10 Easy Tips to Deal with Nursing Stress and Burnout
No doubt, nursing is a lucrative and rewarding job that allures those who dream of a successful career in healthcare, but along with certain benefits, it comes with a demanding and hectic schedule. Long hours of practice, staffing challenges, and emotionally exhausting service are some reasons that can lead to stress and make nursing professionals feel disillusioned. Being a nurse, you need to be fit and attentive in order to serve your patients in the best way. If you are suffering from nursing stress and burnout, you will not be able to fulfill your responsibilities efficiently.
Stress levels may vary with respect to your job responsibilities, shift hours, age, etc. Once you get into this, the condition gets worse and ends up with frustration and helplessness. If you want to avoid this overwhelming situation and wish to excel in this profession cheerfully, you must follow some stress management strategies. To help you out, we are here with some amazing tips to cope up with the stress in nursing.
1. Organize Your Life
Being organized is the first and foremost stress management trick for nurses. Keeping track of everything is a smart way to deal with anxiety and other problems related to it. Set priorities every day, this will set your mind and help you formulate better plans to accomplish all the tasks. If possible, you can come to work 10 to 20 minutes early any day in a week and review all tasks to figure out the most efficient ways to do them and combat the stress.
2. Meditation
In order to relieve turmoil, meditation is another best thing you can rely on. To gain mental peace, you just need to spare some minutes for yoga and meditation before, during, or after work. Even if you are extremely busy at work, you can take a walk or find a tranquil spot to meditate for 10 to 15 minutes nearby your workplace, to reduce the level of strain.
3. Ask for Personal Advice
If you are new to nursing, your seniors and colleagues may help you find out a suitable way to deal with the mental trauma; you are going through. Being experienced, they may suggest you some ways to organize your workload in a systematic manner, which in turn help you a lot.
4. Take Good Care of Yourself
While working, nursing professionals need to be on their feet for most of the time. Along with this, they also need to carry patients from one place to another which require enough physical strength. If your body is not strong, ultimately your mind will suffer. Tiredness is another major factor that leads to mental stress. To keep away from it, you have to take care of yourself by doing physical workouts and having a healthy diet.
5. Long Deep Breaths
Deteriorating effects of stress can be mitigated by taking long deep breaths. It directs the brain to calm down which results in relaxation of the body. This technique is even more effective if you breathe through the nose and let the air out through the mouth. You can try it during the breaks while working.
6. Be Positive
‘Be positive'- it is easy to say but quite hard to apply. Look towards the good things about your job and neglect the negative aspects completely. You can share a joke with co-workers or have a friendly conversation with your patients. Also, you can read some good nursing books that help you remind the importance of your profession and soothe your mind as well. It will create an atmosphere of positive vibes around you and will eliminate the stress automatically.
7. Better Communication
Lack of communication in a profession like nursing may result in stressful situations, which eventually arouse chronic burnout. Though you can’t control the way other accomplish their task, you can do the things best at your end. Keep all the members of your team aware of the work you are going to do on a particular day or what you have already done. This will help you get rid of exasperating conditions and improve your performance as a nurse.
8. Talk About it
If you feel like you are under stress, don’t hesitate to share the problem with friends, family members, co-workers or anyone whom you can trust. Hiding your emotions may induce the feeling of hatred towards the work, and impact your life forever.
9. Access Preventive Measures at Place
You are not the only one to undergo workplace stress in nursing; numerous professionals face this misery. These days, hospitals, clinics, and other workplaces are getting creative to minimize employees’ stress. For this, they organize certain activities such as painting sessions, pottery and dance classes, journal writing, and meditation programs. Besides taking these things into consideration, some organizations set special designated areas where the staff members can relieve their stress. You can undertake these expedients if available at your workplace, to keep tension at bay.
10. Be Emotionally Stable
Emotional stability is of prime importance for those who are in the field of nursing. This profession is amongst the most stressful jobs in the world. Thus, it is a must for healthcare workers to make their emotional intelligence (EI) stronger. For this, you have to regulate some basic dimensions of EI such as self-regulation, empathy, social skills, motivation, and self-awareness. In order to control these dimensions, you can analyze the way you behave with the people, appreciate your colleagues when they do something out of the ordinary, observe the way in which you handle the stress, accept your mistakes, and count your strengths.
Though stress management in the nursing profession is not as easy as pie, patience and complete analysis of yourself may help you conquer this monster.
