ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the events at Mid-Staffordshire NHSFT precedes an analysis of the appearance of compassion in codes and other regulatory and policy documents. It shows that appearance in regulatory codes is problematized on four counts. Firstly, that the need for compassion is frequently assumed and seldom challenged. Secondly, that compliance in quasi-legal codes requires understanding of its absence rather than its presence. Thirdly, that one cannot require people to have an emotional response. Fourthly, that enforced behaviour that looks like compassion is not compassionate. Nurses are required to treat people with compassion. By inference, nurses 'run-ragged' by ever-increasing demands and staff shortages simply failed to see the distress of the patients. In the United Kingdom, the professional body is the Royal College of Nursing and the Nursing and Midwifery Council is the regulator. The claim that compassion is a virtue is common in the medical and nursing literature.
