Introduction:

Nursing, due to its vocation of service and being in daily contact with the world of suffering and death, can suffer from compassion fatigue or burn-out. Therefore, it is necessary to develop certain psycho-spiritual skills to continue developing as individuals and professionally, so that through self-care they can achieve greater efficiency and comprehensiveness in their care, while improving their health and self-realization.

Objective:

describing the psycho-spiritual abilities in Nursing proposed by San Juan de Dios, influenced by his spiritual guide San Juan de Ávila.

Methodology:

we carried out a historiographic study following the current of the history of mentalities.

Documentary analysis:

from his youth, Juan de Dios knew that his vocation was to take care of all kinds of injustices, especially those most vulnerable such as the poor and the sick. However, he had certain difficulties to stay healthy, being his spiritual guide who was marking the development of psycho-spiritual abilities so that, through self-care, he could take care of the other without suffering in his body or in his spirit. These skills were what gave him his human and caring quality, taking care of the other in an integral way without abandoning himself, turning the profession into a path of personal development.

Conclusions:

the father of modern nursing developed 3 psychological abilities and 3 spiritual abilities per dyad, which today are described as empathy-compassion, unconditional acceptance-hospitality, and authenticity-presence. With this, through self-care he came to create a Nursing that even today is maintained over time.