About Us
Compassion makes healthcare better - one connection at a time.
At the Schwartz Center, we know that compassion has the power to save lives. Compassionate healthcare isn’t just an ideal—it’s essential for patients, families, and their care teams to thrive.
About The Schwartz Center for Compassionate Healthcare
Our programs increase compassion in healthcare and create more meaningful connections between patients and healthcare professionals. We work with nearly 800 healthcare partners in the U.S., U.K., Ireland, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand to advance compassion for patients, care teams, and their healing relationships.
Healthcare organizations face unprecedented challenges: staffing shortages, widespread provider burnout, mounting financial pressures, and deepening health disparities. We deliver evidence-based solutions that restore purpose to healthcare work, reduce burnout, and ensure that compassion remains at the heart of healing.
Our Mission
is to partner with healthcare organizations to advance compassion for patients, care teams, and their healing relationships.
Our Vision
is to be a global leader in championing compassion for all who seek and provide healthcare.
Our Work
Patients and healthcare workers alike believe that compassion is essential to successful medical treatment, how well patients recover from illness, and even whether a patient lives or dies. With the difficulties facing healthcare, compassion matters now more than ever.
We cultivate compassion in healthcare for patients, families, teams and organizations by:
Increasing the Reach and Impact of the Schwartz Rounds® Program:
The Schwartz Rounds program gives healthcare workers dedicated time and space to discuss the emotional challenges of their jobs, which has been proven to increase their capacity for compassion and ability to provide better care for patients.
Strengthening our Community of Compassion Champions:
We offer educational, networking, and recognition opportunities to our network of healthcare professionals, organizational leaders, patients and families, donors, and other stakeholders who believe in the transformative power of compassion.
Advancing the Power of Compassion to Transform Organizations:
Using our Schwartz Compassionate Healthcare Model as a guide, we help healthcare organizations and their leaders to advance a culture of compassion.
These acts of kindness - the simple human touch from my caregivers - have made the unbearable bearable
KEN SCHWARTZ, Founder
Our History
In November of 1994, Ken Schwartz was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer. During his ordeal, Ken came to realize that what matters most during an illness is the human connection between patients and their caregivers. He wrote about his experience in an article for the Boston Globe Magazine titled A Patient’s Story. In it, he writes about how “the smallest acts of kindness” make “the unbearable bearable.” His commentary has become a touchstone for the Center and readers around the world.
At the end of his life, Ken outlined an organization that would nurture compassion in healthcare, encouraging the sort of caregiver-patient relationships that made all the difference to him. He founded the Schwartz Center in 1995 – just days before his death – to ensure that all patients receive compassionate care, and all caregivers are supported in providing it.
How Your Giving Helps
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Our Leadership
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Our Staff
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Our Strategic Partners
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