Effectiveness of a one day self-compassion training for pediatric nurses' resilience

Background: Resilience is a critical skill for nurses and other healthcare professionals, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, yet few nurses receive training that promotes emotional awareness and regulation, resilience, and self-compassion. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to understand if attending a one-day workshop format of the Self Compassion for Healthcare Communities (SCHC) program would improve pediatric nurses' resilience, well-being, and professional quality of life. Design and methods: Following a quasi-experimental design, pre, post, and follow-up surveys were acquired from 22 nurses who attended the training and 26 nurses who did not attend the training. In a linear mixed models regression analysis, changes in self-compassion, mindfulness, compassion, resilience, job engagement, professional quality of life (compassion satisfaction, burnout, and secondary traumatic stress), depression, anxiety and stress were analyzed between groups. Results: Participants in the intervention exhibited significant increases in self-compassion, mindfulness, compassion to others, resilience and compassion satisfaction, and significant decreases in burnout, anxiety, and stress compared to the non-intervention group. Conclusions: A one-day SCHC training program provides nurses with knowledge and skills to increase their resilience and support their emotional well-being and professional quality of life. Practice implications: Nurses' schedules may hamper their ability to attend lengthy resilience trainings, yet the skills needed for resilience are crucial to decreasing burnout, empathy fatigue, and turnover. Offering an effective, one-day training provides an accessible alternative for nurses to gain knowledge and skills that increase resilience. (C) 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.