Implications for practice and research

• Two forms of knowledge (person and relational) facilitate staff, patient and family collaboration.

• ‘Simple gestures’, provided in a spirit of sincerity, often positively change patients’ lives.

Context

A longstanding concern regarding quality of care for older people in acute care hospital settings exists. The authors of this study point out the tension between efficient patient care activities, and development of therapeutic carer–patient relationships, a strain that may cause compassionate care to be lost. They established a link between thearpeutic relationships, quality of care and patient and staff satisfaction. Investigators sought to discover the dimensions of compassionate care in the …