6 cs of nursing

The 6 cs of Nursing refer to a set of values that are essential to nursing practice. The 6 C’s are:

1. Care: Providing compassionate and competent care to patients, taking into account their individual needs and preferences.
2. Compassion: Demonstrating empathy and understanding towards patients and their families, treating them with kindness, respect, and dignity.
3. Competence: Maintaining the highest standards of professional knowledge and expertise, and continuously improving one’s skills and abilities.
4. Communication: Engaging in effective communication with patients, colleagues, and other members of the healthcare team, to ensure the best possible outcomes for patients.
5. Courage: Advocating for patients, even in difficult or challenging situations, and standing up for what is right and just.
6. Commitment: Being dedicated to the nursing profession and one’s patients, and working collaboratively with other healthcare professionals to provide the best possible care.

Understanding and embodying these 6 C’s is essential for nursing practice, and can lead to improved patient outcomes, increased job satisfaction, and a stronger sense of professional identity.

The concept of 6cs of nursing gives nurses an easy and consistent way to understand their values as professional and care staff and hold themselves to account for the care and services. All the points of this 6 cs concept carry equal importance. Not one of the points is most important than the other five. This naturally focuses on giving care to the patient by emotionally understanding their condition.

The compassion in nursing with 6cs strategy

To be a nurse, midwife, or a member of the health care staff is an extraordinary role. Nurses are key to the drive to enable people to stay healthy and well for their whole life by promoting health and well-being. Nurses help patients recover fast from any condition, sometimes at the most vulnerable stage: the emotional support, communication, and counselling provided by a nurse help a lot in recovery. 

Nurses have the self-confidence to embrace the bitter realities related to life. The professional commitment helps health care staff to stay determined and tackle every situation with strength. Nurses treat every patient with dignity and respect because it is the right of every patient. To achieve success and enduring value, a nurse provides the best of care to every patient. 

To establish and maintain a high level of care, the NHS commissioning board introduced a strategy called “compassion in practice.” This strategy is based on the concept 6cs of nursing profession. These 6cs of nursing underpin the level of care, support, and attention a professional nurse should give to the patient. and it has included in NMC CBT test.

What are the 6cs of nursing, and why are they important?

The concept of 6 Cs is developed to maintain the standards of care and support given to patients by nurses and health care staff. They provide a set of shared values that help establish consistency across all the health and social care work, employees, and organizations. It ensures that every patient is treated equally with high-quality care services. 

Merriam Webster defines “compassion in nursing” as sympathetic awareness of another distress combined with the compassion of relieving it. In the world of nursing, compassionate care is not only about relieving the pain but entering into the patient experience to feel the same pain and enabling them to retain independence and dignity. 

Care

A good nurse always thinks compassionately, respect patient, and are sincere with them. Compassion in nursing is not limited to being involved emotionally in the pain of the patient. It also includes strengthening patients with proper nursing care. Compassionate care requires responding to the patient’s needs by understanding physical, cultural, traditional, and emotional difficulties. 

It improves the understanding of nurses about the importance of involving a patient’s family and relatives in care. Involving families and relatives in treatment is an important part of compassionate care. To inform the patient about the different therapies and choices they have and ask for their suggestions. It is found that without compassionate care, the patient would not participate in their care. Following are some tips every nurse should follow while giving care to patients:

• Remember that patients you are caring for are human so show compassion and empathy to them. Always listen to them and respond peacefully.
• The nurse should not judge the patient, only listen to them carefully.
• Be kind to the patient and always take consent before touching the patient. Remember, the process of treatment has an impact on the life of every patient. 
• The nurse should properly guide the patient about the disease and treatment procedure. It would help if you were factual regarding information. 

Compassionate care help nurses to develop a therapeutical relationship with patients. Compassionate care involves empathy and effective communication that has a positive effect on patient recovery. It also significantly increases the patient’s satisfaction. For example, a patient is diagnosed with hepatitis C and undergoing dialysis. In that case, it must be frightening and difficult, but compassionate care helps the patient to recover physically, psychologically, and emotionally. 

Compassion

Compassion is the way care is delivered to the patients. The quality and method of providing care are as much important as care itself. Compassion is also defined as intelligent kindness that is the core of how people perceive care. The quality of care is as important as the quality of treatment given to treat a specific condition. Patients always want to be treated with respect and dignity. 

