During the summer I have been reading and learning more about how compassionate nutrition can help to improve our resilience and protect us against stress and illness. As nurses we also have a responsibility to assess nutritional needs to aid healing and recovery.  In light of the pandemic this has never been more important. Bringing compassion into our work more is always a good way to demonstrate our skills and knowledge and to help us provide good quality care.  Compassionate nutrition therefore needs to be evidence based and communicated to all who need to develop their resilience against stress and disease. The emerging evidence from the pandemic is that people who have suffered most have underlying health conditions including obesity and heart or respiratory  problems.  See Dr Michael Greger and his team’s fantastic website for lots of free information and materials which are all evidence based here https://nutritionfacts.org/

I have created the above pyramid as a way of giving consideration around what we need to do to be more compassionate and person centred when assessing the nutritional needs of people who are vulnerable and in our care. We can also use the pyramid to build up our own resilience through self compassion. Resources and skills will always need to be considered before we give advice and we should always bear in mind the skills and resources others might have or not have. It is no excuse however to do nothing .