Personalized compassionate care : an appreciative inquiry exploring the positive core of Canadian health care

Abstract

This research explores how individuals make sense of their own lived experiences of health through the sharing of their stories and how the collectively shared meaning can be used to identify core values fundamental to sustaining a flourishing Canadian health care system. This study considers health care to be a complex system with inherent unpredictability where ideas for values-based sustainability must be given freedom to emerge. At the Kelowna Dialogue on Health, 29 individuals with diverse health care experiences and perspectives participated in a one-day Appreciative Inquiry (AI) conversation. During the seven-hour dialogue, the affirmative topics of compassion, collaboration, and personal responsibility emerged and a full AI 4-D cycle of discovery, dream, design, and destiny was performed. The delivery of these affirmative topics into actionable ideas that will be communicated in the public sphere through digital media will hopefully empower the participants, both health care providers and recipients, to strive for personalized compassionate health care