The Provider’s Role in Promoting Hope for Patients in Clinical Encounters

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to provide health care providers with a set of core strategies to situate hope into the context of their clinical encounters with patients. This article further stresses that providers should know how to be a compassionate presence, convey dignity, and attend to the spiritual needs of the patient. If providers are to be fully present to the patient, they must prepare through reflection on their own sense of transcendence, meaning, purpose, call to service, and connectedness to others. This article represents a nontechnical approach to understand some of the dynamics in the clinical encounter in health care settings.