How do nurses provide comfort? Comforting strategies include listening, touch, distraction, and relaxation. Nurses also offer emotional support, encourage self-care, and teach coping skills.
Nurses play a vital role in providing care for patients who are sick or injured.
They often spend long hours caring for their patients, and they face numerous challenges during these times. One challenge is dealing with stress and anxiety caused by the patient’s condition.
Stress affects everyone differently, but some people experience symptoms such as headaches, fatigue, muscle tension, and difficulty sleeping.
If you are experiencing stress, nurses will recommend starting using these techniques to cope with it.
How To Cope With Anxiety: 5 Ways Nurses Say To Manage Your Emotions
Anxiety can be an overwhelming feeling that makes us feel like we’re about to lose our minds. But there are ways to manage your emotions (see also ‘Is It Really Emotionally Exhausting Working As A Nurse? How To Deal With It‘), so you don’t have to live with them all day every day.
Here’s how to get through those anxious moments.
1. Breathe deeply. When you feel yourself getting overwhelmed, take a few deep breaths. This will help calm down your body and mind.
2. Take time to relax. Try taking a break from whatever is stressing you out. You may want to go outside and enjoy nature, or just sit quietly and read a book.
3. Talk to someone. Talking to a friend or family member can help you work through your feelings of anxiety. It can also give you something else to focus on besides your own thoughts.
4. Get physical. Exercise has been proven to reduce stress levels. Find activities that you enjoy doing, whether it’s walking, running, swimming, dancing, yoga, or anything else.
5. Eat right. Eating healthy foods can boost your mood and make you feel more energetic. Focus on eating fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean proteins, low-fat dairy products, nuts, seeds, beans, and legumes.
Avoid sugary snacks and processed food.
How Exactly Do Nurses Provide Comfort?
Nurses are there to provide patients with comfort based on all sorts of different circumstances, but one circumstance that needs more than most is the end of life comfort.
Comfort For The Dying/End Of Life
Discomfort during the dying process often stems from pain, breathing difficulties, skin irritations, or other issues.
These symptoms can occur at different times throughout the dying process, making it difficult to pinpoint what is causing discomfort.
Sometimes people feel better when they receive treatment, while others prefer to wait until the end of their lives. Regardless of how long someone wants to live, there are ways to provide comfort and ease the dying experience.
What Exactly Is Nurse Empathy?
Nurses are often accused of being cold and uncaring because they don’t show emotion. But compassion isn’t just about showing emotions.
It’s about putting yourself in someone else’s place and understanding what it feels like to be there.
This is called empathy. A nurse who exhibits empathy understands how another person might feel and reacts accordingly.
Empathy is seeing, understanding, caring, and sharing others’ perspectives without judgment.
Empathy has emotional, mental, and physical components. It involves the ability to understand people’s feelings and thoughts. And it includes the willingness to help those who need it.
Compassionate care in nursing includes the following forms of communication.
1. Mirroring – When you mirror, you’re demonstrating empathy by identifying with the patient’s experience. You might say something like, “I know exactly how you feel.” Or “You’ve got my sympathy.”
2. Verbalizing – You verbalize empathy when you use words such as I, we, our, me, us, ours, myself, ourselves, mine, yours, ourselves, etc. to describe the situation. For example, “We’ve had a rough day,” or “I’m sorry this happened to you.”
3. Nonverbal communication – You communicate empathy through body language. Your facial expressions, tone of voice, eye contact, gestures, and touch can convey empathy.
4. Giving support – You give support (see also ‘How Nurses Can Support Families?‘) by helping the patient cope with his or her illness, injury, or stress. You do this by providing information, listening, offering advice, comforting, and encouraging.
Why Does Empathy Matter With Nurses?
Empathy is one of the most important skills that nurses possess. In fact, it’s critical to patient safety and nursing practice.
When we are empathetic, we can better establish rapport with our patients, build trust, encourage positive behaviors and attitudes, make ethical decisions, gather accurate medical history information, and administer appropriate medication (see also ‘Can A Registered Nurse Prescribe Medication?‘).
Nurses who are empathetic perform better than those who aren’t. They’re able to accurately assess patients’ needs and communicate effectively with them.
And because of this, they’re less likely to experience burnout and turnover, which leads to improved patient care.
What Are The Best Tips For Providing Comfort As A Nurse?
Empathy is defined as being able to understand how another person feels. In nursing, it involves understanding what a patient is experiencing, why he or she is feeling that way, and what actions could alleviate those feelings.
This helps nurses better connect with patients and provide compassionate care.
As nurses, we are often faced with difficult situations where our emotions might run high. We must learn to control our emotions in order to maintain a professional demeanor.
A study published in the Journal of Advanced Nursing suggests that nurses who practice mindfulness report less stress, burnout, and compassion fatigue.
The following five tips can help nurses incorporate empathetic skills into their daily routines.
Being Overall Kind And Respectful
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act requires hospitals to provide quality care regardless of a person’s ability to pay.
In addition, it states that nurses must treat every individual with respect, dignity, and compassion. This includes working with patients to identify financial barriers to care.
Nurses often encounter individuals who struggle with mental illness, addiction, poverty, homelessness, disability, or other challenges that affect their ability to receive treatment.
Many times, nurses find themselves having to provide care for people without adequate resources.
However, treating others with kindness and empathy goes beyond simply being nice; it helps build relationships and demonstrates that you value human life.
Listening To Patients
When you’re caring for patients, it’s easy to lose track of what’s happening around you. You might miss something important because you’re busy doing something else.
When you do pay attention, you’ll notice things like blood pressure dropping, pain increasing, or a patient asking questions.
These signals can help you provide better care. Actively listen to patients and show curiosity about their lives outside of being sick. This helps build trust and rapport.
Patients who feel that nurses are paying attention to them open up more about symptoms and concerns, which leads nurses to provide more effective care and higher levels of satisfaction.
Lead By Example
Nurses are often considered the heart of the hospital, but they don’t always lead by example. Nurses must exhibit empathy, compassion, professionalism, integrity, and many other qualities to maintain respect within the profession.
Empathy is one trait that can help nurses foster positive behaviors among colleagues and patients alike.
In fact, studies suggest that nurses who demonstrate empathy are better able to treat patients with greater success and less stress.
Final Thoughts
Empathy is an essential part of nursing. It makes sense that nurses would want to be good listeners and compassionate caregivers.
But there are ways that nurses can use this skill to benefit both themselves and their patients. Being kind and understanding can go far in helping patients recover from illnesses and injuries.