How Can Medical Professionals Maintain Compassion for Their Patients with Breast Cancer?

Abstract

Compassion in the medical field differs from its traditional meaning in daily life. In medicine, compassion includes a desire to understand an individual’s suffering, together with a wish to relieve it. In essence, compassion offers a unique concept, according to which, the modern science of compassion can be practically applied to suffering people, in many circumstances. This is particularly important for some vulnerable groups of patients (e.g., ethnic minorities), such as women with breast cancer (BC) (e.g., in advanced or metastatic stages, with comorbidities and socioeconomic problems). This chapter presents some suggestions (based on recent research reports) for helpful strategies that medical professionals can use daily, to help maintain compassion for their patients with serious diseases, including some aggressive cancers (e.g., Triple-Negative Breast Cancer (TNBC)).

Keywords: Breast cancer (BC), Compassion, Empathy, Medical professionals, Patients with cancer, Sustainable compassion training (SCT), Transactional model of compassion (TMC).

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