Self-Compassion for Nurses

This course is a 6-hr evidence-based healthcare adaptation of Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC).

This nursing continuing professional development activity was approved by the American Holistic Nurses Association, an accredited approver by the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Commission on Accreditation. 

6 Contact hours

This brief training aims to improve well-being and enhance resilience in healthcare professionals by teaching mindful self-compassion skills to deal with distressing situations as they occur at work and at home.

Participants will learn tools to use throughout the day to:

· Care for themselves while caring for others

· Listen with compassion

· Handle difficult emotions with greater ease

· Reconnect to the values that give their work meaning

· Develop and apply self-compassion practices for motivation with encouragement

· Apply core self-compassion practices into daily life

Course themes include:

· What is Self-Compassion?

· Practicing Self-Compassion

· Discovering Your Compassionate Voice

· Self-Compassion and Burnout

· Making It Count (Reconnecting with core values)

Program activities include: Short talks, experiential exercises, brief meditations, discussion, and optional home practices. SC- MSC is an opportunity to explore how we typically respond when difficulties arise and to learn and apply tools for greater well-being. 

Course Objectives: The course aims to help participants to:

· Develop the capacity to contend with challenges and difficulties through awareness of the three components of self-compassion: self-kindness, common humanity and mindfulness.

· Apply core self-compassion practices into daily life

· Develop and apply self-compassion practices to explore motivation with encouragement rather than self-criticism

· Articulate the basic theoretical underpinnings and research findings related to self-compassion

Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) is an empirically-supported training program designed to cultivate the skill of self-compassion. Based on the groundbreaking research of Dr. Kristin Neff, Associate Professor at the University of Texas at Austin, and the clinical expertise of Dr. Christopher Germer, Psychotherapist, and Lecturer at Harvard Medical School, MSC teaches core principles and practices that enable participants to respond to difficult situations with kindness, awareness, and resilience. In research conducted in 2019 the 6-week program was found to significantly decrease depression, stress, secondary traumatic stress and burnout, and to increase self-compassion, mindfulness, compassion for others, and job satisfaction in healthcare professionals.

Defined by Kristin Neff (2003), three key components of self-compassion are self-kindness, a sense of common humanity, and mindful awareness.

Kindness: With self-compassion, we treat ourselves with kindness, care, and understanding, just as we would treat a friend or a patient. Compassion entails concern with the alleviation of stress and difficulty, meaning there is an action component to self- compassion – actively soothing and comforting ourselves when we’re stressed, supporting ourselves, and motivating ourselves with encouragement and kindness rather than criticism.

Common Humanity: With self-compassion we see life’s many difficulties as part of the larger human experience. Acknowledging that others struggle too, and that others are facing similar difficult situations, helps to lessen feelings of isolation.

Mindfulness:  In order for us to respond to our struggles with compassion, we first have to know we are struggling. Mindfulness allows us to turn toward painful feelings and “be” with them as they are with a balanced state of awareness.