Compassionate Leadership

Compassionate leadership in practice means leaders listening to those they lead, arriving at a shared (rather than imposed) understanding of the challenges they face, empathising with and caring for them, and then taking action to help or support them. Without this, patient care and staff health are undermined.

In November 2023, the BBC reported that 67% of 178 maternity units in England were not consistently meeting safety standards, with the country having a shortage of about 2,500 midwives. Similarly, The Guardian reported that more than 41,000 nurses left their jobs in 2022 and 2023 UCAS figures showed a dramatic decline of 18% in the number of applications made to institutions providing nursing courses in England. There is a profound workforce crisis in health and care, and unprecedented numbers of nurses and midwives leaving both professions.

In 2023, in partnership with the King’s Fund, we created Follow Your Compassion which depicts the everyday lived experiences, thoughts, and feelings of 22 newly qualified and registered nurses and midwives, in a variety of health care settings across the UK. This work showcases the stark realities of what faces them once qualifying and serves as an attempt to bring to life the reality of this crisis

This work sits as a companion piece to earlier work we commissioned from The King’s Fund in 2020. The Courage of Compassion, is a report which explored nurses and midwives’ experiences of leadership during the pandemic and set out the ABC framework of core work needs underpinning compassionate leadership.