iCare Compassionately: An Innovative Approach to Improving Nursing Education

Description Historically, compassionate care has been briefly introduced in nursing education, without a sustained focus throughout nursing programs. Compassionate care models define the essential qualities needed to deliver meaningful care. Many of the traditional compassionate care models rely on high-level concepts that can be difficult to operationalize in academia. Further, current compassionate care models are typically limited to specific settings and are taught separately from other parts of the nursing curriculum. To address these concerns, a single purpose nursing college created and implemented the iCare Compassionately Model, which emphasizes both measurable behaviors and concepts related to compassion. As a result of this model, compassionate care is being integrated into the curriculum of every course in every program across the college. This article serves as an introduction to the iCare Compassionately Model and includes an overview of its theoretical underpinnings as well as a discussion of the curriculum integration efforts.