It has been known for a long time that air quality can have a negative effect on our health and yet most of us do not take much notice of it – unless it has a particular smell.  During the pandemic, we have all been advised to ventilate our homes well so that the […]

Many of us are aware of the importance of good nutrition but how do we measure it? Furthermore, is it at the front of our minds in our busy working day and are we aware of our own nutritional needs to be able to do our jobs well? Spencer and Palmer, (2012) suggest that a […]

  Epigenetics is a word that we do not hear a lot about but is becoming more important as we discover what is good or bad for our health. According to Tiffon (2018)  “Epigenetics refers to the control of gene expression via mechanisms not directly related to the DNA coding sequence” (p1) This means that […]

  Many of us in the western world who consider our diets to be healthy may not know enough about vitamin deficiency to be able to ensure that we are getting the correct amount of nutrients into our bodies.  Modern-day food although often in abundance for many can also be seriously deficient in nutrients including […]

When we think about nutrition for heart health we do not often link compassion with what we eat but if we did we could be more focused upon what we need to improve our heart health. Everyone is an individual with different needs and this is how person-centred compassionate care works and can be more […]

At this time of year some of us might be feeling more festive but should we be feeling more spiritual given that it is a celebration of spiritual needs? Spiritual needs are like moral codes that we have learned throughout our life but we are not often aware of how, why or when to apply […]

Living in a pandemic is not something anyone of us would choose but when we find ourselves in this situation it is worth reflecting from time to time on how we are doing. The nurse philosopher Patricia Benner  R.N Ph.D., who wrote the book  From Novice to Expert, looked at how nurses became expert practitioners […]

Have you ever stood in a room full of people and felt completely alone? Most people will associate with being alone but not when  people are around us and that is why it feels so strange. Surely you should not feel alone if you have your friends and family or even strangers around you? The […]

The above quote goes on to say that compassion is a verb – not a feeling – so it is something we do not just feel. In nursing this means we must demonstrate compassion not just say that we are compassionate. This requires an element of critical thinking while we try to work out what […]

“It takes six seconds to manage anger, it takes six seconds to create compassion, it takes six seconds to change the world”. Six Seconds The Emotional Intelligence Network Most of us in our lives will experience conflict either within ourselves or with other people as it is a natural part of the human survival mechanism.  […]

I have recently been looking at self compassion in more depth and how we can  develop our resilience towards stress and the harmful effects of the cortisol hormone that we produce in response to stress. Many years ago in the 1930s a researcher called Hans Selye  developed an idea called the Gerneral Adaptation Syndrome where […]

When we talk about compassionate care we often talk about the theory behind the approach. This is all well and good but practitioners and indeed my own  PhD supervisor  also ask –  “but what does it look like?”.  While I was doing my own research I tried to create a narrative of what good care […]

As students are about to start their university courses all around the world it is becoming more and more important to be able to cope with and manage stress so that they can enjoy their studies and learn from the whole experience. In order to do this they must be fairly realxed to be able […]

Often there is a gap in the evidence for compassionate learning compared to the research evidence for compassionate care and yet it is the learning that informs our practice not the other way around. If we are to understand compassionate learning better then we should be more familiar with the scholarly activity of practitioners that […]

Next week I will be talking to people outside of  the nursing profession about developing their self compassion skills.  I am aware that they may not have ever thought about it despite being in a caring profession such as teaching of the police force.  They may think that they do not have time for self […]

As a reflective blog this place helps me to understand compassion in the many different environments we find ourselves in. This month  leadership is something that we all talk about and some argue that, we are all leaders but what does this really mean. In addition if we are all leaders how can we become […]

For some time I have been writing about narrative practice and promoting this way of working as a compassionate approach to nursing. It does not belong to nursing but is a good way to develop and make visible the evidence for nursing practice. When we talk about narrative practice we do not mean narrative therapy […]

I do not take part in any celebrations at this time of the year partly because I  think it causes people too much stress but it is also a time of the year when people are expected to be more compassionate towards others which, in my view is often a false compassion.  There is no […]

