Nurses Need To Take Care of Themselves So They Can Take Care of Others

 



    Nurse Mental Health is often overlooked. Nurses have such a heavy and difficult workload that it often takes a toll on them mentally and physically. Nurses should be able to prioritize their mental health to allow them to be on top of their game while they are at work. They often feel they have to be the hero because they are there in all the critical moments. 

    The article, "Why Nurses Need More Mental Health Days," states, “Most nurses are empaths and patient advocates; the first one in the room, the one holding the patient’s hand during those critical moments.” This shows the pressure that they tend to feel on an everyday basis that can weigh on them long after they leave the health care setting. There tends to be a lack of resources to help nurses ensure they are taking care of their mental health. If a nurse continues to feel this way, they will eventually end up burnt out, which can start to impact the care of a patient. 

A patient should be able to know that they are going to get a nurse’s best care, but if a nurse can’t properly take care of themself how can they take care of another human being? To help this problem of overworked, overtired, mentally exhausted, and burnt-out nurses they should have more mental health days instituted into their schedule. A mental health day would allow a nurse to be able to focus on getting their mental state in the correct place, so that way they can fulfill their potential while they are at work. It would help them not feel guilty for calling out because they are exhausted, as well as allow them to truly get help if they need it. Nurses need to feel validated in their struggles and know that they are not alone. 


This is a short video that includes real-life nurses and their take on why mental health is so important in the healthcare field. 


This video gives some tips and tricks on how to maintain a healthy mental health state. 

Resources: 

Burnout: Why nurses need more mental health days. NurseJournal.org. (n.d.). https://nursejournal.org/articles/why-nurses-need-more-mental-health-days/



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tying in Ethic Responsibilities to Moral Beliefs

Image
       Everyone has different morals and beliefs. People can fall into the same category of religion and still have varying beliefs. When it comes to nurses, they have to do their best to not let their morals and religious beliefs influence their decision making when it comes to patient care. Nurses have a responsibility to do what is best for the patient, other members of their healthcare team, and much more.  Everyone has rights and nurses have to ensure that their decisions grant patients those rights even if it goes against any moral and religious standings that nurses may have. Every nurse, at some point in their career, will have to make a decision that goes against what they believe is “correct”. They cannot allow this decision to impact them doing what is ethical. They often come across something called an “ethical dilemma”, which is when “a nurse is expected to pick between two different options. The nurse is conflicted because each of the opposing ch...
Read more

Workplace Violence

Image
       Nurse s deal with a variety of different types of patients, unfortunately, that comes with violent patients. Workplace violence is a major problem within a nurse’s career that is often not talked about because it can create a negative stigma surrounding the healthcare field. Workplace violence is described as, “violent acts, including physical assaults and verbal threats, directed toward persons at work or on duty.”   In the article “Addressing Workplace Violence and Creating a Safer Workplace”, it mentions that “healthcare workers are five times more likely to sustain a workplace violence injury than other professions.” This number is much larger, but many of the violent incidents that take place go unreported. There are several different reasons that there is so much violence in the healthcare setting. Some of these include families and patients who are under extreme physical and emotional stress and an unorganized and chaotic workplace setting tha...
Read more