Shane Sinclair

The University of Calgary | HBI · Faculty of Nursing

Background Healthcare providers are considered the primary conduit of compassion in healthcare. Although most healthcare providers desire to provide compassion, and patients and families expect to receive it, an evidence-based understanding of the construct and its associated dimensions from the perspective of healthcare providers is needed. Objec...

Background There is international concern about the lack of compassion in healthcare systems. A valid and reliable tool for measuring compassion in healthcare systems and educational institutions is required. This comprehensive and critical narrative synthesis identified and compared existing measures of compassionate care in clinical settings. Met...

Background: Compassion is considered an essential element in quality patient care. One of the conceptual challenges in healthcare literature is that compassion is often confused with sympathy and empathy. Studies comparing and contrasting patients’ perspectives of sympathy, empathy, and compassion are largely absent. Aim: The aim of this study was...

Background Information needs are one of the most prevalent unmet supportive care needs of those living with cancer, including patients and their informal caregivers. Understanding how existing questionnaires for evaluating information needs have been developed is important for guiding appropriate use and informing future research. A literature revi...

BACKGROUND Cancer patients and their supporters use information for emotional support and to assist with planning in the short and long term. The internet is a common source of information for those living with cancer. There is little peer-reviewed research to guide the creation of online content to assist those living with cancer. OBJECTIVE This...

Background: Evidence supports the positive influence of compassion on care experiences and health outcomes. However, there is limited understanding regarding how compassion is identified by people with lived experience of mental health care. Aim: To explore the views and experiences of compassion from people who have lived experience of mental hea...

Background A previous review on compassion in healthcare (1988-2014) identified several empirical studies and their limitations. Given the large influx and the disparate nature of the topic within the healthcare literature over the past 5 years, the objective of this study was to provide an update to our original scoping review to provide a current...

Our previous review of compassion measures in healthcare between 1985 and 2016 concluded that no available measure assessed compassion in healthcare in a comprehensive or methodologically rigorous fashion. The present study provided a comparative review of the design and psychometric properties of recently updated or newly published compassion meas...

The provision of pasture and outdoor access for dairy cattle differs around the globe. For example, in Ireland, New Zealand, and Australia, dairy farms are largely pasture based, whereas dairy farms in the United States and Canada are largely confinement based. There is a high level of public support for pasture and outdoor access for dairy cows, a...

Phenomenon: Training programs have been used to improve compassion in healthcare, but the factors necessary to make such programs successful and sustainable have not been identified. This thematic analysis aimed to bridge the gap between theory and practice by drawing on the experiences of international leaders and educators of compassion training...

Background Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are the gold standard for generating evidence to inform clinical oncology practice. Knowledge gained through qualitative research methodologies can be complementary to that gained through RCTs. How qualitative research has been combined with RCTs in oncology has not been previously characterized. Obje...

Background Patients and families want their healthcare to be delivered by healthcare providers that are both competent and compassionate. While compassion training has begun to emerge in healthcare education, there may be factors that facilitate or inhibit the uptake and implementation of training into practice. This review identified the attribute...

Background Compassion has received significant scholarly attention over the past decade. Research has been largely theoretical, with interventions focused on self-care practices of healthcare providers (HCPs), rather than implementation at a systems level. This study aimed to identify how compassion can be operationalized within pediatric healthcar...

Dairy cows are highly motivated to access pasture, especially at night in summer. When pasture is not available, dairy cows show a partial preference for alternative types of outdoor access, spending half the night outside in summer on an outdoor sand or wood chip pack. However, many dairy farms do not provide cows outside access. To better underst...

Objectives Compassion is a key indicator of quality care that is reportedly eroding from patients’ care experience. While the need to assess compassion is recognised, valid and reliable measures are lacking. This study developed and validated a clinically informed, psychometrically rigorous, patient-reported compassion measure. Design Data were co...

Objective: Compassion has long been considered a cornerstone of quality pediatric healthcare by patients, parents, healthcare providers and systems leaders. However, little dedicated research on the nature, components and delivery of compassion in pediatric settings has been conducted. This study aimed to define and develop a patient, parent, and...

