This study aims to address the following research question; To what extent can compassion training that specifically addresses stigma improve compassion and quality of care offered by health workers to persons affected by leprosy and other stigmatizing health conditions?
Compassion training for reducing stigma and improving quality of care for persons affected by leprosy
Project coordination
Partners
- The Task Force for Global Health
- NLR
- Association of People Affected by Leprosy (APAL)
- Emory University,Atlanta,USA
- Life University, GA,USA
Project summary
Compassion refers to “a virtuous response that seeks to address the suffering and needs of a person through relational understanding and action”. Compassion is often considered the hallmark of quality care, it is ranked among the greatest healthcare needs by patients and their family members and considered essential for quality universal health coverage. Especially in the context of stigmatised conditions, compassionate care is crucial. Many persons with a stigmatised condition, such as persons affected by leprosy, experience stigma and discrimination. Health workers often participate in stigmatizing beliefs and practices that exist within their communities. It is impossible for these health workers to provide respectful, compassionate care, as stigma is a major barrier to compassion. This compromises the quality of healthcare offered to persons with stigmatizing conditions, and it reduces access to services, as persons with stigmatised conditions would avoid further dehumanization by the health system.
While randomised controlled trials have demonstrated that compassion-based training can improve compassionate responses to suffering, little work on compassion has been done specifically in the setting of leprosy. We hypothesize that a stigma-informed compassion-based training can 1) reduce health worker stigma, 2) improve quality of health services for persons affected by leprosy, 3) improve communication in and trust within routine care; and 4) increase self-esteem and stigma resilience among persons affected. We hypothesize that these changes would eventually lead to compassionate care leadership.
The main research question of this study is “to what extent can compassion training that specifically addresses stigma improve compassion and quality of care offered by health workers to persons affected by leprosy and other stigmatizing health conditions?”
The research group will conduct a before-after study design with a mixed methods approach. The project will be implemented in Bokaro district, Jharkhand state, India. Bokaro district has 17 primary health care centres. The research group aims to train all health care workers from the 17 primary health care centres (50 health care providers). This study has three main phases:
(1) Exploration phase. In this phase, the researchers will explore how patients, their family members and health providers understand and experience compassion (this will also serve as baseline measurement).
(2) Intervention development and adaptation phase. In this phase, a compassion training curriculum will be developed, based on results of the Exploration phase and CIT. CIT includes components of meditation techniques, interactive discussions, lectures and exercises. The training will be adapted based on the baseline/phase 1 findings.
(3) Implementation, evaluation and dissemination phase. In this phase, the training will be piloted across 17 primary health care centres (PHCs). In this phase, we will also evaluate the training (using the same methods as at baseline). Once evaluated, the training will be made freely available online.