"Timor-Leste has a traumatic history, and often in developing countries where there has been trauma, holding a position as a nurse or midwife in overwhelming and under-resourced conditions leads to a sense of hopelessness. 

"Making the connection between compassionate care, aligning this with your own personal faith and values, and bringing that to bear for your patients to give them comfort, can be an alien concept.  

"This was the first time that nurses and midwives were beginning to make the connection between the work they did, the importance of compassion and its impact on patient experience, and in some cases, their clinical outcomes."

Since then, the culture of care at the Hospital Nacional Guido Valadares has evolved significantly with compassion and patient experience now underpinning everything nurses and midwives at the hospital do.   

"For the Hospital Nacional Guido Valadares to be recognised by the World Health Organisation as a compassionate organisation, is just incredible." Anthea said. 

"I am so incredibly proud of what we have been able to support the Timorese to achieve, and the long-term impact that will have on the delivery of healthcare in Timor-Leste."