“It means you get off your butt and do something!” Prof. Al Aynsley-Green’s mission to put compassion back into healthcare and medicine

Our Centre for Health Sciences and Services podcast episodes is called 'Holistic Health'. They are about about bringing the ethos, research and work out of the University and into the public domain.For this episode, the UK’s only Professor of CompassionateCare – Al Aynsley-Green, also a Visiting Professor at UON and a medical doctor – sat down to chat about his career and area of expertise and reflections on the recent death of his wife.Al also talks about the issues he sees with compassionate care in the UK in 2025 and where the health service should concentrate it efforts.Al’s looking for a "momentum" in compassion in UKhealthcare and sets a challenge for listeners to respond about what they feel – or will action – after listening to this conversation.Compassionate care is a key part of many UONdegrees and courses, so Al is joined by CHSS co-lead and Associate Professor Dr Tracey Redwood (a children and young people’s nurse) and Senior Lecturer in AdvancedNursing, Win Hughes. They cover Professional Nurse Advocates at UON, how care and compassion is woven throughout undergraduate curricula at UON and Mental Health First Aid training that is given to all UON undergraduate Nursing students.The University will hold its second Care and Compassion conference on 30 March 2026; keep an eye on on our events page for more.The next Holistic Health podcast episodes will cover single mothers and the stigma around online dating, support dogs and BAME/GEM people who work in the NHS.