Quotes from Carmel Sheridan

Whether you deliver or receive the handover report, mindful communication during handovers is essential and can significantly reduce the risk of errors and accidents during your shift and the ones that follow.

Do not wait until your body is flooded with stress hormones before you practice mindfulness. By then, it is often too late! Instead, practice being mindful when things are going smoothly and during the early stages of stress.

To plant the seed of mindfulness firmly in your life, set the intention to practice mindful breathing daily.

Compassion arises from inside you - it is already present within you like a seed that needs to be cultivated. If you feed and water it, your compassion will grow - and so will you.

Mindfulness and compassion practice are antidotes to compassion fatigue.

Compassion fatigue is a common phenomenon, and nurses are especially vulnerable.

Self-compassion helps you recognize and soothe painful emotions.

When we bring self-compassion into everyday life, we learn to be kind to ourselves.

Self-compassoin is a skill that anyone can (and should!) learn. Practicing it increases emotional strength and resilience, allowing a person to bounce back from difficult experiences and to overcome self-criticism.

Just like a weak muscle, compassion strengthens with training. Almost anyone can learn to be more compassionate and kinder with themselves and others.

Practice loving-kindness and compassion by sending warmth, friendliness, and goodwill to everyone with whom you come in contact.

The monkey mind is constantly generating thoughts, which may appear as images, sounds, fragments, judgments, or memories. Sometimes, these thoughts pass through us like clouds. At other times, we may identify with them and get hooked by them.

With mindful attention, you realize that thoughts are just thoughts - mental processes in the mind - rather than the truth.

Mindfulness helps you shine the spotlight on negative thoughts that run rampant - and unchallenged - in your mind for years.

When you bring mindful mindful awareness to your thoughts, you train your mind to settle, and, with time and practice, realize you don't have to react to every passing thought.

Mindfulness puts you in charge of where you place your attention. Then, when you are less preoccupied with concerns and worries, you have more energy available to attend to your work.

Just as a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, a group is only as strong as its weakest member.

Knowing how to manage conflict is a vital skill for nurses.

Mindful communication is about becoming aware of the ways you send information into the world. When you are conscious of the messages you project, you understand the effect that your words and actions have on others.

With increased presence comes kindness and compassion - the nurse's calling cards.

Even without words, you communicate through touch, body language, and facial expression.

Communicating with awareness and kindness, and listening without judgement, are at the heart of good nursing practice.

The primary causes of errors in nursing are distraction and stress.

If you reduce your levels of distraction and stress, errors are less likely.