Why Your Support is Vital
Everyone needs food for the soul - especially during illness or trauma. For example, 1,600 elderly people, disabled with chronic illnesses, live in the skilled nursing facilities of Santa Barbara County. More than 50% of them have no visitors – none at all - other than Adventures in Caring volunteers. Hospitalization is worrisome for everyone, but for those who must live in a long-term care hospital for the rest of their life, the humiliation, loneliness and sense of abandonment can be devastating.
Although our hospitals and nursing homes may be well equipped to treat the “presenting” illness of patients, they are poorly equipped to assist patients in finding a ray of hope.

Adventures in Caring is recognized locally and nationally as an exemplar in the field of teaching and delivering compassionate patient care. Harnessing the power of love in the service of healing – making compassion practical in health care – is the gift Adventures in Caring brings to the community.

Yet very few health care organizations actually value compassion enough to put it in the budget. Almost no resources are ever invested in cultivating a culture of compassion, despite the solid evidence that patients:
  1. Are never very satisfied with the quality of their care – unless they experience compassion.
  2. Rarely complete their medical regimen correctly – unless they experience compassion.
  3. Almost never file malpractice lawsuits – if they experience compassion.
  4. Are killed or maimed by more medical mistakes – when clear, compassionate communication is lacking.

Despite these widely known facts, few hospitals or universities allocate the time and resources to teach their staff or students how to convey compassion to patients. Instead, many give it lip service as a buzzword in public relations statements. Others regard it as a frill, an optional extra that, in a pinch, can be done without. Most simply don’t know what to do with such a nebulous concept. Rarely is compassion deliberately cultivated, and the question of how to teach it effectively remains a mystery to most organizations.

This is why the pioneering work of Adventures in Caring is so important - and why we need your help. Hospitals and health care institutions can never become places of healing without compassion.

Will you help us deliver this food for the soul to people who need it so desperately? With your participation we can make compassion visible and teachable, and its results measurable and reproducible throughout the world.
Projects in Need of Funding

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