Developing Compassionate Leadership in the UK in Healthcare Contexts: A Narrative Review of Leadership Programmes and...

Leadership within UK healthcare has been criticised for focusing on performance and financial indicators. Compassionate leadership has emerged as a promising approach to shift organisational culture by focusing on empowering healthcare staff and improving patient outcomes. While compassionate leadership is a stated priority within NHS policy, the extent to which UK-based leadership programmes explicitly incorporate and develop this is unclear. By using West's compassionate leadership framework, this narrative review aimed to identify leadership programmes for staff working in UK healthcare which contain a compassionate leadership element. It also reported the aims, components, outcomes, and impacts of such training on programme participants, their teams, organisations, and patients.

A narrative review was conducted following guidelines from the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta Analyses and JBI. Five databases were searched for records published between January 2013 and June 2025. Data were extracted and thematically analysed using West's four elements of compassionate leadership: attending, understanding, empathising, and helping.

Of 550 records screened, seven papers met eligibility, reporting on five distinct leadership programmes. None of the programmes explicitly aimed to develop compassionate leadership. Positive outcomes were consistently reported across all four of West's elements of compassionate leadership, particularly for programme participants. An additional theme emerged of enhanced compassion and relationships within workplace culture. Evidence of organisational or long-term impact was limited, and reporting of programme characteristics lacked depth.

This review found limited evidence for leadership programmes that explicitly focus on compassionate care leadership practices in UK healthcare. Despite this, existing programmes do report positive outcomes that map to West's four elements of compassionate leadership. Further programmes that focus more explicitly on compassionate leadership skills, and study of those outcomes, are needed.