Comparative study of self-compassion and sense of coherence in nurses of psychiatric hospitals

Abstract Objective Nurses, due to the nature of their job, are subjected to various forms of stress and physical and psychological injuries. Self-compassion and a sense of coherence have attracted much attention in research in recent years as having high potential for improving the health and performance of people in the workplace. The present study aimed to compare self-compassion and the sense of coherence in nurses working in psychiatric hospitals and other hospitals of Kerman University of Medical Sciences. Methods The present study was a descriptive-comparative study of applied type conducted on 100 nurses of Shahid Beheshti Psychiatric Hospital in Kerman by the census method and 100 nurses of other hospitals of Kerman University of Medical Sciences by the stratified random sampling method. The instruments included the self-compassion questionnaire and the sense of coherence questionnaire. Data were analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences software. Results The results of the present study showed that self-compassion and sense of coherence were higher in psychiatric nurses (39.35 ± 7.7 and 53.02 ± 8.01) than among other nurses (36.03 ± 5.81 and 49.76 ± 6.30). There was a direct and moderate relationship between a sense of coherence and self-compassion (P-value <0.005). The higher the score of compassion for oneself, the higher was the score of sense of coherence. Furthermore, the sense of coherence had a direct and weak relationship with all dimensions of self-compassion, except for the extreme imitation dimension, which showed a direct and moderate relationship to other dimensions (P-value <0.001). Conclusions Self-compassion and a sense of coherence, as a form of self-communication, increase nurses’ satisfaction and reduce nurses’ job stress and, as a result, job performance is improved.