We would like to say a huge thank you to all those professionals who shared their experiences to help shape this resource.

The Compassionate Mind Approach to Neonatal Care offers a method of responding the the high levels of stress, trauma and emotional threat that neonatal staff experience within their work on a daily basis. The model has been shown to have a significant impact on the emotional wellbeing of individuals and teams. This TED Talk gives a bit of context to the importance of compassion for the care of families and of healthcare staff themselves: https://youtu.be/elW69hyPUuI 

The model is also very applicable to thinking about the experiences of babies and families on a unit and additional resources for families are currently in production. We believe that everyone can benefit from this approach, and that by developing a shared language for understanding our responses to our experiences, we are in a better position to respond to our own needs and those of others.

Please give us feedback here about what's helpful, what isn't, and what you might like to see next.

We will also be holding 6-weekly online meetings to see how people are getting on with the resources and how they are growing that sense of safeness and compassion on their unit. You're really welcome to join - please also join via the form.

•When you have nipped outside to breath some fresh air.

•To “re-fuel” whilst boiling the kettle for a cup of tea or walking from one place to another.

•Whilst sitting doing skin-to-skin with a baby, imagining breathing the colour into the baby.

•Whilst doing Cares for a baby, imagining the colour flowing out of your hands into the baby.

•When near a distressed parent, imagining the colour flowing out of your heart or palms of your hands into them.

When feeling head-achey or neck stiffness

•WhatsApping  a suggested colour to someone who might need it

•Putting a compassionate “colour of the day” on the unit notice board

•Perhaps enjoying choosing a very specific colour for people eg “the colour blue-green of the sea in a Greek island bay”, “warm yellow for this grey, rainy day”, “the fresh green of a new fern in spring”

•Cutting out a square from a colour chart for yourself/to pin on the notice board/to give to someone

•Firstly spend a few moments together settling into a calm, open, grounded position as this broadens our perspective and brings on line our curiosity.

•Then just walking around the unit, perhaps following the journey of parents arriving for the very first time.

•Noticing the signs, the décor, smells, sounds, things that makes us feel a little uneasy or in threat, and things that settle us.

•It can include staff areas, waiting areas, the toilets

•Computer systems including screensavers

•The process of admitting a baby

•How letters are written to parents and other professionals

•The allocation of shifts

•How transitions are managed eg moving a baby to nursery, or to home

•The process of arriving at work, and leaving work.

What do you notice? 

How does the environment trigger the threat system? 

Notice what makes you feel safer, calmer, steadier, encouraged

What small changes might help to grow the green - or increase that sense of safeness?

•Consider the difference between having a submissive, dominant, or confident and compassionate posture:

•When you are driving home after a difficult shift

•When you are going to meet with an angry parent

•When you get home tired and the kids/partner/dog have left their stuff on the floor.

Imagine you have received an email from your boss just asking you to come and see them.

Collapse your body into the submissive posture.

How do you imagine you might be going in to that meeting with your boss?

Perhaps feeling terrible, ashamed, ready to apologise profusely, anxious, feeling tearful?

Now imagine standing upright and in a highly dominant, aggressive posture.

How do you imagine you might be with your manager now?

You might go in defensively, arguing, not listening very well, getting angry, verbally attacking, criticising, blaming others.

Now imagine standing upright, feet hip width apart, shoulders back, dropped and open, feeling steady, stable, confident, calm.

Walk around like this for a moment.  Then imagine walking in to meet your manager.  

How might you be now with them?

You might listen to what they have to say, perhaps curious as to what this might be about.

Perhaps feeling more confident in expressing your honest reactions.

See if you can understand their point of view

Put your point of view across more calmly

Be more focused on how this could be resolved if there is a problem.

Be sincerely sorry if you feel you did make a mistake

Just changing our posture makes a profound difference to how our body and our mind function

And how we relate to others, and to ourselves

•In a meeting where you can just listen for a bit and practice your soothing rhythm breathing

•In a room where difficult things happen but whilst it is empty

•Whilst providing cares for a baby

•Whilst doing a more difficult but straightforward procedure for a baby….

•…All the way until you are remembering your Soothing Breathing Rhythm even in the most difficult of circumstances (a real challenge for anybody, even those that have been practising for many years!)

•To calm your mind before sleep.

•To learn how to be able to disconnect from thinking, particularly threat thinking.

•To learn how to be with all experiences with more looseness and ease.

•To learn that thoughts are transient- even the scariest and harshest of thoughts come and go like the clouds in the sky…..

•When you need a mini oasis of calm.

•Learning how to bring mindfulness to other activities eg washing your hands, making a cup of tea, taking in what’s around you on your way home.

•This can give little pockets of recuperation or breaks from stress, throughout your day.

•When you want to learn how to bring more ease or equanimity to your experiences.

•When you want to learn how to bring experiences of richness and joy to the “ordinary”.

•When you want to foster a deeper connection with a baby.

•To take in a sense of the “whole” baby if there is an aspect that keeps taking your focus.

•When you might be feeling trapped or bored as you sit with a baby.

•To learn how to bring a mindful attention to being with another- to relating…..

•Try the five stepping stones in these situations and notice whether you feel similar to usual, or any different.
•So just taking a few moments first, even when you are walking along, or with people to move your body into the upright, open, confident position (“Body like a mountain”), slow down your breathing (“Breath like the wind”), imagine your mind is like the blue sky, just observing the clouds and the weather (“mind like the sky”) and bring your warm friendly face and voice.

•Before you walk through the door at work

•Before you click “join” on the Teams meeting

•As you are writing up your notes and finishing off at the end of the day.

•On your way to going and talking to a parent.

•Just as you begin Cares for a baby.

•As you are beginning a procedure for a baby.

•At the beginning of a ward round

•Sitting with yourself in the toilet during an exhausting day.

•These steps can be good fun and very helpful to learn in a group.  

•They can then be integrated into significant points in the day when the team are together and could benefit from moving into the particular pattern of the Compassionate mind and out of a threat mind, such as: 

•The beginning of handover

•Beginning of MDT meetings/ward rounds

•Start of a debrief

•Before going into a difficult meeting

•Before beginning a challenging procedure with a baby

Embedding this into the ethos of the team has the potential to make a significant impact over time.