Kindness beyond care: an integrative review of kindness in the nursing profession

Background: In the nursing profession, it is concerning to witness frequent occurrences of incivility in the workplace. Therefore, it is imperative to foster a shift in interpersonal interactions. One effective strategy to cultivate a culture of civility is through the practice of Kindness.Objectives: This review explored the role of kindness in nursing beyond bedside care, incorporating insights from psychology and social sciences to define and apply kindness in practice. The goal was to identify ways for nurses to use kindness to reduce workplace incivility and promote a thriving environment.Design: The authors conducted an integrative review to synthesize data from various sources, including experimental and non-experimental studies, to enhance understanding and offer diverse perspectives on the subject.Data Sources: The authors systematically searched CINAHL, PubMed, Embase, and APA Psych Info for peer-reviewed papers on "kindness" and "nursing" published between 2012 and 2024, excluding opinion articles, letters, reviews, commentaries, and papers focused on kindness in the context of therapeutic care.Methods: The authors followed Whittmore and Kafl's (2005) structured date extraction protocol steps and performed comparative analysis of extracted data tables to verify content uniformity.Results: Seven articles met inclusion criteria, and several key themes were identified: (1) Definition of kindness, (2) Examples of kindness in Action, illustrating how these behaviors manifest in everyday interactions, (3) Interpretation of kindness from multiple perspectives.Conclusions: Acts of intentional kindness are potent tools that can mitigate workplace incivility and cultivate a culture of kindness among nurses and, by extension, positively impact the broader society. Further research is essential to establish a unified definition of kindness in nursing, identify its antecedents and attributes, and conduct empirical studies to substantiate these concepts.