Health and wellness are crucial for nurses. After a long exciting day at work, they need proper food and rest to replenish their body with vital energy.
Most nurses sometimes ignore their health and wellness because they don’t know what to do. Other times, it is because they find it challenging to take time to pamper themselves. According to a recent report, half of American nurses are overweight and don’t t get enough nutrition and sleep. The same report also mentions that around 40% of nurses experience burnout. These problems negatively affect their mental and physical health.
Regardless of how hectic your work routine is at the hospital, being a nurse, you need to care for your well-being. Otherwise, it won’t be long before you feel it challenging to fulfill your daily tasks vigorously.
It is never too late to take the right steps for maintaining your wellness, so start today. Some bits of advice to help you maintain your wellness are mentioned below in the article.
1. Engage in new learning endeavors
Engaging in growth-oriented learning endeavors is one of the ways that can help nurses with their careers as well as their mental health. When you engage in development-oriented activities, your curiosity gets a boost.
Research shows that curiosity has positive mental and physical health effects. It breeds positive emotionsand a desire to excel and explore more.
Being a nurse, you can fan your curiosity by engaging in higher learning programs at prestigious universities. The more esteemed the institution of learning, the more confident you will feel about your knowledge. Similarly, the more you know about your field, the better your patient care services.
La Salle nursing university is one of the highly rated institutions, attracting nurses due to its high-quality curricula. Their fully online coursework, affordable fees, and flexible clinicals help nurses continue working concurrently.
Increasing your knowledge boosts your self-confidence, work and life satisfaction, and performance. All these changes translate into positive health and well-being.
2. Make some time for daily exercise
Most nurses think since they walk all day, they don’t need to dedicate some time to exercise. While this thought might giveyou self-satisfaction and a readymade excuse for not doing exercise, this physical activity will not have any positive effect on your health.
The National Library of Medicinestates that nurses, on average, walk three miles during their 10-hour shift. However, you cannot call this activity anything other than stress walking, which hasno positive effects on your health and well-being. Instead, it makes you tired and cramps your muscles. You will get the benefits of exercise only when your mind is focused on the activity.
When you exercise with all your mind focused on this activity, you get plenty of mental and physical health benefits. Exercise soothes your aching muscles and boosts your immunity.
It is also a solution to many of your mental health problems. It improves your mood, makes you happy, enhances self-confidence, and decreases stress. Therefore, exercise daily with full dedication and focus, even if it is just for half an hour.
3. Be thankful for your blessing
Being appreciative of what you have in life is called gratitude. It means recognizing the blessings you have got in your life and avoiding unnecessary self-criticism.
When you practice gratitude, you don’t feel a sense of deprivation or compare your life with others. Gratitude instills fulfillment, and you start noticing even trivial things in your life.
Even the fact that you can get food multiple times a day when countless others don’t even get one feels incredible.
Gratitude prevents you from stressing out about things not in your control. Instead, your focus shifts to positive elements in your life. For instance, you might ignore things like long working hours and low pay and focus more on the respect and self-fulfillment you get in your profession.
When you make practicing gratitude your second nature, you don’t feel fretful and dejected, and your mental health improves considerably.
4. Meditate for your mental health
Meditating has immense mental and physical health benefits. During meditation, your focus remains on something positive in your life, scenery, or a good memory. During that time, your mind tries to resist all the negative thoughts trying to overpower your mind.
Continuously meditating for a few minutes daily improves your focus and attention span. It makes you calm and peaceful. Side by side, meditation helps you resist negative thoughts. You find yourself prioritizing positivity over negative emotions. Overall, you feel more contented with your life and work.
5. Make digital detox a part of your routine
Technology has made our life easier and more comfortable. Still, excessive use of even the most useful things is wrong. For instance, excessive use of phones and other digital gadgets might affect your physical and mental health.
After a hectic workday, nurses need to have some rest. Instead, they spend that time surfing the internet and scrolling through social media pages.
They should put their gadgets aside and practice a digital detox. Practicing digital detox daily will help them spend time on other healthy activities, such as playing with their pets or a peaceful walk on the terrace.
6. Spend time with nature
Nurses mostly work in patient wards and offices behind closed doors. When the shift is over, it is already too late to spend time with nature. But nurses need to spend time with nature.
Spending time with nature daily will give nurses the following health and wellness benefits.
- Instills feelings of calmness
- Reduce irritability
- Reduce anxiety and depression
- Increased levels of endorphin and dopamine
- Reduced cortisol
- Improved mood
Conclusion
Working on your health and well-being is essential for a happy, healthy, and satisfying life. Concurrently it is also crucial to give your best at your job. Therefore, nurses must recognize the need to ensure their wellness to perform their job well. The article above mentions some tips for improving the health and wellness of nurses. Following them will make a lot of difference in their life.
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