Self-Care for Nurses Who Care for Others: The Effectiveness of Meditation as a Self-Care Strategy

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I very much enjoyed this paper and I feel it is an important demonstration of the effectiveness of mindfulness meditation as a form of mitigating work-related stress for nurses. My only criticism is the conceptual awkwardness of the first paragraph.  I'm not a fan of the concept of empathy and I'm very glad that compassion was introduced and defended later in the paper, particularly one exploring Buddhist methodology.  The first paragraph seems to describe a paradoxical trap of sorts that paints a picture of inherent and unavoidable harm in sharing the suffering of patients, vicarious exposure, if you will.  This assumption aways seems to prevail as folk wisdom in nursing, but I feel it is conceptually dangerous. Distress arrives from feeling the suffering of another and being incapable of alleviating that suffering.  Nurses however, have the opportunity, all things being equal, to experience the suffering of another and be moved to assuage that suffering.  That is the natural cycle of compassion, through the alleviation of another's suffering, so is one's own experience of that suffering.  So compassion is not an exhaustive exercise, though empathy might be.  Similar is the case for nursing, it can be exhaustive, but not necessarily so.  I have no doubt the authors understand these distinctions as they discuss them later and in interesting ways.  I'm not sure the first paragraph is even necessary as the fact that nursing is difficult and exhausting work seems a prima facie claim that needs little theoretical explanation.

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

The quality of English Language is disputable - some parts are less understandable because of the grammar and stylistics. Also the use of the term "meditator group" is: 1. not consequent (at some places it is substituted by term "mediator" group. 2. not really clear - do the authors suggest it should be "meditative or mediation" group?

Author Response

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