Compassion In Nursing

The profession of nursing is grounded on certain qualities that each nurse must uphold to ensure best practice. This paper highlights the qualities that my team and I have identified as the most crucial in nursing care, and also discusses the symbolism in our coat of arms to represent these qualities. The qualities that we have identified are continuing competency, client-centered care, cultural competency, and compassion and teamwork. The first quality that will be discussed is continuing competency, which is represented by a book with a sprouting tree. Continuing competence is one of the seven practice standards as outlined by the CNO, which entails that each nurse must take responsibility for their own growth as a professional and take

When one is asked to think of the profession of nursing, the word compassion quickly comes to mind. Compassion in nursing go hand-in-hand in that you can not be a nurse without having compassion, and has been described by Jane Georges (2012) as “an absolutely necessary component of praxis” (para. 2). Compassion is also a component of the “human act of caring” theory, where it is essentially described as being present for someone in a time of need (Roach as cited in Potter & Perry, 2014, p. 265-266). As nurses, we are often with the patient through their direst times, and so a sense of compassion is something that naturally comes with nursing. To represent compassion, we have angel wings on both nurses, which are a universal symbol for kindness and compassion. The wings are spreading across the globe and the people on it to symbolize that the compassion of nurses knows no borders; the nurse will be there for their clients no matter who they are or where they may come from. Along with compassion, we chose two nurses to also demonstrate teamwork. A nurse’s ability to work well within a team is foundational to effective care (Goosen, 2015). To represent teamwork, we have the two nurses sharing a double headed stethoscope, demonstrating that nursing is a profession that requires collaboration with each other, and with other professionals outside of nursing (Potter and Perry, 2014, p. 129). When I began this program, I was already aware of the importance of compassion in nursing care, and also that teamwork between nurses was an important part of nursing, but I was not aware of how many different professions, apart from doctors, we are required to work with. I know now that the scope of nursing care is a lot more extensive than I would have ever