The Growing Compassion programme is a series of initiatives led by NHS England  Professional Standards and System Improvement Team in the North West.  The aim is to create a social movement with a focus ensuring we lead with compassion and foster a compassionate culture across all parts of the NHS.

When concerns are raised about a practitioner’s performance, the employing body will manage these concerns and take any appropriate action to protect patient safety, taking into account the welfare of the practitioner. Whether this is through the ‘Maintaining High Professional Standards in the Modern NHS’ for employed practitioners or ‘The National Health Service (Performers Lists) Regulations’, the process can be extremely stressful and worrying for the practitioner.

The vision

Our vision is to enable and grow a compassionate and inclusive leadership culture when managing professional standards concerns, whilst at the same time ensuring effective governance and reducing inequalities.

In simple terms, the aim is to work together within and across organisations to strengthen how we make sure that compassion, inclusivity, and collaboration are always present whenever professional concerns are discussed and managed, and to ensure the focus is always on the practitioner at the centre.

What is needed

When talking to leaders across the North West about what they wanted to support them in managing professional concerns compassionately, the resounding view was a need for a supportive resource that would complement the existing compassionate leadership literature and provide a focus on applying compassion throughout the professional concerns processes.  The leaders recognised that, whilst most understood and embraced the importance of being compassionate and inclusive, the challenge was knowing what to do in practice, and more importantly, how to grow compassion at an organisational level.

The Toolkit

The L.O.T.U.S. Compassionate Leadership Framework and Toolkit has been developed as a direct result of the feedback from leaders across the North West, to help leaders to nurture and grow compassion, and compassionate cultures within their organisation when managing professional concerns.

The Toolkit is applicable in all organisational settings and serves as a companion guide to all leaders when upholding professional standards with compassion for self and for others. Built across five modular steps, the Toolkit takes the reader through a journey that helps to develop knowledge, skills, and understanding of how compassion and inclusivity can be integrated through professional concern processes.

The call to action

Compassion is one of the most powerful acts of leadership available to us, and it often shows up in the smallest of ways. Throughout the Toolkit there are opportunities to reflect and enhance awareness and insights on how you as a leader can contribute to growing compassion within yourself and in your teams and organisations.

Participating in this improvement initiative will enable the ‘know how’ within your teams and organisation/s to ‘Grow Compassion in Action’, through doing hard things in a human way, yet effectively and with accountability, to enrich our NHS further as a more compassionate, inclusive organisation, collectively through the action-centred approaches.

If you are interested in learning more about The L.O.T.U.S. Compassionate Leadership Framework and Toolkit please email Julie-Ann Bowden, Head of Professional Standards at NHS England – North West: julie-ann.bowden@nhs.net

The L.O.T.U.S Compassionate Leadership Framework and Toolkit

Appendix 2: Initial triage and review template for risk stratification used by NHS England SIPS team when performance concerns are raised

Appendix 4: Lessons Learnt and System Improvement Review Template

Appendix 5: Template used to keep practitioner updated regarding outcome of PAG/ PSG formal discussions