Our Vision

Our Vision for the Future of Healthcare: Compassion Through Connections

We know that compassion makes healthcare better – one connection at a time. And we know that compassion has the power to save lives. Compassionate healthcare isn’t just an ideal—it’s essential for patients, families, and their care teams to thrive.

For three decades, the Schwartz Center has been at the forefront of championing meaningful human connections in healthcare. Through our efforts, we have reduced psychological distress in care teams and increased empathetic care for patients – all of which drive improved health outcomes.

Today’s healthcare landscape is marked by unprecedented challenges, including staffing shortages, burnout, financial pressures, and persistent health disparities. Despite these obstacles, we are committed to championing compassion for everyone who seeks and provides healthcare.

Why Does Compassion Matter?

Patients and healthcare workers alike believe that compassion is essential to successful medical treatment, how well patients recover from illness, and even whether a patient lives or dies. With the difficulties facing healthcare, compassion matters now more than ever.

We will cultivate compassion in healthcare for patients, families, teams and organizations by:

Increasing the Reach and Impact of the Schwartz Rounds® Program:

The Schwartz Rounds program gives healthcare workers dedicated time and space to discuss the emotional challenges of their jobs, which has been proven to increase their capacity for compassion and ability to provide better care for patients.

Strengthening our Community of Compassion Champions:

We offer educational, networking, and recognition opportunities to our network of healthcare professionals, organizational leaders, patients and families, donors, and other stakeholders who believe in the transformative power of compassion.

Advancing the Power of Compassion to Transform Organizations:

Using our Schwartz Compassionate Healthcare Model as a guide, we help healthcare organizations and their leaders to advance a culture of compassion.

Increasing the Reach and Impact of the Schwartz Rounds® Program

The Schwartz Rounds program is offered in more than 700 healthcare organizations throughout the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. It has proven to be highly effective across many different healthcare settings, but there are still thousands of healthcare organizations that have not yet experienced the difference that our program can make on burnout, employee engagement, patient satisfaction, and an organization’s bottom line.

The program offers a regular open forum where healthcare professionals gather to discuss the psychosocial and emotional joys and challenges of caring for patients and families.

More than 100 research studies on the Schwartz Rounds program have documented a range of benefits, including improved teamwork, increased feelings of compassion and empathy for patients, and improved patient and staff satisfaction.

“Schwartz Rounds reminds us of our humanity… and [that] there are people behind the titles, roles, positions, and jobs we all have. I am deeply impacted by every Schwartz Rounds I attend.” – a nursing leader</span

Research shows that the Schwartz Rounds program is beneficial for patients, individual caregivers, care teams, and healthcare organizations. Studies show:

85%

of respondents said the Schwartz Rounds program increased their understanding and practice of empathy with patients

90%

of attendees reported a greater understanding of the psychosocial and emotional aspects of patient care

50%

reduction in psychological distress

Our goal is to extend our signature program to support more healthcare organizations and reach more professionals worldwide. We’ll do this by:

Expanding our reach in traditional acute care hospitals while venturing into new healthcare organizations across the continuum of care and in new international markets.
Expanding the variations of Schwartz Rounds sessions – like hybrid, virtual and team-based options – to broaden the program’s reach and impact. Specialized Schwartz Rounds sessions can be adapted to focus on inpatient units, departments, leadership groups, trainees, early practitioners, and more.
Enhancing onboarding, training, and retention through streamlined processes and comprehensive support to make the administration of the program even more efficient and rewarding.
Developing tools to help organizations reach more front-line staff through enhanced marketing support and to optimize virtual and hybrid sessions.

Strengthening our Community of Compassion Champions

We’re expanding our vibrant community of compassion advocates to amplify our mission across healthcare settings worldwide. This network will unite passionate healthcare professionals, organizational leaders, patients and families, our sponsors and donors, and other stakeholders who believe in the transformative power of compassion. This community will serve as both a catalyst for meaningful change and a supportive fellowship for those dedicated to ensuring that compassion remains at the heart of healthcare delivery, ultimately creating more healing environments for patients and healthcare workers alike. We’ll do this by:

Creating networking opportunities that foster meaningful connections and shared learning through facilitated peer groups and community events
Expanding our educational resources, including expert-led webinars, conferences, case studies, publications, and enhanced partner support and online coursework sites
Offering professional development opportunities with our Schwartz Rounds and other training programs
Launching a new “Compassion Champions” certificate program to strengthen individual skills and competencies
Recognizing and celebrating compassionate caregivers, innovative initiatives, and visionary leadership in compassionate healthcare
Convening experts to shape the future of compassionate care through participation in our Compassion Champions Advisory Council

Advancing the Power of Compassion to Transform Organizations

Schwartz Compassionate Care Model graphic

Drawing on more than 30 years of expertise in compassionate healthcare, the Schwartz Center has developed an unparalleled understanding of how organizational compassion improves both health outcomes and financial sustainability.

We’ve distilled this knowledge into our innovative Schwartz Compassionate Healthcare Model. Organizations that implement the model’s six domains can create transformative change that enhances the patient and care team relationship while strengthening safety and quality of care, caregiver retention, and organizational health.

Our goal is to share this vision across the country and around the world, and to provide the guidance and support for organizations to make real progress. We’ll do this by:

Developing an organizational resource kit that includes an assessment tool to identify strengths, potential gaps, and improvement opportunities
Going beyond the Schwartz Rounds program to provide specialized tools to help caregivers, including our healthcare adaptation of Schwartz Stress First Aid
Collaborating with strategic partners on services and programs that can advance the work of each domain and support our community’s needs
Aligning our education, innovation, and thought leadership agenda with the Model’s areas of impact

Join Us!

Our vision builds on our expertise in compassionate care and proven track record of successful partnerships, while boldly addressing today’s challenges. Through the expansion of the Schwartz Rounds program, the growth of our global Schwartz Community of Compassion Champions, and the advancement of our Schwartz Compassionate Healthcare Model, we’re working to transform healthcare culture at every level.

This transformation isn’t just about programs and frameworks—it’s about people and connections. It’s about the clinician who finds renewed purpose through a Schwartz Rounds session, the patient who feels truly seen and heard by their care team, and the healthcare leader who embeds compassion as a cornerstone of their organization.

We invite you to join us in this vital work. Whether you’re a healthcare professional, organizational leader, donor, or advocate, there’s a place for you in our plan to make compassionate healthcare the standard of care. Together, we can create a healthcare system that supports and sustains both the art and science of medicine—one that honors the human connection at the heart of all healing.