Our Future as Nurses Essay -- Nursing

Nurses should be empathetic and compassionate caregivers. However, what happens when nurses are constantly giving their energy to compassionate care, without seeing the positive outcomes nor being able to regain energy through self-care? This eventually would lead to compassion fatigue, which often results in impairment of concentration and diminished performance ultimately leading to poor quality of care. Preventing compassion fatigue can be achieved through a strong foundation with a comprehensive education consisting of critical thinking skills, evidence-based practice, leadership, management, and delegation, which are only taught in baccalaureate nursing programs. Nurses and nursing students must be reminded or taught that in order to prevent compassion fatigue, they should not only be taking good care of their patients but also themselves. All caregivers are at risk for compassion fatigue, especially nurses, since our profession is based on taking care of the ill. One experience that illustrates this condition was when I helped on an Intensive Care Unit (ICU). I recall one nurse I met who had many years of experience but had a reputation of being anal-retentive and unfriendly. I would greet her every time I walked onto the unit, but she never responded. One day, this nurse was assigned to the son of a non-English speaking Chinese mother for whom I often acted as a translator. Her son was suffering from neuroleptic malignant syndrome and recovering from abdominal surgery for an ischemic bowel, which was infected. The mother rushed to me that day with a worried look and told me that the nurse was harming her son. She said she saw the nurse give two intravenous (IV) medications through his neck (internal jugular central venous ... ...es have worked long and hard to advance their careers and should have higher standards for education and provide quality care not only for the patients, but for themselves. Additional focus on nurses’ personal health and higher education will allow the nursing profession to advance in the future with improved integrity and credibility and result in better healthcare for patients. References Aiken, L. (2011). Nurses for the future. The New England Journal Of Medicine, 364(3), 196- 198. Aiken, L., Clarke, S., Cheung, R., Sloane, D., & Silber, J. (2003). Educational levels of hospital nurses and surgical patient mortality. JAMA: Journal of the American Medical Association, 290(12), 1617-1623. Boyle, D. A. (2011). Countering Compassion Fatigue: A Requisite Nursing Agenda. Online Journal of Issues In Nursing, 16(1), 1-14. doi:10.3912/OJIN.Vol16No01Man02