What strategies do you use to shield yourself from negative emotions from patients and ensure that your confidence and performance as a nurse remain unaffected?

This is just my own personal experience and opinion, so feel free to take it or leave it. 😉 but after grinding through COVID as a floor nurse and know an OR nurse, I’ve began to learn that most often your patients are scared, in pain or have other outside influences and experiences that are being expressed to us as their primary nurse.
It’s probably 95-99% not even associated with you personally. But unfortunately, we are an easy target. So just I listen, calmly explain that I’m here to help support them and do my best to care for them. And leave it at that. You take a few deep breaths and tell yourself “yiu got this” because you do.