There’s a lot going on in healthcare and in nursing across the country … and world.

Lots of life saving and grief comforting,

… in the swirl of conflicting forces and messages.

You may be caught in the COVID-19 surge where your work is endless,
or you may be caught in an area where there is not enough work and you are furloughed.

In the midst of this … here are some grounding practices to make your own.  Taken from Watson’s Caritas – Veritas Literacy Guide 

“Start here …   Cultivate personal caring consciousness and intentionality in your practice

“Life and work are divided no more; the personal becomes the professional

• Honor each person’s unique gifts, talents, and contributions as essential to the whole.
• Speak and listen without judgment; know the difference between discerning and judging.
• Work from heart-centered consciousness with others, seeking shared meaning and common values.
• Listen with an open heart—without interrupting.
• Learn to be still, to center self while holding a “still point” inside in the midst of turmoil.
• Welcome and cultivate silence for reflection, contemplation, clarity.
• Be aware of your energy field and how you feel in deep caring moments.

**  I hope you don’t feel put-off or disrespected by this image.  By no means, do I believe that we can just ‘rise above it’.  First we must learn how to express and process (verbally and within) our negative thoughts and feelings mixed in with the positive. It’s then that we can see their meanings and start to heal. 
Only then, can we, “Start here and cultivate our personal caring consciousness and intentionality in our practice” … and learn to BE above it.
(What I love about the image – I love the nature green color, the sun shining through and her (ugh, gender bias? not intentional) position above the fray) 🙏

• Pause before entering a patient’s room.
• “Read” the energetic field when entering the life space / field of others.
• Cultivate the ability to be authentically present—be with—versus doing.
• Identify self, and address the other person by name.
• Maintain eye contact as culturally and sensitively appropriate.
• Energetically ground self and other as comforting, soothing, calming acts.
• Accurately detect another’s feelings.
• Stay within the other’s frame of reference.
• Authentically listen to another person’s story without interrupting or trying to “fix” anything, knowing that this moment of listening is a healing gift for both of you.
• Hold another in your heart space with unconditional compassion, kindness, dignity, and regard.
• Hold silence with another, creating open space for connecting, reflecting.
• Practice intentional use of touch—non-contact therapeutic touch (TT) and healing touch (HT), as well as intentional physical touch.
• Attend to the physical environment for energy flow and removal of clutter, offering beauty and aesthetics in the space.
• Translate and carry out conventional nursing skill and tasks into conscious, intentional, literate (Caritas-Veritas) caring-healing acts—manifestations of unitary caring science praxis.
• Translate conventional actions into meaningful, intentional, literate caring-healing rituals.
• Incorporate healing arts and general and advanced caring-healing modalities and integrative practices into the culture of patient and system care.

🙏

Watson’s Caritas – Veritas Literacy Guide to Unitary Caring Science Praxis, pp 83-85
Unitary Caring Science – The Philosophy and Praxis of Nursing
Jean Watson, 2018