Mindful Compassion in Nursing
The keys to success in nursing stem from within, from within our heart and mind and how we show up at the bedside. While the skill sets and the knowledge base are absolute necessities, as are the willingness to engage humankind in its suffering, pain, joy and fortitude of spirit; the greatest key that we can have, the one that unlocks the door to our deepest potential, is stability of mind and heart while caring for our patients. While not just anyone can become a nurse, it's not just the skills and knowledge that make one a compassionate and mindfully attentive nurse either. There are plenty of nurses who, after many thankless years, tiring shift-work, and impersonal medicine, have closed their minds, shackled their hearts, and engaged in the autopilot survival of getting through the shift.In almost three decades of working in the healthcare arena, in a host of different nursing areas, I've met many, many excellent nurses; nurses who could put even the most skilled physician to shame in terms of their breadth of knowledge and depth of understanding of pathophysiology. And yet it is these nurses who will mutter under their breath words of disparagement for patients who are uncooperative, unkempt, noncompliant or simply unruly. While their skill sets and expertise have improved, their compassion and presence of mind, their ability to see in their patients another human being who wishes to be happy and free from suffering; that ability to resonate with another human being, have withered, like spent fruit on the vine.The key to success in nursing is to keep an open heart in the face of the most immense obstacles; to know one's mind enough to bring it back to the present when it wanders off, again and again, distracted by a desire to be anywhere but here. The key to success in nursing is to know oneself enough to know that there but for the grace of God [or whoever] go I. We're not so different from our patients, and when we meet them as one human being to another, connecting mind to mind, and heart to heart, then, that's where the healing takes place. By remembering to bring our mind home, reigning in the scattered pieces of ourselves to rest in a compassionate presence that doesn't make the distinction between self and other, nurse and patient, compliant and noncompliant; simply being, just being with our patients; then we truly succeed in being the healing presence that our patients most need.
