CCIM EXAM 3 QUESTIONS AND CORRECT
ANSWERS!
Summarize what the Balanced Compassionate Caring Model means:
-Optimum level of emotional involvement yields positive effects for both the patient and the
clinician.
-Zone of Balanced Caring lies between being emotionally detached and being over-involved.
-Draw Relationship Between Level of Clinician Emotional Involvement and Effects on Patient.
Why might the Balanced Compassionate Caring Model be important in a clinician's
career?
Anything outside of the Zone of Balanced Caring is simply not sustainable:
-Being overly-involved leads to emotional exhaustion.
-Being detached also yields downstream emotional problems and can result in a lack of a sense
of personal accomplishment.
Both of these can lead to burnout.
In contrast, optimal emotional involvement allows clinicians to manage their own emotions
while simultaneously caring for their patients.
Balanced Compassionate Caring Attitudes: Caritas Attitude
-This fundamental attitude places compassionate caring attitude as the core driving force in
helping relationships.
-Whatever you do is grounded in this compassionate caring focus. Even when things get tough,
the attitude of caritas persists underneath.
-In that way, the caritas attitude is always guiding and motivating what you are doing with
another person.
In staying grounded in the caritas attitude, we are in touch with the key force in helping our
patients as well as being connected to the intrinsic motivation we have for being in this work.
-If we understand the nature of compassion, we will also be able to guard against being overly
,emotionally involved with patients and know what we need to do to take care of ourselves in this
work.
10 Caritas Processes that facilitate the healing process:
-Practice of loving-kindness toward self and others.
-Authentic presence.
Instill faith and hope/spirituality.
-Develop and sustain a helping-trusting caring relationship.
-Being present and supportive to the expression of positive and negative feelings.
Creativity in caring process.
-Engage in genuine teaching-learning experience.
-Create a healing environment.
-Honor/assist basic human needs.
-Opening and attending to the spiritual/ mysterious and existential unknowns of life-death.
Balanced Compassionate Caring Attitudes: Balanced notion of personal responsibility and
outcome:
-This attitude basically says that you should accompany people on their journeys, not do their
journeys for them.
-If a helper has no sense of personal responsibility in helping another person, then the helping
action will most likely not be successful.
-An excessive sense of personal responsibility is also a problem in which the clinician feels they
are completely responsible for what happens to the patient. It is unrealistic to take responsibility
for all the variables that can affect a patient.
-Those you help may hold you more responsible for their progress than you really can be and lay
that expectation on you.
-Crucial within this attitude are mistakes: Blow to clinician self-confidence; upsetting to increase
suffering of patient who sought them out and trusted them. Need each other to process what
happened in mistakes and how we should proceed; have to support and help colleagues when
they make mistakes.
, Balanced Compassionate Caring Attitudes: Compassionate empathic concern vs. emotional
detachment or emotional engulfment.
-Empathic arousal increases the intrinsic motivation to help another person. Empathy leads to
helping behavior because it increases our internalized values of what's important to do, which we
call 'autonomous motivation'. Emotional detachment removes this empathic arousal and thus
reduces the motivation to offer help.
-Perspectives are important in maintaining balance with this attitude. Specifically, balancing
between the 'self' perspective and the 'other' perspective. The key difference being "Imagining
what I would feel if I were my patient" vs. "imagining what my patient feels".
-The key to balanced empathy is maintaining a clear distinction between Self and Other.
-Self-other merging leads to becoming emotionally overwhelmed and distressed.
-Good self-other distinction underlies empathy-based altruism.
Balanced Compassionate Caring Attitudes: Being Centered:
This attitude does not mean a relaxed calm.
-Instead, an emotionally collected, focused awareness while doing something:
-Having the ability to concentrate even with distractions.
-The ability to manage strong emotions (yours, patient's, colleagues', etc.).
-Ability to shift mental state smoothly.
-Emotionally present; not preoccupied.
-Mental state of optimum emotional management and problem solving; fully present with the
patient in the situation before us (not rushing to move on the next thing).
Balanced Compassionate Caring Attitudes: Lifetime of caring as a story with succession of
awakenings:
-This attitude is founded upon the idea that people become more compassionate, both toward
themselves and to others, as they age.
-Arriving at that destination is not easy though. It takes many trials and many ups and downs.
-As such, periods of emotional detachment or severe over-attachment are seen as temporary steps
that are taken within the transformation process.
