Great courage and cultivating compassion amongst newly registered nurses and midwives

The authors of this week’s blog are prof. Gemma Stacey (@GemmaStacey10) (Academy Director, Florence Nightingale Foundation [@FNightingaleF]) and Bethan Davies (co-founder, The bravest path [@BravestPath]).

Gemma: As a mental health nurse and Academy Director on the Florence Nightingale Foundation (FNF), I’m increasingly concerned concerning the impact of the pandemic on parenting programs, which have inevitably been interrupted or abandoned to answer clinical needs and redeploy the workforce. Through the delivery of our Nightingale Frontline support service (Bond et al. 2022), I and our facilitators have heard stories from newly registered staff who witness the emotions of fear, overwhelm and conflict they’ve experienced. The shock of reality described by Kramer in 1974 isn’t any longer adequately representative of the suffering described by our novice nurses over the past two years.

It will be argued that our perception is subjective and only represents the experience of a minority. However, the survey, which we conducted in partnership with Unison and Nursing Times, received responses from over 5,000 student, early profession and experienced nurses. The consensus was that the present context of transition to skilled practice was tougher than ever before, and early profession nurses were left with a ‘sink or swim’ decision (Mitchelle 2022). The consequences of this on their health and well-being were serious and highlighted the urgent need for immediate corrective motion to point out our early profession employees a positive way forward. We knew this might require a distinct form of conversation. The traditional transition-to-practice messages, which included a means of “arming ourselves” and desensitizing ourselves to the emotional impact of our practice, were unhelpful and ethically inappropriate. Evidence to support a distinct variety of conversation comes from Brene Brown’s research, which was conducted by Bethan Davies, co-founder of The Bravest Path, a courage-building consulting firm.

Bethan: The opportunity to work with FNF to offer nurses and midwives with this groundbreaking support has exceptional personal meaning for my family and me. Both of my children are alive today only due to the fast and decisive actions of the nurses. a midwife who helped me gain the courage to have the VBAC at home that I had dreamed of a lot. A community that cares a lot for us and held us so tenderly when we wanted support most, it is sort of inconceivable to place into words its impact after we were most vulnerable. We desired to help them provide that support.

At The Bravest Path, we work with organizations to create a psychologically secure culture where individual colleagues and teams feel empowered to bring more of themselves to their work, without fear of guilt, shame or judgment. A key a part of this work is self-compassion, defined by Dr. Kristen Neff as “mindful, loving, present” and consisting of three key elements – self-kindness, shared humanity (knowing that we usually are not alone in our struggles), and mindfulness.

In a profession where you are taking on a lot responsibility for the lives of others and clinical performance standards are so high, I’m wondering how a lot of you reading this might still consider yourself your individual biggest critic, creating internal expectations of yourself which might be ultimately unattainable . How often do you persuade yourself that you simply at all times should know the answers and that asking for assistance will make others think you’re less capable? This will be especially acute whenever you start a brand new position because you would like to show your competence and value to recent colleagues. As human beings, we’re hardwired for connection and belonging; our desire to be accepted by our colleagues is robust. However, our secret inner critic tells us that we must exude excellence or risk rejection, and this is usually what holds us back from bringing out the perfect in our roles.

It’s one thing to speak about self-compassion and one other thing to practice it. We may attempt to persuade ourselves that we do not deserve it, or worry that it would make us complacent. Especially in healthcare, it will probably be very easy to change into competitive with the patients in your care and ask yourself, “Who am I to think about my own self-care right now?” The situations at work when we want it most are sometimes when we now have little or no opportunity to give attention to anything apart from the job at hand. In these webinars, along with theory, we offer a practical set of tools and live demonstrations of methods to apply them, which you should utilize during your busy shift. Instead of expressing our feelings by opposing or distancing ourselves from others, we now have the chance to benefit from the moment with acceptance, notice moments of struggle without judging ourselves, and check with ourselves as we’d to an expensive friend. When we allow ourselves to be imperfect, as a substitute of wearing the armor that we predict protects us, we allow others to do the identical. The courage to be vulnerable to say I do not know, ask for help or challenge can ultimately end in higher patient care and outcomes, in addition to reducing anxiety and fear in nurses and midwives by unburdening ourselves of our own unrealistic expectations.

Putting on a full suit of perfectionism as armor at first of every shift will be exhausting, and because it becomes the norm, it’s hard to recollect to take it off each time we return to our personal lives. We have designed these webinars to assist newly registered nurses and midwives imagine they’re doing the perfect they’ll in essentially the most difficult of circumstances and recognize the necessity for self-care as a priority. Because once they can practice self-compassion, it advantages not only themselves, but in addition those of their care and people they love.”

Both: We work collaboratively to host webinars that each one newly registered nurses and midwives in England can access. It can accommodate 17,000 people and everyone seems to be welcome. Our first webinar has already taken place and we were honored by the willingness of our audience of early profession nurses and midwives to lean into vulnerability and critically examine the self-protection strategies they relied on, versus the self-compassion they deserved. The theory presented in the course of the webinar make clear the story of Joshua Hammond, himself an early-career nurse and a task model for all who previously viewed vulnerability as weakness. His story shows his courage in asking for help, listening to opinions and showing compassion to himself.

We encourage all newly registered nurses and midwives in England to participate and call on their leaders to provide them the consent and time to make this possible. Dates and booking details will be found on the web site Cultivating courage and compassion for yourself and others – webinar for newly registered nurses and midwives – Florence Nightingale Foundation (florence-nightingale-foundation.org.uk)

Kenny, A., Dickson-Swift, V., McKenna, L., Charette, M., Rush, K. L., Stacey, G., Darvill, A., Leigh, J., Burton, R. and Phillips, C ( 2021). Interventions supporting the transition of registered nurses to practice and associated outcomes: A scientific review. Nurse education today, 100, [104860]. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2021.104860

Kramer, M. (1974) Reality shock: why nurses leave nursing. American Journal of Nursing, 75, 891. doi: 10.1097/00000446-197505000-00041.

Mitchell, G. (2022) Exclusive research reveals too many newly registered nurses lack good support. Nursing Times, Volume 118, Issue 2 (8-11)

Neff, K. (2011) Self-compassion: the proven power of being kind to yourself. Yellow kite

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