Compassion in Nursing
Compassion is “noticing or recognizing suffering, being empathically resonant with that person, desiring to relieve that suffering, and acting to attempt to alleviate that suffering in some way.”
—-Dr. Dominic Vachon, How Doctors Care
Compassion is the essence of nursing.
It is in your bones. Your DNA. You started the nursing school application process because you wanted to tenderly care for people, to heal your patients, to be with the most vulnerable while offering grace and dignity along their health journey.
Yes yes, you are already there. You have everything you need to be a compassionate, loving nurse.
The healthcare system makes it particularly difficult to tap into your compassion.
Sometimes it feels like the system destroys this compassion.
The National Academy of Medicine frankly discusses the systemic factors that can lead a nurse to burn out such as inadequate staffing, excessive workload, workflow interruptions, moral injury, and moral distress (the misalignment of values and the reality of giving care in a busy health care setting). Self-care practices will not make systemic inadequacies go away, and no matter how much self-care you do, the unrealistic job demands and the system alone can lead a nurse to quit and work at Trader Joe’s. Yes, some days I dream about this.
We do know that self-care practices can enhance your well-being when you are working with humans who are suffering.
We also know that building compassion into your practice can actually sustain you and may buffer you from crashing and burning.
I know some days are simply better than others. Being a human, I am inconsistent and regimented, lazy and strivey, funny and boring, alive and exhausted. I am consistently inconsistent. Compassion can seem elusive on the best of days.
I realized (after way too long) that nursing is a profession of the mind, the body, and the spirit. When you tend to all facets, you may experience less reactivity of the mind, more ease in your body, and more fulfillment as a nurse, making it a little easier to harness the compassion that is your birthright.
Here are some ways to develop, maintain, and insert more compassion into your nursing practice:
Mindfulness practices can help us to be more present, more focused, and responsive rather than reactive.
Breath-focused meditations: Try a long exhale which activates the parasympathetic nervous system and elicits the relaxation response. Inhale and count to 4, hold and count to 6, exhale and count to 8. He may be a little extreme, but I am obsessed with Wim Hoff.
Guided meditations will help you build the skill to neutrally observe your thoughts rather than reacting to unconscious thought processes. I love Tara Brach.
Self-compassion meditations: Nurses need this more than anything. We are hard on ourselves and it is impossible to be compassionate to others when we don’t know how to be compassionate with ourselves. Here are my favorites from Kristin Neff.
Body scan: Lie down and breathe as you focus on each body part moving from the head to the feet.
Practicing Presence: While you are working a shift, pull up a chair, sit next to your patient, and time it. Practice 1-4 minutes. This is my favorite practice and it shifts the energy in the room dramatically. Patients and families feel the care and presence.
On my best days, I view my nursing career as my spiritual practice. I show up with the intention of compassion, I take breaths throughout the day in the med room, I actually take a lunch break, I pull up a chair and sit next to my patients as they are dying. These practices have the side effect of minimizing moral distress and keep me loving my job, because I am dwelling in compassion satisfaction - the pleasant feelings that come from being compassionate.
Just for the record, I have plenty of bad days.
Nursing is a difficult profession mentally and physically and the systemic factors alone can cause you to crash and burn and leave the profession. Compassion practices will not make these systemic issues go away, but they can soften the state of your mind and the state of your nursing heart.