Circle of compassion: Arts and nursing – the stimulation of compassionate awareness

This article has two authors – the artist/patient and the nurse educator. Their meeting point was an arts-based research project inspired by a personal experience of compassionate care from a hospital nursing team. The artist/patient developed an exhibition – Touching the Unthinkable, which explored the ‘voices’ of health teams, other hospital patients and visitors linked by the treatment of breast cancer. The nurse educator used art practices as part of a nursing pedagogy to facilitate students’ understanding of themselves, the patient experience and the centrality of compassion. It was discovered that many of the inspirational hospital nurses had previously engaged with art as part of their education. The authors have identified what they have termed the circle of compassion – if compassion is enhanced in students and sustained in practicing nurses it is then experienced by the patient/recipient.