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Modelling compassionate veterinary nursing care – eight steps towards a more compassionate approach to patients, their owners and oneself
Abstract
Organisational elements can have a major influence on the capacity to be compassionate, however there are also individual factors that affect this capacity and these are important to address. Being positive can have an effect on the individual and those most adept at compassion may have greater resilience in the healthcare setting. Nonetheless, the demands of frequent contact with patients and their owners who are suffering are generally considered to be a significant stressor that may, at times, limit ones capacity for compassion. This article will outline eight steps that veterinary nurses can seek to undertake daily to help facilitate compassionate behaviour towards themselves, their clients and their patients.
Compassion, both giving and receiving, entails an emotional response. It goes beyond acts of basic care and is likely to involve generosity, giving a little more than you have to, kindness, and real dialogue (Frank, 2004).
‘Real dialogue’ is an essential component of compassion and of good nursing care in general. It involves more than communication, which is defined as the accurate giving and receiving of a message. It is spoken human to human rather than clinician to patient/owner. Real dialogue shows interest, does not stereotype, includes honesty and may indeed require courage at times. In order for a person to develop compassion towards others, first he or she must have a basis on which to cultivate compassion, and that basis is the ability to connect to one's own feelings.
Be alive to your internal world: it is essential for healthcare personnel to recognise their capacity to tolerate distress, their emotional state and their levels of fatigue and then to take measures to maintain resilience or improve matters if needed. Research on compassion is limited, however there is growing evidence that enhancing self compassion increases wellbeing (Allen and Leary, 2010) and resilience (Smeets et al, 2014), thus enhancing the capacity to be compassionate towards others. Mindfulness, defined as the basic human ability to be fully present, aware of where we are and what we are doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by what is going on around us (Mindful.org, 2016) has been advocated as a significant aid to developing compassion.
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