Self Compassion Analysis

Shelley, I appreciate your insight into what happens when you dip below the line. You note that dipping below the line is correlated to your stressors at either work or school (S. Mccargar, personal communication, July 17, 2017). You go on to share how you try to talk to yourself as you would a friend as we should be as kind to ourselves as we are to the other people in our lives whom we care about (S. Mccargar, personal communication, July 17, 2017). You bring up the importance of self-compassion. You’re right, we should be as kind to ourselves as we are to others. However, typically, we aren’t. The self-talk we inflict upon ourselves, is typically much harsher than how we would ever speak to another person. Quite simply, we don’t give the compassion to ourselves, that we strive to provide to our patients. As nurses, we understand that we must have compassion for the patients we serve, furthermore, to be effective leaders, we must have compassion for those we lead. …show more content…
It is well known that the wellbeing of nurses and quality of care are interdependent (Mills et al., 2015). Therefore, as nurses, we have a responsibility to take our own well-being as seriously as we do that of our patients for us to continue to provide excellent care. In fact, the American Nurses’ Association (ANA) calls out the importance of self-care in Provision Five of the Code of Ethics for Nurses (Fowler, 2008). Compassion for self is a key part of self-care and also having compassion for others. As DNP nurses, no matter our role, we will be leaders. Therefore, we have a responsibility to practice and model self-care and compassion to be effective nurses to our patients and effective leaders. Furthermore, we need to model this behavior and lead nurses to develop the same practice. Not only will it help us as leaders stay above the line, it will help our colleagues and those we lead stay above the line as