Why Is Self-Care Important To Nurses
Being a nurse is a noble career that is personally fulfilling and demanding. Between the long hours and high-stress situations that take a toll on you mentally, emotionally, and physically, you may feel fatigued and overwhelmed.
Finding time and energy to do your laundry may feel impossible, and even thinking about taking time out for self-care may seem even more challenging. Having the proper self-care techniques is as crucial as having comfortable scrubs and shoes and other necessary tools you need as a nurse.
However, self-care is critical for nurses. In this article, we go over why it is essential and give you ideas on easy ways to incorporate self-care that will ensure that you maintain mental, emotional, professional, social, spiritual, and physical health.
Why Is Self-Care Essential For Nurses?
- It is a valuable stress management tool
- It replenishes nurses and increases their ability to practice empathy and compassion toward patients
- It improves safety as nurses feel revitalized and rested
- Patients receive higher quality care
- It reduces depression amongst nurses
- It improves sleep and energy levels for nurses and leads to improving performance on the job
- Nurses living a healthier lifestyle and reducing health-related issues
Ways For Nurses To Practice Self Care
Here are some suggestions for self-care practices for nurses. Utilize the ones that work best for you.
1. Ideas For Psychological Self-Care For Nurses
As nurses, practicing psychological self-care can involve learning, growing, thinking, and learning activities that focus on personal or professional development. Personal reflection time is highly beneficial for psychological self-care.
- Practicing meditation to help reduce and relieve anxiety, calm your mind and build mental resilience
- Keeping a journal can help support you process your feelings and thoughts, enhance feelings of happiness and well-being and reduce stress. Even 10 to 15 minutes daily writing in your journal at the end of each day is beneficial.
2. Ideas For Physical Self-Care For Nurses
Taking care of your body is essential.
- Eating a well-balanced diet to ensure that your body has fuel is essential for physical self-care. Healthy diets include lots of vegetables, fruits, proteins, and healthy fats to help stabilize your blood sugar and promote improved mental focus and emotional stability.
- Drink water to ensure that your body stays hydrated and is essential for brain function and energy
- Regular exercise helps reduce stress and improves physical and emotional health. Exercise is a great way to maintain a healthy weight, improve blood pressure, and decrease the risk of heart disease. Exercising also releases endorphins known as the body's happy hormones, but you're shown to improve elevated mood and reduce anxiety.
- Getting adequate sleep is critical for nurses because of the intensive emotional and mental work of being a nurse. Rest and sleep are essential parts of self-care and allow your body to recover, support your immune system, and reduce the likelihood of burnout.
- Wear Compression socks and supportive shoes to help reduce swelling and pain in your feet and legs from working long shifts at the hospital.
3. Ideas For Emotional Self-Care For Nurses
Nursing is emotionally taxing, and developing ways to help you express, process, and experience your feelings will support your overall well-being and is a critical aspect of self-care.
- Practicing mindfulness will help you be fully present and maintain awareness of thoughts, feelings, body sensations, and the surrounding environment through a soft lens, without judgment.
- Develop and use affirmations which are positive statements to help you overcome challenging or negative thoughts and behaviors. Repeating affirmations helps to reprogram the way you think and act and improves overall emotional well-being.
- Practicing gratitude helps you to keep a positive outlook on life, promotes humility, and helps you connect meaningfully with others.
- Ask for help when you need it. Nurses often want to be able to fix everything for everyone else, and it's essential to know when it's time to talk to a friend, manager, or mental health professional.
4. Ideas For Social Self-Care For Nurses
Nurses spend a lot of time with patience and the patients' families, so having social time outside work with personal friends and family is essential.
- Develop relationships that are nurturing and healthy with your family and friends.
- Set boundaries to help support your mental, emotional and physical health
- Spending quality time with friends and family
5. Ideas For Professional Self-Care For Nurses
Nurses often struggle to separate personal responsibilities from professional ones.
- Create clear boundaries between personal time and work time
- Organizing your workspace and your schedule will help you feel less overwhelmed in creating a calendar of your schedule and activities
- Balancing your workload is vital as nurses often take on too much to burn out.
- Invest in comfortable scrubs and shoes, compression socks, surgical caps, and other items to help make your job as a nurse easier and go more smoothly.
6. Ideas For Environmental Self -Care For Nurses
When you're working as a nurse in a medical facility, you are constantly surrounded by equipment, patient charts, medical supplies, and more—find ways to reduce clutter in your environment.
- Have a designated work space at home if you need one
- A comfortable and relaxing personal living space for you to have a place to unwind
- Declutter your home and office
7. Ideas For Spiritual Self-Care For Nurses
Nurse nurses experience the miracle of life and the sadness of death. Finding a way to connect with something larger than yourself has excellent benefits.
- Connecting with nature by spending time going for a walk, watching the sunset or sunrise, swimming in the river, or burying your feet on the sandy beach, whatever works for you is a good choice.
- For those who pray, prayer is a way to speak to God, help with your emotional and mental stress, and bring you comfort.
- Speaking with a spiritual advisor who aligns with your values and beliefs can help you deal with some of the difficulties of being a nurse.
Blue Sky Scrubs Has You Covered
At Blue Sky Scrubs, we have 100% fair trade and ethically made high-quality nursing scrubs for women and men. We also carry compression socks, lab jackets, and surgical caps; our scrubs are stylish and comfortable, and medical professionals love how they fit. Check out our website to order today!