In the 21st century, cancer is a disease that captures much of our attention for its complexity, and its physical, emotional, and financial impacts on one’s life. Research attention and investment in cancer management has made it the most studied disease in clinical trials globally. Clinical trials nurses are part of the oncology research team and...

En ce 21e siècle, le cancer est une maladie qui suscite particulièrement l’attention en raison de sa complexité ainsi que des impacts physiques, émotionnels et financiers sur notre vie. L’attention portée à la recherche et les investissements dans le traitement contre le cancer en font la maladie la plus étudiée dans les essais cliniques à l’échell...

Purpose: To investigate the current state and quality of compassion education interventions offered to health care providers during training or practice, determine how the components of each education intervention map onto the domains of an empirically based clinical model of compassion, and identify the most common approaches to compassion educat...

Objectives To explore the impact of caring for family members experiencing spiritual distress on Intensive Care Unit healthcare providers. Design A qualitative study involving interviews and focus groups between May 2016 and April 2017. Participants Intensive care healthcare providers from nine teaching and three non-teaching units across Alberta...

Background Information has been identified as a commonly unmet supportive care need for those living with cancer (ie, patients and their friends and family). The information needed to help individuals plan their lives around the consequences of cancer, such as the receipt of health care, is an example of an important informational need. A suitable...

Background: There is little concrete guidance on how to train current and future healthcare providers (HCPs) in the core competency of compassion. This study was undertaken using Straussian grounded theory to address the question: "What are healthcare providers' perspectives on training current and future HCPs in compassion?" Methods: Fifty-seve...

Objectives To explore the impact of caring for family members experiencing spiritual distress on Intensive Care Unit healthcare providers. Design A qualitative study involving interviews and focus groups between May 2016 and April 2017. Participants Intensive care healthcare providers from nine teaching and three non-teaching Iunits across X, X....

Background: Despite increased annual mortality in long-term care (LTC) homes, research has shown that care of dying residents and their families is currently suboptimal in these settings. The purpose of this study was to evaluate resident and family outcomes associated with the Strengthening a Palliative Approach in LTC (SPA-LTC) program, develope...

BACKGROUND Information has been identified as one of the most commonly unmet supportive care need for those living with cancer (i.e. patients and their friends and family). The information needed to help individuals plan their lives around the consequences of cancer, such as the receipt of healthcare, has been identified as a unique area of need. A...

Background and Purpose Although various measure development guidelines exist, practical guidance on how to systematically generate items is nascent. This article provides practical guidance on item generation in measure development and the use of a Table of Specifications (TOS) in this process. Methods In addition to a review of the literature, th...

Family members of patients admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) experience multidimensional distress. Many clinicians lack an understanding of spiritual health practitioners’ role and approaches to providing spiritual support. Through semi-structured interviews and focus groups with 10 spiritual health practitioners, we explored how spiritual...

Although there is an increased need for delivery of bereavement care, many health care providers in acute care hospital settings feel inadequately prepared to deliver quality grief support, have lack of time, and have inexperience in provision of bereavement care. As a result, although families would like health care providers to offer bereavement...

Spiritual care has been recognized as important to family members of critically ill patients, although it is often not integrated within clinical practice. We conducted focus groups and interviews with family members, spiritual health practitioners, and clinicians who work in the intensive care unit (ICU) to explore their experiences of working wit...

Background: Patient-reported outcomes (pros) are essential to capture the patient's perspective and to influence care. Although pros and pro measures are known to have many important benefits, they are not consistently being used and there is there no Canadian pros oversight. The Position Statement presented here is the first step toward supportin...

Background: South Asians are one of the fastest growing ethnic populations in Western countries. Accordingly, providing culturally sensitive healthcare to South Asians is becoming increasingly important. Compassion is a key component of quality healthcare and is central to bridging ethnic and cultural differences between patients and their healthca...

Background Although compassionate care is considered a cornerstone of quality palliative care, there is a paucity of valid and reliable measures to study, assess, and evaluate how patients experience compassion/compassionate care in their care.Objective The aim was to develop a patient-reported compassion measure for use in research and clinical pr...

