Compassion is consistently identified by patients as one of the most important aspects of quality care, while also improving various health outcomes. Employees, leaders, and healthcare providers who are supported by their workplace in providing compassion to those they serve and work with have higher job satisfaction, workplace wellbeing, and are more likely to be retained by their organizations.
Despite this evidence, compassion training programs are nascent, and as reported in a recent systematic review, those that do exist are limited in demonstrating tangible and sustainable improvements in learner outcomes beyond self-reported satisfaction and whether participants felt they learned something new.
Ironically, we could find no compassion training study that evaluated whether patients actually experienced more compassion as a result of their healthcare providers participating in compassion training programs.
Our recently published study evaluating the EnACT (Evidence-informed, Competency-based, Accredited, Compassion Training) program sought to address these limitations and to develop a compassion training program that was evidence-based and clinically relevant. In a multicentre feasibility trial, we assessed not only learner outcomes, but also patients' experiences of compassion before and after training.
One of the enduring myths surrounding compassion is that people either have it or they don't. Another is that experienced healthcare providers are already compassionate by virtue of being in the healthcare industry and therefore have little to gain from additional training.
Our findings suggest otherwise.
Healthcare providers who participated in EnACT not only reported very high satisfaction with the program and increased knowledge and skill development, they also had significant improvements in their confidence and competence in providing compassion post-training, with gains remaining evident nine months later. These results suggest that compassion is not simply an innate trait, but like strength training, can be cultivated and strengthened over time.
Compassionate care benefits patients, but it also has positive outcomes for the people who provide it.
As demonstrated in this study and other studies we have conducted, healthcare providers do bring high levels of baseline compassion with them into the classroom. The EnACT program builds on these strengths through an evidence-informed, clinically relevant, learner-centred, and interactive approach that is driven by over a decade of research in the Compassion Research Lab, producing tangible results.
Importantly, participants who completed EnACT reported significantly higher levels of professional fulfillment nine months after training, while maintaining high levels of satisfaction with the program throughout the study period.
At a time when healthcare providers face increasing demands, staffing shortages, and burnout, providing training that demonstrates sustained and significant improvements in workplace wellness, in addition to increased compassion competence, holds promise for not only personal practice but the workforce more broadly.
Perhaps the most encouraging finding was that the EnACT training program also positively impacted patient experiences of compassion.
One month after the training, patients cared for by healthcare providers who participated in EnACT reported significantly higher experiences of compassion than patients in the control group. While many communication and professional development programs rely exclusively on learner self-reports, EnACT was deliberately designed to evaluate whether training translated into meaningful changes in patient care, because we believe that in healthcare, patients are the ultimate determinants of whether a compassionate training intervention was effective or not.
EnACT was informed by patients, families, healthcare providers, educators, researchers, and healthcare leaders. The program combines evidence-informed teaching, skill development, experiential learning, self-reflection, and practical tools that support the integration of compassion into everyday practice. Individuals and teams can have EnACT Compassion Training delivered onsite and in-person, or delivered online, allowing individuals to learn at their own pace and organizations to scale the training to entire teams or sites over time.
Importantly, EnACT is also accredited, providing learners with valuable Continuing Medical Education and Continuing Professional Development credits and, upon completion of the course, certification as a ‘Certified Compassionate Care Provider’.
In healthcare, compassion is often described as essential, but in education and practice it has historically been considered optional learning. Our findings suggest that when compassion training is grounded in science, informed by patients, and designed for clinical practice, meaningful change is possible and sustainable, significantly benefitting both the recipients and the providers of compassion.
Visit www.compassiontraining.com to discover EnACT Compassion Training for you and your teams.
For access to the open access journal article associated with this blog please visit: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-026-09716-4
