Kindness Save Lives in Healthcare
Every day, healthcare staff and patients deal with the hard truths of what it is to be human. Feeling cared about as a person, not just an illness or a worker matters.
We've created #KindnessWorksHere Week to celebrate and elevate kindness in healthcare - and ultimately save lives. When kindness is at work, everyone thrives!
Anyone can be a Kindness Champion - you may be a healthcare consumer or provider. You may want to celebrate and support your local healthcare service, or your team or whole organisation! Or you may just want to bake for friends, family or colleagues and support the work of Hush.
We’re tackling serious issues with serious solutions - and with joy, celebration and participation! And cake! This is our chance to spread kindness across all areas of healthcare, and we need YOU to help us make it amazing.
Up to 70%
More than 50%
76% higher
The healthcare and social assistance industries had the highest number of serious claims for work-related mental health conditions than any other industry over the last five years. (Safe Work Australia, 2022).
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Register to become a #KindnessWorksHere organisation, site, unit or team. You’ll receive our Kindness Celebration Pack (digital) filled with resources to support you to acknowledge your colleagues, staff and community, including activity ideas, conversation starters, handy information and creative inspiration. - register interest below
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Sign up to join daily presentations, interactive Q&A’s and workshops on Kindness in Action as part of our Gathering of Kindness online event series. For more information, to see the program and to get your tickets. - click here
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Add visual appeal to your celebration with our physical Kindness Celebration pack (Australia only) and receive bunting, posters, cards and more to help you promote and celebrate kindness. - click here
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Join the Great #KindnessWorksHere Bake Off, raffle or sell your cakes and nourishing goodies, fundraise from your attendees or just nourish each other with cake and kindness stories! Share your baking creativity on social media, help us to spread the word and help raise money for the kindness, care and creativity to continue! - register interest below
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Buy gifts for your staff, colleagues, patient advocates, volunteers and team - you can choose from cards, books, original Hush Music, badges, T-shirts, bags and more! - click here
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Spread the kindness! Share #KindnessWorksHere with your colleagues, networks, and friends. Follow us on social media and use the hashtag #KindnessWorksHere to amplify the movement. Together, we can make kindness a part of every conversation! - click here for QR codes
"Kindness is so, so important and overlooked as the most central part to providing good care and working well with those around you."
- Dr Emma West, Director of Emergency Medical Training and a senior doctor, Royal Melbourne Hospital
Funds Raised
Funds raised will go towards supporting the work of the Hush Foundation, which
includes:
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Partnering with some of Australia’s top musicians to compose and perform original works designed especially to soften the edges of healthcare environments. Our next album will be a collaboration with Aboriginal artists.
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Partnering with visual, literary and documentary artists to create resources which support wellbeing, calm, nourishment, inspiration and reflection for patients, families and staff alike.
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Development of a touring concert and fundraiser to celebrate the Hush Foundation’s 25th anniversary in 2025 and showcase its use of the arts in enhancing healthcare environments and experiences (including 20 original albums of award winning, quality Australian music).
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Developing quality creative educational resources for healthcare professionals
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Building our evidence base to demonstrate impact and outcomes and further advocate for the importance of person centred values for occupational health and safety and patient safety and experience.
Internationally renowned healthcare improvement leader Professor Don Berwick gives his endorsement to the Gathering of Kindness and the pioneering work of the Hush Foundation.
More about #KindnessWorksHere
The Hush Foundation has run an annual Gathering of Kindness event since 2016, designed to bring all the voices in healthcare together to learn more about the art, science and practice of person-centred values in action. In 2021 the Gathering went online and reached even more people. In 2024, we're powering up the movement by inviting all health and care organisations, and the broader community to become Kindness Champions in your own 'backyard'. We have whole health services and whole states signed up for our year long Kindness in Action program and we'd like to extend our reach now to general practice, mental health, aged care, community health, allied health, disability and welfare services. Will you join us and help us to grow the kindness movement?
Our subscribing hospitals love our #KindnessWorksHere resources and the difference they make. They teach it to their teams, wear the visual message on their lanyards, their scrubs and use it in their hallways and e-mail signatures. One hospital CEO even shared with us that the accreditors took a strong interest in what sat behind the words.