Problem: Compassion has been described as a central construct or essential feature of quality healthcare and is as important to patients' and families' overall healthcare experience as the health interventions and treatments they receive. However, there is little shared understanding of what constitutes compassion, how it is delivered within a ped...

Introduction: Combat soldiers experience Operational Stress Injuries (OSIs) exacerbating mental illnesses, social difficulties, and spiritual or moral distress. While, research continues to explore OSIs, one of the least understood and under researched aspects are the perspectives of veterans themselves. The purpose of this research was to determin...

Background: Despite increased annual mortality in long-term care (LTC) homes, research has shown that care of dying residents and their families is currently suboptimal in these settings. The purpose of this study was to evaluate resident and family outcomes associated with the Strengthening a Palliative Approach in LTC (SPA-LTC) program, developed...

Background: Spiritual distress among family members of patients in the intensive care unit (ICU) has not been well characterized. This limits clinicians' understanding of how to best offer support. Objective: To explore how family members experience spiritual distress, and how it is recognized and support offered within the ICU context. Design: A...

Background: Spirituality is important for many family members of patients in the intensive care unit (ICU). Clinicians without training in spiritual care experience difficulty identifying when family members are experiencing distress of a spiritual nature. Objective: The purpose of this study was to develop a guide to help clinicians working in th...

Creating evidence that is both scientifically rigorous and patient oriented in addressing patients’ needs is essential to informing health-care professionals’ practice and meeting patient needs. Patient-oriented research (POR) aims to address this 2-fold mandate by engaging and incorporating patients’ voices throughout the research process through...

Background: Despite increased annual mortality in long-term care (LTC) homes, research has shown that palliative approaches to care are currently suboptimal in these settings. The purpose of this study was to evaluate resident, family, and staff outcomes associated with the Strengthening a Palliative Approach in LTC (SPA-LTC) program, developed to...

Introduction This paper details a subset of the findings from a participatory action research project exploring a palliative intervention in long-term care sites across Canada. The findings presented in this paper relate to understanding compassion within the context of a palliative approach to long-term care. Methods Findings presented are drawn...

Purpose: To understand the meaning and impact for adult patients with cancer (past or present) of creating a digital story related to their cancer experience. Participants & setting: 10 participants made digital stories with the help of a research assistant trained in digital storytelling. This research took place in a large, urban center in Cal...

Background: A lack of evidence and psychometrically sound measures of compassion necessitated the development of the first known, empirically derived, theoretical Patient Compassion Model (PCM) generated from qualitative interviews with advanced cancer inpatients. We aimed to assess the credibility and transferability of the PCM across diverse pal...

We aimed to identify effective participant retention strategies utilized in longitudinal studies of ethnic groups, specifically those from South Asian and Chinese communities. We conducted a systematic review of the literature focusing on the retention of ethnic minorities in longitudinal studies, up until April 2017. Only peer-reviewed research wa...

Objective To identify and describe the perspectives, experiences, importance, and impact of compassionate care among ethnically diverse population groups. Methods A systematic search of peer-reviewed research focused on compassionate care in ethnically diverse populations published between 1946 and 2017 was conducted. Results A total of 2296 abst...

Sympathy, empathy, and compassion are frequently invoked concepts in contemporary health care, particularly in incidences when we find ourselves at a loss for words or curative interventions. Linguistic epistemologists remind us that words are powerful--they shape our thoughts, determine what is truth, influence our actions, and can instil healing...

Background Compassion is considered a component of quality healthcare that healthcare providers (HCPs) are increasingly expected to provide. While there have been some studies exploring facets of HCPs’ perspectives on the barriers and facilitators to providing compassion, a comprehensive understanding based on direct reports from HCPs is lacking....

Context: Spiritual distress contributes to patient and family experiences of care. Objectives: To map the literature on how seriously ill patients and their family members experience spiritual distress within inpatient settings. Methods: Our scoping review included 4 databases using search terms 'existential' or 'spiritual' combined with 'angs...

