Care expressed and practiced in professional nursing models provides a way of looking at the nursing role from the aspect of care. It may seem excessive to consider aspects of caring and compassion in nursing. However, precisely because it IS nursing makes it crucial to our continual progress of defining and upholding one of our central professional principles.

Address each of these items:

Reflect on a caring and compassionate experience with a patient or family encountered in your practice.

How was your compassion demonstrated?

• How does your thinking about compassion expand to include self and colleagues?
• Reflect on the iCARE Self-Assessment and share an insight related to this discussion.
• I will also need one answer to two of my classmate’s answers, I am attaching their reply, below, thank you
• Tacara: Compassion means caring about a sick person and treating them with kindness, love, respect, and decency in their time of need(Beasley, 2019). While working on the amputee unit, I provided compassionate care to a man who had tragically lost both of his legs. As a result, he was depressed. Traumatic events like amputation can have an impact on a person’s entire life. It can have a significant impact on a person’s professional, personal, and extracurricular endeavors in addition to the apparent impact on a person’s physical capacity, autonomy, and engagement in daily life. In addition, an amputation can alter one’s outlook on life and the future for the person who endures it. Many amputees must adjust their expectations, learn new skills, and deal with persistent health problems (such as pain) that may persist after amputation. Therefore, it is necessary for the affected individual and their support system to make substantial changes after a limb is amputated.

Initially, it is normal to experience a wide range of emotions, including shock, anger, frustration, sadness, and grief/loss. A lack of control and a sense of isolation are also common, as are increased stress and worry (for example, due to financial strain). Depression and anxiety are common because of the difficulties that people face. Researchers have found that as much as 41% of amputees suffer from some form of mental illness after their limbs have been amputated (Silander, 2018). Because of the detrimental effects untreated depression and anxiety can have on a person’s ability to heal and rehabilitate, as well as their physical and mental health, people must take action to combat these conditions. When I first walked into the room, he seemed downcast. When I entered the room, my smile was wide and welcoming. After his amputation, I urged him not to let the loss of a limb get him down. “I want you to know that you are not alone. This is a struggle that many people who have lost a limb must face. It’s not a sign of weakness or negativity to admit this. Also, this doesn’t mean things can’t improve down the road a bit. Do not forget that there are many reasons for joy. How you feel about your physical self is just as important as how you feel about yourself overall. If you want a good body image, it’s important to work with your doctors to make healthy choices regarding your nutrition and exercise that will improve your physical and mental well-being.”

He eventually started talking to me and letting out his pain. I encouraged him and gave him some references to other people who had achieved similar results. These kind words strengthened him, and he felt delighted by them. In many ways, he was ready to start his new life. Patients will have a greater feeling of community and support if we treat them with respect and kindness in our interactions with them. We hope to internalize their emotions as though they were our own. My care for the patient was evident in the form of my undivided attention and the length of time I spent with him. My feelings of empathy for others at work are just natural. They can always count on me to be there for them professionally and personally. Like most others, I tend to put others’ needs before mine.

Karen:Compassion to me is to listen to someone’s story, connect with their suffering, and have a desire to help alleviate their distress in any way that I can. (Tierney et al., 2018) One human experience I had this week in my practice was with a young HIV+ patient; the patient was on disability related to his many health problems due to HIV. He could not secure new catheter supplies and has been self-catheterizing at home with the same catheter for four months. He now presented to the emergency room with a UTI infection, which to any other patient may not be as big a deal, but when you are immunocompromised, it becomes more urgent. After discussing his issues and attempts at securing more supplies, I was motivated to help fix the problem by ordering supplies and getting him some community resources to assist him with his healthcare issues. In the immediate moment, I discussed with the nurse giving the patient supplies to go home. Then I reached out to his medical supplier and the management team explaining the issue and the nature of the emergency failing to send his supply has caused. I was able to get a delivery for him later that week. By contacting his insurance company, I found out they y offer community case management services; I was able to enroll him into services with their community outreach team, so in the future, he has resources to help with supply issues and other medication issues that may arise before they become emergent issues requiring hospitalization.

I got the nurse involved with the patient’s issue after discussing it with him, and she was more than happy to round up the supplies he may need to take home with him. These past few years have taught me that compassion fatigue and burnout are real. I was able to recognize this in myself, and the way that I chose to address this was to change my role to refresh my outlook and experience in nursing. Studies have shown that environment has a significant factor in nursing burnout and compassion fatigue; being able to make positive changes to one professional quality of life will reinvigorate your passion, compassion, and empathy. (Baek et al., 2020) The iCare self-assessment is about reflection and taking the time to recognize your strengths and areas that need attention. As a nurse, learning to value research and evidence-based research helped me identify issues within myself and practice and make changes accordingly to have positive outcomes for my patients and myself.