Compassionate care provision: an immense need during the refugee crisis: lessons learned from a European capacity-building project

Abstract

Background: The refugee crisis has resulted in massive waves of migration towards Europe. Besides sufficient and appropriate healthcare services, these vulnerable populations need kindness, respect, acceptance, empathy, and attention to basic needs. Healthcare professionals ought to have a respectful and compassionate approach to safeguard the dignity and interests of the people they care for. Aim: The overall aim of the European Refugees-Human Movement and Advisory Network (EUR-HUMAN) project was to provide good and affordable, comprehensive, person-centred, integrated and compassionate care for all ages and all ailments, taking into account the transcultural settings and the needs, wishes and expectations of the newly arriving refugees. This paper reports on findings to help establish what the nature of compassionate care for refugees consists of and implies and how its implementation could be promoted across European countries and healthcare settings. Methods: A two-day Expert Consensus Meeting (ECM) took place in order to reach consensus in different thematic areas including cultural issues in health care, continuity of care, information and health promotion, health assessment, mental health, mother and child care, infectious diseases, and vaccination coverage. Results: Notably, all experts stressed the need to address mental health problems. Interactions and input received during the meeting highlighted the urgent need for compassionate care for these vulnerable populations. Additionally, the needs reported by refugees and other migrants helped identify a serious gap in terms of compassionate attitudes exhibited by healthcare workers. Linguistic and cultural barriers exacerbate the effect of the lack of compassion, especially where healthcare information and psychological support are urgently needed but an appropriate supportive framework is missing. Conclusions: This European collaborative capacity-building project attempts to develop a long-term strategy to tackle this issue, focusing in particular on the design and delivery of appropriate person-centred and compassionate-based primary healthcare (PHC) services. A list of recommendations developed by this consensus panel may facilitate the design and implementation of similar capacity-building efforts, as well as the design of educational intervention programmers for a person-centred and compassionate PHC for vulnerable populations.

Maternity care for refugees living in Greek refugee camps: What are the challenges to provision?

“…Poor staff attitudes, as a consequence of an overburdened health system, were identified as a barrier in our data; this has support in other literature. A Europe‐wide report found that migrant women frequently felt their health care professionals were unfriendly and disrespectful 31 . They note that the language barriers, also identified in our research, exacerbated the breakdown in patient and health care professional relationship.…”

“…They were an important meeting point, enabling women to build trust with health care workers. It is recommended that refugee women are provided information about human rights, gender equality, public health issues, and services available for refugees 31 . Health care providers in our study discussed intentions to bring in wider education to their safe spaces.…”

Through health workers’ eyes: a qualitative study of health service provision for migrants at Schengen border

“…A study by Stammel et al [37] emphasizes that the received multidisciplinary treatment in a clinic had a positive effect on trauma-related symptoms as well as on the quality of life of traumatized refugees where medical doctors, psychotherapists and social workers were included in the treatment process. A study by Mechili et al [38] also emphasizes a trained multidisciplinary team in order to provide culturally adapted health assessment and compassionate health care services for migrants. For better treatment migrants must be informed about the provision of healthcare services across European countries and should stay in one host country longer.…”

Migrant women’s experiences of pregnancy, childbirth and maternity care in European countries: A systematic review

“…This model has been feasibility tested and will be reported in further articles currently under development. Other known integrated healthcare models include Community Orientated Primary Care [118,119], as well as the integrated approach developed within the European Refugees-Human Movement and Advisory Network (EUR-Human) project [120].…”