How do you feel when you're on either the receiving or giving end of kindness? If you're like most, it feels great. I recently gave a gift certificate for a day of salon services to my hair stylist and asked her to give it one of her customers who needed some kindness. She gave it to a client in treatment for breast cancer who was delighted. I was even happier.
The experience made me reflect on the kindnesses we see every day among colleagues, nurses, staff, patients, and families-what a difference it makes in someone's day. We need more kindness, and we need to celebrate it. Kindness is part of the "heart" side of nursing, which is just as important as the "brain" side, melding art and science into the glorious discipline of nursing.
Nurse theorists Wei, Hardin, and Watson published an evidence-based Unitary Caring Science Resilience Model that includes "embracing loving-kindness for self and others" as one of the six arms of the framework. The model's focus is on resilience-building as an antidote to clinician burnout and depletion. Exactly why we should be promoting and celebrating kindness.
Acts of kindness can be big or small, random or intentional. Bringing in lunch for a coworker, brushing a patient's hair, making Halloween costumes for NICU babies, running to the coffee shop for someone else, holding a hand, sending thank-you notes, or even just actually listening: it's all kindness. It can cost nothing nor take up much time, yet the benefits are immeasurable.
Examples abound. At the unit level, staff are holding "random acts of kindness" days. I know of a nurse who spent her lunch break (yes, she got one, thanks to a unit culture where everyone had each other's backs for meal breaks) taking an Uber to a Lego store for an oncology patient who needed a distraction for a long holiday weekend. Another colleague walked a homeless couple to a hotel room and paid for it. A hospital's nursing department used Nurses Week to "pay it forward," with each unit bringing a meal to a collaborating department instead of expecting it for themselves.
I've heard about organizations that have posted signs to "be kind" to their exhausted staff in response to the increase in disrespect from patients and visitors. What a senseless shame it would be for nurses to give up on kindness in the face of stressful work environments. Perhaps kindness is not only an antidote to staff burnout but also a balm for stressed patients and visitors.
Evidence-based gratitude practices have been touted in the literature as another contributor to well-being. There's an intersection of outwardly placed gratitude being received as kindness by the recipient, and the bilateral benefits are shared as well. In either practice, there's value in their principles and in their effects. Caryl Goodyear wrote in the June issue of Nursing Management about how one hospital used "connecting with kindness" to bring back purpose and passion, even creating a Culture of Kindness Employee Council.
Mother Teresa has said that "kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless." Kindness builds on kindness and the ripple effect is akin to the butterfly effect: one small occurrence influences larger systems. Commit to being kind, flutter your butterfly wings, promote it with your workforce, and feel the effects. It just might be life-changing.
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