About this book

Empathetic Care: A guide for community health workers includes these chapters:

1. Introduction to kindness, empathy and compassion
2. Thinking empathy and empathic communication
3. Self-care
4. Using empathy and kindness to help others

These chapters have been successfully used as part of the Skills to Care learning programme for the Lukhanji Municipality and Sarah Baartman District Municipality in the Eastern Cape, funded by the Small Projects Foundation.

Community health workers (CHWs) serve as a very important direct link between patients, communities and health services. As trusted on-the-ground support to community members, they therefore expand access to essential healthcare information as well as available treatment and prevention programmes.

This course book provides appropriate, cost-effective, and sustainable targeted learning for the large numbers of emerging community health workers in South Africa.

The proven Perinatal Education Programme (PEP) methodology of decentralised, small group learning, facilitated by a professional nurse, is ideal to meet the training needs of diverse groups of community health workers, particularly those in under-resourced, remote or rural communities. Bettercare is working alongside health workers to bring this highly successful, easily applied training model to community health worker development programmes.

Editor: Prof David Woods