Northerner
Admin (Retired)
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 1
As a student nurse I was told to keep my distance and not get too involved with patients. I am sure this was meant to be helpful, yet as a strategy it failed spectacularly. Within two years of qualifying as a nurse I had left the profession, I thought permanently.
To care for and show compassion for patients takes emotional strength and resilience. It requires staff to see the person in the patient, listen to their fears, concerns and worries, to empathise and to imagine yourself in their shoes, not least to be able to help them improve.
Yet apart from being told to keep my distance, no-one taught me any coping skills or taught me how to manage my emotional responses to the challenges of being a nurse – for example to the death of a child or young person my age, or to an unsuccessful cardiac resuscitation of someone who could be my father.
http://www.theguardian.com/healthcare-network/2014/jul/02/nhs-culture-empathy-gap-schwartz-rounds
To care for and show compassion for patients takes emotional strength and resilience. It requires staff to see the person in the patient, listen to their fears, concerns and worries, to empathise and to imagine yourself in their shoes, not least to be able to help them improve.
Yet apart from being told to keep my distance, no-one taught me any coping skills or taught me how to manage my emotional responses to the challenges of being a nurse – for example to the death of a child or young person my age, or to an unsuccessful cardiac resuscitation of someone who could be my father.
http://www.theguardian.com/healthcare-network/2014/jul/02/nhs-culture-empathy-gap-schwartz-rounds