COUC 500 Week 7 Wellness Assessment and Plan Paper Example

Wellness Assessment and Plan Paper: Sleep, Self-Compassion and Satisfaction in a Former Night-Shift Nurse

Purpose and Model

I completed these assessments to see whether the risks I named in my impairment paper show up in measured results, and to revise my plan accordingly. I used the Wheel of Wellness as my framework. Myers et al. (2000) put spirituality at the hub of the wheel, surrounded by life tasks such as managing oneself, working, playing, forming friendships and loving, and argue that counselors should help clients, and themselves, build strengths across all of them. Granello and Young (2019) treat wellness as central to the profession, something counselors should live out in their own lives and not merely recommend to clients.

The Instruments

I chose three published measures. The Satisfaction With Life Scale asks five questions about how close life is to one's ideal, producing a score from 5 to 35 (Diener et al., 1985). The short form of the Self-Compassion Scale contains 12 items scored from 1 to 5 and measures how kindly one treats oneself in difficulty (Raes et al., 2011), built on the account of self-compassion in Neff (2003) as self-kindness, a sense of common humanity and mindfulness. The Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index assesses sleep over the past month in seven components that combine into a global score from 0 to 21; in its original validation, a global score above 5 distinguished poor from good sleepers (Buysse et al., 1989).

Results

My life satisfaction is reasonably good. I am grateful for my marriage, my church and the change of career I chose. My self-compassion score is low: I agreed strongly with items about being harsh with myself when I fall short and disagreed with items about being kind to myself in hard times. My sleep score is the clearest problem. Even two years after leaving night shifts, I sleep about six hours a night, take a long time to fall asleep and wake several times.

Discussion

The results suggest that the habits that made me a good emergency nurse, pushing through exhaustion and judging myself harshly for mistakes, are now the main threats to my wellness. Night-shift work disrupted my sleep for years, and the emergency department's culture rewarded working through fatigue. In the Wheel of Wellness, sleep belongs to self-care within the life task of self-direction, and self-compassion connects to self-worth and emotional awareness. A counselor who cannot extend kindness to themselves may struggle to model it for clients, and a counselor who is chronically underslept is at higher risk for the impairment I described last week. My strong social and spiritual life, by contrast, gives me resources to draw on in making changes.

What the Results Change in My Plan

My impairment paper listed personal counseling, mindfulness, supervision, limits on work hours, connection with friends and a monthly review. The assessments confirm most of that list but shift its emphasis. Connection and spiritual practice already appear strong and need protecting rather than building. Sleep, which I had not mentioned at all, turns out to be the most measurable problem, and harsh self-judgment, which I had described only as stamina, turns out to be a risk in its own right. The revised plan therefore puts sleep and self-compassion first and keeps the rest of the earlier plan as maintenance.

Limits of Self-Assessment

All three instruments rely on my own reports, and helpers are notoriously poor judges of their own depletion. I may have rated my life satisfaction generously because I am pleased with my change of career, and I may have underestimated how much my sleep affects my mood. So the plan deliberately builds in outside observers, namely my husband, my counselor and my supervisor, and it uses behaviors I can count, such as bedtimes and hours slept each night, alongside the scale scores themselves.

Wellness Plan

• 1. Sleep. Target: a global sleep score of 5 or below at retest. Actions: lights out at 10:30 p.m. and an alarm at 6:30 a.m. seven days a week, no screens after 9:30 p.m., and no caffeine after noon. Support: my husband will keep the same evening routine. Obstacle: late study nights. Response: move study to early mornings twice a week.
• 2. Self-compassion. Target: a short-form score above 3.0. Actions: a daily five-minute practice of writing what I would say to a friend in my situation, and a weekly reflection on one mistake treated with patience rather than criticism. Support: my own counselor, whom I began seeing this term. Obstacle: dismissing the practice as soft. Response: remember that I would recommend it to any client.
• 3. Satisfaction and meaning. Target: keep the life satisfaction score at or above 24. Actions: protect my church small group and a monthly day trip with my husband. Support: friends in my small group. Obstacle: the busiest weeks of practicum. Response: shorten rather than cancel.

Retesting and Review

I will complete the three scales again when the semester closes and again midway through practicum. If my sleep score has not improved, I will ask my physician about further evaluation. If self-compassion remains low, I will make it a regular topic with my counselor. I will also keep a simple sleep log on my phone between assessments, so that I can see patterns week by week rather than only at the retest, and share it with my counselor once a month.

Conclusion

Wellness is part of competent counseling, not a reward for finishing the work. Jesus slept in the boat during a storm (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Mark 4:38), a picture of trust that rest is not neglect. The assessments show me where my rest and my kindness toward myself are thin, and the plan gives me concrete ways to strengthen both before clients depend on me. There is also a professional benefit. Clients who struggle with sleep or with harsh self-criticism are common, and a counselor who has practiced the remedies personally can speak about them honestly, without pretending to have mastered what they are still learning.

References

Buysse, D. J., Reynolds, C. F., Monk, T. H., Berman, S. R., & Kupfer, D. J. (1989). The Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index: A new instrument for psychiatric practice and research. Psychiatry Research, 28(2), 193-213. https://doi.org/10.1016/0165-1781(89)90047-4

Diener, E., Emmons, R. A., Larsen, R. J., & Griffin, S. (1985). The Satisfaction With Life Scale. Journal of Personality Assessment, 49(1), 71-75. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327752jpa4901_13

English Standard Version Bible. (2016). Crossway. (Original work published 2001)

Granello, D. H., & Young, M. E. (2019). Counseling today: Foundations of professional identity (2nd ed.). Pearson.

Myers, J. E., Sweeney, T. J., & Witmer, J. M. (2000). The wheel of wellness counseling for wellness: A holistic model for treatment planning. Journal of Counseling & Development, 78(3), 251-266. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1556-6676.2000.tb01906.x

Neff, K. D. (2003). Self-compassion: An alternative conceptualization of a healthy attitude toward oneself. Self and Identity, 2(2), 85-101. https://doi.org/10.1080/15298860309032

Raes, F., Pommier, E., Neff, K. D., & Van Gucht, D. (2011). Construction and factorial validation of a short form of the Self-Compassion Scale. Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy, 18(3), 250-255. https://doi.org/10.1002/cpp.702