A Loving Organization Success Story:

Trinity Health: Caring Through Caritas, The Power to Connect and Make Change

Overview:

Trinity Health fosters a culture of compassionate, human-centered care by embedding Caritas principles into daily practice, leadership, and policies. This focus on love, connection, and respect strengthens teams, improves patient and staff experience, and drives measurable outcomes in engagement, retention, and trust.

Leaders: Darlene Cunha, Nurse Executive & Caritas Coach, Trinity Health

Framework: Jean Watson’s Caritas Processes, centered on compassion, presence, and human connection

"A Loving Organization gives us the structure to truly live out the heart of our mission. At Trinity, we’ve seen that when love is modeled in daily behaviors—not just spoken as a value—physicians reconnect, teams heal, and patients feel it. ALO helps us sustain Caritas by aligning our systems, not just our values and intentions."

- Darlene Cunha, Nurse Executive

Goals

  • Embed authentic caring science into everyday practices to transform both patient and colleague experience.
  • Foster an environment where micro-caring moments consistently uplift teams and patients.
  • Improve clinical outcomes, retention, and workplace culture through relational core values.

Challenges

  • High emotional exhaustion and moral distress among care teams.
  • Fractured care experience, where patients felt unknown and staff felt unseen.
  • Pressure to prioritize efficiency, often at the expense of compassion.

Key Initiatives

1. 

Micro-Caritas Moments

Training and coaching staff to recognize and deliver small, meaningful acts of caring —rooted in Jean Watson’s Caritas processes — as daily “power moves” in care.
2.

Storytelling And Shared Reflection

Leaders regularly facilitate narrative-sharing sessions, allowing staff to reflect onnimpactful patient moments and the personal meaning behind their work.
3.

Ripple Effect Activation

Encouraging staff to “be the ripple”—intentionally spreading caring actions across departments, creating a culture of compassion contagion.
4.

Caritas Coaching Model

Scaling the approach through certified Caritas Coaches who mentor colleagues one-on-one and within teams to build relational competence and presence.

Outcomes

Quantitative

  • Improved patient experience and colleague engagement scores (linked to Caritas process implementation)
  • Notable increases in staff retention across coached units.

Qualitative

  • Caregivers report “feeling seen,” “de-stressed,” and “empowered to care again.”
  • Patients share more moments of feeling truly connected and valued.

Lessons Learned

Quantitative

  • Caring is actionable. Micro-moments rooted in Caritas amplify connection and purpose.
  • Personal stories catalyze culture. Sharing lived experiences bridges emotional and operational work.
    Coaching scales care. Dedicated Caritas Coaches enable relational growth across the system.
    Compassion is contagious. “Ripple effect” strategies empower frontline staff to be change agents.