A Journey from Empathy to Self-Compassion:A Prerequisite in Nursing

Nurses and nursing students regularly get exposed to pain and sufferings of the patients. Indeed, being empathic and compassionate during patient care is required, yet, the decline in empathy and experience of compassion fatigue was evident during the clinical experience. Here comes the role of self-compassion. Self-compassion is being warm and caring at times of hardship, being kind to self, accepting suffering or unpleasant experiences as they are and being non-judgment. When an individual can be compassionate towards self, he/she can be compassionate towards others during suffering. Substantially, interventions that would improve self-compassion can be emphasized in the nursing curriculum. However, brief self-compassion intervention, MBSR program, and yoga intervention have reported promising results.