The nurses should always listen to the patient’s problems carefully because the patient becomes irritated by telling the same story repeatedly. It seems unprofessional to the patient, and they get disappointed by the staff and the quality of care given. Therefore, compassion means understanding patient needs, showing empathy and sympathy during treatment, and providing care that respects patient dignity and individuality. 

Compassion also involves telling the patient that they are also involved in giving care to themselves. The patient always wants to listen to their advice and act upon it. They want all the treatment services to be designed to enable them to be involved in care. Some actions nurses should include in their profession to ensure they are creating a compassionate environment are:

• Active listening to every word of the patient, family, and the relatives
• Collaborate and discuss with other health care staff to ensure that you are delivering quality care.
• Consider inter-professional working.
• Sharing information and data will work well to find out the best possible treatment procedure.
• Learn from mistakes and feedback of patients 

Competence

Nursing competency is generally viewed as the complex integration of knowledge, skills, attitude, and thinking. In the nursing profession, it is required to implement the acquired knowledge and skills in different circumstances, sometimes the venerable ones. The Japanese Nurse Association defines competence as “the ability to perform clinical nursing care that is based on nurse’s ethical thinking and skills and it is provided to meet the needs of quality care.”

Nursing competency is a natural intelligent skill that integrates various factors and problems in complex ways, unique to every situation. To acquire nursing competency, nurses must-have skills and personal traits important to perform their duties effectively. Three important components of competency include the ability to understand people, the ability to achieve patient-centred care, and the ability to improve nursing quality. 

Communication

Communication is a core component of good relationships, collaboration, and coordination, which are necessary aspects of nursing practice. Communication has a major impact on the outcome of the treatment procedure. Increased communication between nurses and patients decreases errors and makes a difference in positive patient outcomes. 

Nurses should make therapeutic communication with their patients to promote patient health and well-being. Nurses should ensure that all the information is handled sensitively and carefully, actively listening to what the patients are telling them. Listening is as important as what you say and do and necessary for “no discussion about me, without me.”  

There are types of communication that are important in nursing practice.

• Verbal communication: It is about spoken words by patients and healthcare staff, and it is crucially important in a healthcare setting. Verbal communication is also between the multidisciplinary healthcare team and the relatives of a patient with are equally important as communication with the patient. 
• Non-verbal communication: This type of speech is conveyed with the help of body language. Sometimes it can tell a great deal, and other times it can mean a totally wrong perception. Still, it has great importance in a healthcare setting, especially for nurses. Non-verbal communication comprises accent, gaze, speech tone, posture, physical appearance, speech errors, and gestural movements. 

Courage

Nursing as an ethical practice requires moral courage to speak what is right. Nurses need moral courage in all areas at all levels of nursing. There are seven core attributes of courage, including true presence, moral integrity, responsibility, integrity, advocacy, commitment, and personal risk. Nursing is a highly responsible occupation, and everyone is accountable for the care and treatment provided to the patients.

Nurses should have the courage to make judgment calls to convey their opinion if they think other treatment options can be done more effectively to provide quality care. 6Cs aims to empower all the healthcare staff to contribute to making improvements in care. 

Commitment

Professional commitment is defined as sincerity, the passion for staying in a profession, and a sense of responsibility towards hurdles and challenges in a profession. The commitment element in the 6Cs strategy is dedicated to the role continuously demonstrated by nurses and the commitment to learn new skills and knowledge, share knowledge, coordinate, take action against wrong practices, and work efficiently across all sectors boundaries. The highlights of commitment in nursing are:

• Awareness of the hurdles and challenges in your profession and continuously working to overcome them for the well-being of your patients. 
• Put your social life after your professional life, especially in emergencies.
• Maintain your health to show yourself as an example to your patients 
• Always try to learn new skills and knowledge from your co-workers
• Striving hard to give quality care to your patient and make sure you treat every patient equally.

Conclusion

The strategy 6cs of nursing is introduced to maintain the quality healthcare standards and ensure that the best care is given to patients. Every postulate of this model has equal importance in the nursing profession. A nurse should keenly follow all the steps of compassion and should be well aware of responsibilities. It gives strength and courage to nurses to speak up against wrong practices and ensure patient safety. In short, the 6Cs model develops a healthy relationship between healthcare staff and patients.