ANSWERS!
Summarize what the Balanced Compassionate Caring Model means:
-Optimum level of emotional involvement yields positive effects for both the patient and the
clinician.
-Zone of Balanced Caring lies between being emotionally detached and being over-involved.
-Draw Relationship Between Level of Clinician Emotional Involvement and Effects on Patient.
Why might the Balanced Compassionate Caring Model be important in a clinician's
career?
Anything outside of the Zone of Balanced Caring is simply not sustainable:
-Being overly-involved leads to emotional exhaustion.
-Being detached also yields downstream emotional problems and can result in a lack of a sense
of personal accomplishment.
Both of these can lead to burnout.
In contrast, optimal emotional involvement allows clinicians to manage their own emotions
while simultaneously caring for their patients.
Balanced Compassionate Caring Attitudes: Caritas Attitude
-This fundamental attitude places compassionate caring attitude as the core driving force in
helping relationships.
-Whatever you do is grounded in this compassionate caring focus. Even when things get tough,
the attitude of caritas persists underneath.
-In that way, the caritas attitude is always guiding and motivating what you are doing with
another person.
In staying grounded in the caritas attitude, we are in touch with the key force in helping our
patients as well as being connected to the intrinsic motivation we have for being in this work.
-If we understand the nature of compassion, we will also be able to guard against being overly
,emotionally involved with patients and know what we need to do to take care of ourselves in this
work.
10 Caritas Processes that facilitate the healing process:
-Practice of loving-kindness toward self and others.
-Authentic presence.
Instill faith and hope/spirituality.
-Develop and sustain a helping-trusting caring relationship.
-Being present and supportive to the expression of positive and negative feelings.
Creativity in caring process.
-Engage in genuine teaching-learning experience.
-Create a healing environment.
-Honor/assist basic human needs.
-Opening and attending to the spiritual/ mysterious and existential unknowns of life-death.
Balanced Compassionate Caring Attitudes: Balanced notion of personal responsibility and
outcome:
-This attitude basically says that you should accompany people on their journeys, not do their
journeys for them.
-If a helper has no sense of personal responsibility in helping another person, then the helping
action will most likely not be successful.
-An excessive sense of personal responsibility is also a problem in which the clinician feels they
are completely responsible for what happens to the patient. It is unrealistic to take responsibility
for all the variables that can affect a patient.
-Those you help may hold you more responsible for their progress than you really can be and lay
that expectation on you.
-Crucial within this attitude are mistakes: Blow to clinician self-confidence; upsetting to increase
suffering of patient who sought them out and trusted them. Need each other to process what
happened in mistakes and how we should proceed; have to support and help colleagues when
they make mistakes.
, Balanced Compassionate Caring Attitudes: Compassionate empathic concern vs. emotional
detachment or emotional engulfment.
-Empathic arousal increases the intrinsic motivation to help another person. Empathy leads to
helping behavior because it increases our internalized values of what's important to do, which we
call 'autonomous motivation'. Emotional detachment removes this empathic arousal and thus
reduces the motivation to offer help.
-Perspectives are important in maintaining balance with this attitude. Specifically, balancing
between the 'self' perspective and the 'other' perspective. The key difference being "Imagining
what I would feel if I were my patient" vs. "imagining what my patient feels".
-The key to balanced empathy is maintaining a clear distinction between Self and Other.
-Self-other merging leads to becoming emotionally overwhelmed and distressed.
-Good self-other distinction underlies empathy-based altruism.
Balanced Compassionate Caring Attitudes: Being Centered:
This attitude does not mean a relaxed calm.
-Instead, an emotionally collected, focused awareness while doing something:
-Having the ability to concentrate even with distractions.
-The ability to manage strong emotions (yours, patient's, colleagues', etc.).
-Ability to shift mental state smoothly.
-Emotionally present; not preoccupied.
-Mental state of optimum emotional management and problem solving; fully present with the
patient in the situation before us (not rushing to move on the next thing).
Balanced Compassionate Caring Attitudes: Lifetime of caring as a story with succession of
awakenings:
-This attitude is founded upon the idea that people become more compassionate, both toward
themselves and to others, as they age.
-Arriving at that destination is not easy though. It takes many trials and many ups and downs.
-As such, periods of emotional detachment or severe over-attachment are seen as temporary steps
that are taken within the transformation process.
