Mindfulness, self-compassion and compassion science in mental health nursing: Commentary on Ruiz-Fernandez et al. (2019). Mindfulness therapies on health professionals. International Journal of Mental Health Nursing, doi: 10.1111/inm.12652

Ruiz-Fernández et al. (2019) make a timely contribution to the literature on health professionals’ well-being and are to be commended on this work. Their review of evidence for effectiveness of mindfulness-based interventions on stress, self-compassion and mindfulness in health professionals raises important points for further discussion. The purpose of this commentary is to further contextualize mindfulness and self-compassion in relation to mental health nursing practice and to introduce the field of compassion science as a complementary body of knowledge to inform future work in this area.