Nursing Compassion: A Case Study

Sawbridge and Hewison (2015) believe that compassion is important to the delivery of patient care. However, professionals are working in environments that are increasingly targeted which can take the professionals away from delivering compassionate care (Baverstock and Finley 2016). This assignment aims to discuss how important and how realistic it is for health and social care leaders to balance compassion with effective and efficient service delivery. It aims to do this by exploring what is meant by the term compassion and the influence that it has on patient care. The author will then move on to discuss the impact compassion has on service delivery, considering if professionals need to balance compassion with effective and efficient care delivery including the if compassion is in fact required to deliver effective care.

Compassion and respect are essential attitudes for nursing practice. Compassion has been described as the “wounding of the heart” or a

Compassion represents an “acknowledgement of another’s suffering and is accompanied by the expression of a desire to ease or end that suffering.” (Van der Cingal, 2009, p. 124) This is a fundamental characteristic usually found in health care workers and nurses especially. In one twelve hour shift, a nurse’s job can change from taking vitals and administering medications to performing life saving measures

Compassion is a crucial aspect of nursing; it involves seeing the patients as more than just a medical problem. Patients look to nurses as a source of comfort to help them deal with their emotions and understand their medical problems. In Norway, a study was conducted to find the role of compassion in nursing and

Using discussion of related literature, this assignment will attempt to define the meaning of compassionate relationship centred care. Using a clinical scenario it will demonstrate how compassionate relationship centred care can be provided to service users. It will determine some of the barriers encountered by nurses and their implications when providing compassionate relationship centred care. Suggestions as to how these barriers may be overcome by practitioners will also be included. In addition legal and ethical issues regarding relationship centred care will be explored.

healing process. Compassion allows the patient to feel at ease to communicate with the nurse

Compassion is another valuable attribute of caring. Compassion is the sense of concern for others and their less than desirable situations. According to Perry (2009), compassion is the attention to minute details, generally exhibited in a face-to-face interaction with a patient/client (p. 18) and should be implemented when providing patient care and interventions. Attentiveness goes a long ways to enhance the well-being and quality of care provided to a patient/client. This in turn, establishes trust amongst a nurse/caregiver and a patient/client.

Respect is vital to any relationship because it provides a base for fair and unbiased treatment of one another. Without respect for the worth of each individual and his expertise it would be difficult to act as a team. Just as critical to the function of a team is integrity. Integrity ensures that the nurse is acting honestly and holds herself to both moral and professional standards. Responsibility is essential in all nursing practice, but is particularly necessary when integrating care with other disciplines and professionals. As the functions of a healthcare team become more individually specific, the ability rely on each person to perform her part is crucial. Finally, compassion is the framework for all nursing action. While it is widely accepted that compassion for patients is part of nursing, compassion for fellow professionals is necessary too. In conjunction with respect, compassion allows the team to function by accepting each individual’s specific perspective and acknowledging the importance of their skills.

The purpose of this essay is to look at barriers of compassion and what nurses could do overcome these barriers. Three sub topics will be looked at over the course of this essay and a conclusion will be made to evaluate these essays findings and to provide some input into battling these barriers so that patients can receive high standards of patient care.

Healthcare providers are at increased risk for compassion fatigue (CF), which has also been called secondary traumatic stress, second hand shock syndrome, secondary stress reaction, and vicarious trauma (ABA, 2011). Compassion fatigue begins to become an issue when caregivers give too much of themselves to others and neglect to provide for their own needs. Neglecting one’s personal needs can be harmful, leading to destructive behaviors and patterns, such as over indulgence and increased sick calls. Over time the provider has a decreased ability to show compassion. This paper will discuss and describe compassion fatigue, warning signs of compassion fatigue, and discuss recovery options for those suffering from compassion fatigue.

. This exploratory study used a cross sectional survey method (Hopper, Craig, Janvir, Wetsel, Reimels, Anderson, Greenvilee & Clemson, 2010, p. 422). Compassion satisfaction and fatigue subscales were measured using the Professional Quality of Life, using ProQOL R-IV instrument (Hopper, et al. 2010, p. 423). Despite study limitations which were small sample size, authors concluded that recognising the signs and symptoms, and identifying best practice interventions and raising awareness, will lead to the development of ongoing support programs for hospital nurses (Hopper, et al., 2010, p. 427).

When one thinks about nursing, caring, empathy, and compassion come to mind. There exists a link, an unbreakable union, for nurses that "compassion fatigue is the cost of caring for others in pain" (Boyle, 2015, p. 49). Compassion fatigue (CF) and its impact on nurses are predominating problems in various Emergency Departments (ED). Nurses perform a number of procedures throughout the day; however, the essential item that they deliver the utmost is themselves (Harris & Quinn-Griffin, 2015). Nurses provide care, succor, kindness, and tenderness to patients, families, other nurses; support to doctors and advanced practitioners, and convey directions to medical technicians, nursing assistants, and other staff every day. Eventually, the nurse can have their internal well of compassion come up empty, leaving them with CF. Simply stated, CF is the inability for nurses to nurture patients due to secondary traumatic stress disorder (Hinderer et al., 2014). This study explores what is compassion fatigue and ways to alleviate it and prevent it from taking away the love of nursing.

Nursing is recognized as an occupation that is under stress on both professional and personal levels. In recent years, increasing amount of nursing disputes cause the shortage of nurses currently threatens health care globally. One of the reasons of this shortage is that nurses experience high levels of stress and work load in acute care settings. The purpose of this assignment is to review ‘compassion fatigue’ in nursing and discuss the solutions of increasing resilience by nurses’ self-care.

physical and mental exhaustion that occurs as a gradual result of working in hostile and

Empathy is defined as the ability to communicate an understanding of a client’s feelings, and is a crucial component of the helping relationship (Boggs. 2011, p.106). Empathy is an essential concept to nursing practice as it allows the nurse to gain perspective in order to provide appropriate actions and interventions significant to that patient’s individual experience. In Tilda Shalof’s “A Nurses’ Story”, the author, a registered nurse in the intensive care unit (ICU), struggles with a particularly difficult patient case and must reflect upon her own values and subsequent judgments in order to provide adequate nursing care.