International Journal of Health Policy and Management

International Journal of Health Policy and Management

Healthcare and Compassion: Towards an Awareness of Intersubjective Vulnerability; Comment on “Why and How Is Compassion Necessary to Provide Good Quality Healthcare?”

Document Type : Commentary

Author
Kate Kenny
Queen’s University Management School, Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, UK
10.15171/ijhpm.2015.115
Abstract
How to instill compassion in a healthcare organization? In this article, I respond to Marianna Fotaki’s proposals in her piece, ‘Why and how is compassion necessary to provide good quality healthcare?’ by drawing on insights from organization studies. Following Fotaki, I argue that to instill targets and formal measures for assessing compassion would be problematic. I conclude by drawing on psychoanalytic and feminist theories to introduce alternatives, specifically proposing an approach that is grounded in a shared sense of a common, embodied precarity, which necessitates our commitment to preserving the conditions in which life might flourish.
Keywords
Healthcare
Compassion
Organizations
Targets
Psychoanalysis
Feminist Theory
Subjects
  1. Fotaki M. Why and how is compassion necessary to provide good quality healthcare? Int J Health Policy Manag. 2015;4(4):199-201. doi:10.15171/ijhpm.2015.66
  2. Burns D, Hyde P, Killett A. Wicked problems or wicked people? Reconceptualising institutional abuse. Sociol Health Illn. 2013;35(4):514-528. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9566.2012.01511.x
  3. Fotaki M, Hyde P. Organizational blindspots: counteracting splitting, idealization and blame in public health services. Hum Relat. 2014;68(3):441-462. doi:10.1177/0018726714530012
  4. Laurance J. Pure Madness: How Fear Drives the Mental Health System. London: Routledge; 2003.
  5. Noyes P. Child Abuse: A Study of Inquiry Reports 1980-1989. London: Department of Health; 1991.
  6. Wardaugh J, Wilding P. Towards an explanation of the corruption of care. Crit Soc Policy 1993;13(37):4-31. doi:10.1177/026101839301303701
  7. Goffman E. Asylums. Harmondsworth: Penguin; 1961.
  8. Arendt H. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. New York: Penguin; 1994.
  9. Bauman Z. Modernity and the Holocaust. Cambridge: Polity; 1989.
  10. Burrell G. Modernism, postmodernism and organizational analysis: The contribution of Jürgen Habermas. Organ Stud. 1994;15(1):1-45. doi:10.1177/017084069401500101
  11. Chenoweth L. Women with disability and violence: Silence and paradox. In: Bessant J, Cook S, eds. Women’s Encounters With Violence in Australia. Thousand Oaks: Sage; 1996.
  12. Garner J, Evans S. An ethical perspective on institutional abuse of older adults. Psychiatr Bull. 2002;26:164-166. doi:10.1192/pb.26.5.164
  13. Barnes WR, Ernst S, Hyde K. An Introduction to Group Work. Hampshire: Macmillan; 1999.
  14. Menzies I. A case study in functioning of social systems as a defence against anxiety. Hum Relat. 1960;13(2):95-121. doi:10.1177/001872676001300201
  15. Fotaki M. The sublime desire for knowledge (in academe): Sexuality at work in business and management schools in England. Br J Manag. 2011;22(1):42-53. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8551.2010.00716.x
  16. Fotaki M. No woman is like a man (in academia): the masculine symbolic order and the unwanted female body. Organ Stud. 2013;34(9):1251-1275. doi:10.1177/0170840613483658
  17. Harding N, Lee H, Ford J, Learmonth M. Leadership and charisma: a desire that cannot speak its name? Hum Relat. 2011;64:927-949. doi:10.1177/0018726710393367
  18. Tyler M. Tainted love: From dirty work to abject labour in Soho’s sex shops. Hum Relat. 2011;64(11):1477-1500. doi:10.1177/0018726711418849
  19. Schwartz H. Anti-social actions of committed organizational participants: an existential psychoanalytic perspective. Organ Stud. 1987;8(4):327-340.
  20. Butler J. Undoing Gender. New York: Routledge; 2004.
  21. Butler J. Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? London: Verso; 2009.
  22. Hyde, P. Harris, C. Boaden, R. Pro-social Organizational Behaviour of Health Care Workers. International Journal of Human Resource Management. 2013;24(16):3115-3130 doi:10.1080/09585192.2013.775030
  23. Willmott H. Strength is ignorance; slavery is freedom: managing culture in modern organizations. J Manag Stud. 1993;30(4):515-552.
  24. Kenny K, Fotaki M. From gendered organizations to compassionate borderspaces: Reading corporeal ethics with Bracha Ettinger. Organization. 2015;22(2):183-199.
  25. Ettinger BL. (M)other re-spect: Maternal subjectivity, the ready-made mother-monster and the ethics of respecting. Studies in the Maternal. 2010;2(1).http://www.mamsie.bbk.ac.uk/documents/ettinger.pdf.

  • Received Date 27 May 2015
  • Revised Date 16 June 2015
  • Accepted Date 11 June 2015
  • First Published Date 01 September 2015
  • Published Date 01 September 2015