Pakistani nursing students' perspectives of compassion: A convergent mixed methods study.

BACKGROUND: There has been increased research on the conceptualization of compassion in nursing. Nursing institutions expect educators to foster student compassion. However, limited research exists on students' perceptions of compassion in nursing. PURPOSE: To develop a comprehensive understanding of students' perspectives of compassion and compassionate care. METHODS: A convergent mixed methods design. A purposive sample of 117 students completed an exploratory questionnaire and 17 participated in interviews. Descriptive analysis was used for quantitative data, thematic analysis for qualitative data, and joint displays for mixed analysis. RESULTS: In total, 83% of students described compassion as "understanding and sharing patients' suffering" and 88% indicated that compassionate care entails "consciously trying to understand patients, their needs, and their suffering". The qualitative themes were, meanings of compassion and compassionate care, ways of developing and fostering compassion, antecedents of compassion and compassionate care, and compassion in practice. CONCLUSIONS: Nursing students realized the importance of compassion for patients and nurses and identified different acts of compassionate care. The students noted the compassionate care entails deliberately caring for the "whole person" and can be fostered through practice, observations, and reflection.

Development and Testing of a Measure of Self-awareness Among Nurses.

Self-awareness is an essential nursing competency and there is limited knowledge about nurses' levels and application of self-awareness and instruments to measure nursing-specific self-awareness. Using mixed methods, we developed and tested a scale to measure nurses' self-awareness. First, 13 nurses were interviewed to understand their meanings of self-awareness and to develop nursing-specific self-awareness scale. Qualitative analysis generated professional, personal, contextual, and contentious aspects of self-awareness. Second, a 25-item scale assessed through expert consultations and pilot testing with 252 nurses. The content validity index was 0.94. After psychometric testing, seven items were deleted. Cronbach's alpha for the 18-item scale was 0.87 and the four-factor structure accounted for 45.55% of the variance. Lastly, the final scale was administered to 216 nurses. Nurses' had moderate self-awareness (59.65 ± 7.01), significantly associated with age and years of the clinical and educational experience. Intensive care nurses were more self-aware than nurses in other settings.