Saving Grace: Focusing on the Positive

Lessons Learned Sharing Your Stories and Advice The Stitch

By: Jacqueline Bak, EdD, MSN, RN, CNOR

Published: 2/15/2024

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The first year of perioperative practice can be challenging. The right mindset is essential. While your preceptor can smooth the rough waters or toss you a life preserver with words of wisdom, perioperative nurses who have weathered a few storms during their first years of practice can provide a lifeline sprinkled with some lessons that they found helpful as novice perioperative nurses.

Lindsey's Story

After reflecting on her first year of practice, Lindsey Wilson-Collins, BSN, RN, indicated that she believes it is essential to give yourself grace, because the first year is demanding. She has found that people can often forget to focus on the positive. Lindsey learned early on that it is essential to surround yourself with those who are encouraging, or as she put it, find “your people”: those who nurture and provide you with the grace to learn from your mistakes and bring out your potential.

Lindsey recalled an incident of self-compassion when she was fresh out of orientation. While she thought she was prepared, she missed a suture on the surgeon’s preference list, which they requested. Lindsey quickly retrieved the suture in a matter of seconds but was still left feeling deflated by the surgeon’s remarks that the entire team heard. Instead of letting the negativity overwhelm her, she focused on the positive: the successful procedure for the patient because of her planning and delivery of patient care.

Giving Yourself Grace

As a caregiver, you often put yourself last regarding compassion or forgiveness. There can be times when you feel as if you do not deserve the same comfort that you offer to others. Unjustified negative thoughts can arise when you have failed at something, feel as if you have not done your best, or have been made to feel that you did not live up to expectations. These feelings should be acknowledged.

Self-care is an essential, but often neglected, element of the transition to perioperative practice. At the heart of self-care is self-compassion, which enables you to manage conflicting feelings and process the disharmony instead of spiraling into feelings of shame and inadequacy.1 While preceptors or supportive colleagues may help you turn away from the negativity, as Lindsey pointed out, you are responsible for giving yourself grace and learning from your mistakes, as these are the best lessons. Lindsey noted that “her people” helped her develop as a perioperative nurse while giving her grace. "I wish I would have given myself more grace, but I am learning that now," she says.

As a new perioperative nurse, getting caught up in the negative talk in your head can be easy. Self-compassion is a nonjudgmental way of understanding your perceived failings or inadequacies and bringing them into focus within the more extensive human experience that is common with others (not a self-isolating experience).2 Giving yourself grace or compassion allows you to move past the negativity associated with the event and focus on improving and learning.

References

  1. Dames S. The interplay of developmental factors that impact congruence and the ability to thrive among new graduate nurses: a qualitative study of the interplay as students transition to professional practice. Nurse Educ Pract. 2019;36:47-53.
  2. Neff K. Self-compassion: an alternative conceptualization of a healthy attitude toward oneself. Self Identity. 2003;2(2):85-101.

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