Vulnerability and Compassion: More Cinema Please

Abstract

Vulnerability points to an unavoidable weakness condition of the human being and it holds the possibility of suffering from damage. That chance increases in situations of sufferings, diseases and when death overshadows. In these scenes, care helps to ease the struggles deriving from the weakness situation in which people in the sanitary environment find themselves. There are many necessary elements to employ the best care and among them, compassion, understood as a feeling of concern about the others"™ suffering as well as the wish to help him/her and the action to relieve him/her is essential. This complex emotional phenomenon can be difficult to understand. Regarding this difficulty and the possibilities offered by the cinema as an educational tool, we have considered the objective of identifying and describing emotional behaviours and attitudes of healthcare professionals in the scenes of three selected films: The death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005), Médecin de Campagne (2016) and Wit (2001) to help students and healthcare professionals know, appreciate and be able to understand better the concept of compassion in the field of assistance relationship.