Background: The first priority for nurse educators is getting new nursing graduates ready for the workforce so they may do so safely and independently. self-directed learning is essential in nursing academic institutions because it helps students develop their professional aspirations and clinical experience. Self-compassion enhances mental health as a beneficial factor in practice readiness. Objective: To design a structure equation model of practice readiness and self-directed learning: mediating effect of self-compassion. Setting: The study was carried out at the Faculty of Nursing, Damanhour University, Egypt. Subjects: comprised of 314 nursing students selected randomly in the first semester of the academic year 2022-2023. Tools: three tools were used to collect data. Tool I: Readiness for Practice Survey. Tool II:  Self Rating Scale of Self-Directed Learning. Tool III:  Self-Compassion Scale Short Form (SCS-SF). Results: This study revealed that, there was a highly statistical significance positive correlation between readiness for practice and self-compassion where p = 0.000. Also, there was a highly statistical significant positive correlation between readiness for practice and self-directed learning where p= 0.000. Additionally, it can be seen that there was a highly statistical significant positive correlation between self-compassion and self-directed learning where p= 0.029. Conclusion: this study explains that Self-Compassion acts as a partial mediating factor to boost the influence of readiness for practice on degree of self-directed learning. Recommendation: Incorporating problem-based learning strategies into the nursing curriculum to improve student practice through simulation of practice.