Care expressed and practiced in professional nursing models provides a way of looking at the nursing role from the aspect of care. It may seem excessive to consider aspects of caring and compassion in nursing. However, precisely because it IS nursing makes it crucial to our continual progress of defining and upholding one of our central professional principles. Address each of these items: Reflect on a caring and compassionate experience with a patient or family encountered in your practice. How was your compassion demonstrated? What other ways do you wish you would have expressed caring? How does your thinking about compassion expand to include self and colleagues?