I am aware that I have not blogged for a while but I have not lost compassion for this subject that I am really passionate about.  The problem with blogging is that it requires discipline which in turn develops self-compassion and resilience.  Now discipline is something I am not very good at but I also […]

When I first met Tracey and people who were already familiar with her, I had no idea of all the hard work she had been putting in over the years for free! Her compassionate approach was outstanding and although not a nurse or a health professional  she had a vast knowledge of B12 Deficiency. This […]

In many health and social care professions we are constantly required to demonstrate an evidence base for our practice. As a teacher I insist that no student should write or talk about anything without finding and discussing the evidence base for it. This can make talking about compassionate care very difficult as there is an […]

When we talk about compassion it can appear to be an overwhelming subject that we might never grasp or understand everything that we need to know about it. This might make people turn away from being compassionate because it is just too hard to understand and therefore practice. Many  of the posts in this blog […]

Resilience is a developing concept that could change the way we think about healthcare practice, but what does compassionate resilience do. As discussed previously compassion simply means understanding ourselves or others and our universal, diverse and recovery needs.  Compassionate resilience therefore means developing coping skills to support our compassionate actions. For example if we wear […]

There is an argument that compassion cannot be taught but if this was the case we would also not be able to measure compassion. I have already suggested that we can do this from my research with people who use healthcare services (Ghisoni 2016) and in other posts to this blog. However if compassion can […]

In nursing we are often being assessed for our competence either as a student or as a practitioner, as we need to re register our competence with our professional body. This is a regulatory process that all nurses need to go through to keep their registration and to continue to work in healthcare including healthcare […]

In education we often use the word critical to mean that we have been able to analyse what we hear and read about. It is important therefore to be critical when thinking about compassion and not to use the term lightly. Compassion is too important to become a tick box exercise and as we can […]

In mental health care perphaps more so than in any other healthcare field stigma is a huge barrier to people seeking help when they need it. Even if a person is mindful of how they are feeling and are self’ compassionate enough to know that they need help the stigma and self-stigma prevents them. This […]

What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare. W.H.Davies 1871-1940   Many people may think that compassion is something that we should do everyday in our work as healthcare professionals and to some extent that is true but if we are compassionate because we are told we […]

I often teach student nurses about suicide prevention and how it is everybody’s business. Something not every nurse thinks about  in the busy working day but it is not just mental health nurses who need to be alert when people are feeling suicidal.  It is also an important part of of compassionate nursing practice as […]

The science for compassion is sparse but can be found in other areas of research and one that is interesting me more and more is the process of mentalisation. This process is used in psychoanalytical therapy to help people who have trouble understanding another person’s emotions such as in mental illness or learning disabilities. Now, […]

Diversity is a frequently used word in professional education and many people take for granted what it actually means. It is a word we hear on a daily basis either in work or in the media. Many people when asked might describe the word as respecting that people are different to each other or that […]

To begin writing from our pain eventually engenders compassion for our small and groping lives. Out of this broken state there comes a tenderness for the cement below our feet, the dried grass cracking in a terrible wind. Natalie Goldberg 2015 Today I attended my first creative writing for wellbeing workshop. I had wanted to […]

How can compassion protect us against stress and burnout in the nursing profession? We hear many stories of good and bad nursing that demonstrates the importance of compassion.  It is also improtant in protecting the people that we care for as well as our colleagues, environment and families. Fundamentally compassion provides the opportunity for us […]

When we talk about compassion in nursing we are not talking about a unique skill or intervention as this implies that compassion is something we do some of the time. Neither are we talking about personal qualities, although there are some that might argue that compassion is innate and cannot be taught. I would argue […]

Welcome to my blog on compassionate nursing care. We hear so much about compassion in nursing and arguments for whether it can be taught or not that I thought I would start to gather some evidence for one of the most important skills in the profession. Without compassion we cannot demonstrate  our knowledge, empathy or […]