Background Maintaining a sense of self-care while providing patient centered care, can be difficult for practitioners in palliative medicine. We aimed to pilot an “on the job” mindfulness and compassion-oriented meditation training for interdisciplinary teams designed to reduce distress, foster resilience and strengthen a prosocial motivation in t...

In the research literature, intensive care units (ICUs) have often been called dehumanizing and alienating due to the intensiveness, invasiveness, and technologically oriented nature of ICU interventions. This chapter examines how these dynamics can be counterbalanced by healthcare providers (“providers”) practicing compassionate and spiritually se...

Background. Many veterans experience significant compromised spiritual and mental wellbeing. Despite effective and evidence-based treatments, veterans continue to experience poor completion rates and sub-optimal therapeutic effects. Spirituality, whether expressed through religious or secular means, is a part of adjunctive or supplemental treatment...

The State of the Science in Spirituality and Palliative Care was convened to address the current landscape of research at the intersection of spirituality and palliative care and to identify critical next steps to advance this field of inquiry. Part I of the SOS-SPC two-part series focuses on questions of 1) What is spirituality? 2) What methodolog...

The State of the Science in Spirituality and Palliative Care was convened to address the current landscape of research at the intersection of spirituality and palliative care and to identify critical next steps to advance this field of inquiry. Part II of the SOS-SPC report addresses the state of extant research and identifies critical research pri...

Background Spiritual distress is prevalent in advanced disease, but often neglected, resulting in unnecessary suffering. Evidence to inform spiritual care practices in palliative care is limited. Aim To explore spiritual care needs, experiences, preferences and research priorities in an international sample of patients with life-limiting disease a...

RÉSUMÉ Cette étude qualitative canadienne rapporte les résultats de 19 groupes de discussion comprenant 117 participants, incluant des bénéficiaires, des familles et des membres du personnel. Elle avait pour objectifs : 1) d’explorer les soins palliatifs offerts en soins de longue durée (SLD) en vue de faire face aux tensions associées à la prestat...

Background: Maintaining a sense of self-care while providing patient centered care, can be difficult for practitioners in palliative medicine. We aimed to pilot an " on the job " mindfulness and compassion-oriented meditation training for interdisciplinary teams designed to reduce distress, foster resilience and strengthen a prosocial motivation in...

Objective: We attempted to understand how people of South Asian and Chinesedescent prefer to receive health information. Methods: To achieve this end we conducted a search of academic and grey literature articles published between 1946 and 2016. To be included, articles had to be focused South Asian and Chinese specific ethno-culturally-based prefe...

Purpose/Objectives: To examine the relationships between spiritual, religious, and so-ciodemographic factors and post-traumatic growth, quality of life, and spiritual well-being in outpatients undergoing bone marrow and/or stem cell transplantation (BMSCT). Design: Cross-sectional, descriptive, exploratory. Design: Cross-sectional, descriptive, ex...

Background The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate advanced cancer patients’ perspectives on the importance, feasibility, teaching methods, and issues associated with training healthcare providers in compassionate care. Methods This study utilized grounded theory, a qualitative research method, to develop an empirical understandin...

Background Multiple factors influence the end-of-life (EoL) care and experience of poor quality services by culturally- and spiritually-diverse groups. Access to EoL services e.g. health and social supports at home or in hospices is difficult for ethnic minorities compared to white European groups. A tool is required to empower patients and familie...

There is a growing body of evidence investigating chaplaincy services. The purpose of this scoping review was to examine the empirical literature specific to the role of chaplaincy within health care published since 2009. Electronic searches of four databases were conducted in August 2015. After screening, 48 studies were retained and reviewed. Fou...

Purpose-This statement provides guidance to advocacy groups, professional health care associations, health care administrators, clinical teams, researchers, government and other funders, faith communities, spiritual care professionals, and other stakeholders internationally on the indicators of quality spiritual care in health care, the metrics tha...

Context: Compassion is frequently referenced as a hallmark of quality care by patients, health care providers, health care administrators and policy makers. Despite its putative centrality, including its institution in recent health care reform, an empirical understanding based on the perspectives of patients, the recipients of compassion, is lack...