Not just a ‘nice to have’: Team compassionate care behaviours and patient safety

The experience of suffering is ubiquitous in healthcare facilities, but against this backdrop, is compassion a ‘nice to have’ or does it also affect patient safety? This article uses mixed methods across two studies to understand team compassionate care behaviours as a shared unit property and its association with patient safety outcomes. Using data from 188 healthcare teams, Study 1 finds that team compassionate care behaviours mediated the relationship between team psychological safety and fewer patient hospital-associated infections. Furthermore, the positive relationship between team psychological safety and team compassionate care behaviours was weakened when team workload demands were high. In Study 2, we interviewed 25 nurses to understand the experiences and gain further insights into the relationships between the focal variables. Together, our findings provide evidence that compassion emerges at the team level, is driven by team antecedents, moderated by team environments and tangibly affects patient safety.JEL Classification: M00