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Self Care

5 Self Care Tips For Nurses

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Over the years, nurses who by virtue of their jobs are trained caregivers, have effortlessly taken care of generations. Nurses have taken care of societies, communities, generations and families, and they continue to do so to this day. However, nursing in 1939 where the district nurse would ride a bicycle to do community visits is now different from nursing in the 21st century.

Nurses nowadays have a lot to juggle since today’s life demands more from us with very little help coming from any direction. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic worsened the situation and many nurses have put aside self-care in order to carry out their duties faithfully. Self-care by definition as defined by the Global Self-Care Federation is:

Self-care is the practice of individuals looking after their own health using the knowledge and information available to them…. It involves making healthy lifestyle choices, avoiding unhealthy lifestyle habits, making responsible use of prescription and non-prescription medicines, self-recognition of symptoms, self-monitoring and self-management 

Global Self-Care Federation

it is imperative for nurses to prioritise self-care because a lack of adequate self-care will lead to outcomes like burnouts which will lead to mistakes, and in the nursing field, a mistake can result in a fatality. These 5 tips will help nurses in our communities take care of themselves so that they prolong their lives and other services to humankind in need of them:

  1. Try to avoid mental strain. If you feel you have mental fatigue rest for a while.
  2. Do not compare your capabilities and abilities to those of your neighbour, if your neighbour can manage 5 long days and 2 short days in a row, do not compare their strength to yours. Pick a schedule you can manage.
  3. Prioritise your mental health, if anything has the ability to temper with your sanity even by a small fraction, find a way to cut it off.
  4. Try by all means to avoid an unhealthy lifestyle.
  5. Rest, whenever possible take some time off and rest your mind and body.

If you are based in the West Midlands and looking for extra shifts, call us at 03300300031 or send us an email at info@myshifts.works

Self Care

3 Self-Care Tips That Will Blow Your Mind

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When we say self-care tips, we are opening an avenue that is too broad because different people have different definitions of the term self-care. However, for today we will use the World Health Organisation’s definition of self-care which states that:

The ability of individuals, families and communities to promote health, prevent disease, maintain health, and to cope with illness and disability with or without the support of a healthcare provider

So, based on the WHO’s definition of self-care it could be right that those self-care tips we see on social media suggesting that we block our friends and relatives from nagging us and causing us anxiety are to an extent right. Because in the end, self-care is basically making decisions each minute that will better serve you on all fronts and maintaining your physical and mental health.

We have heard so much about eating a healthy diet to maintain a healthy body, trying to stay away from things that will trigger you emotionally or mentally and exercising among other self-care tips. However, for today we will talk about three things that will enhance your self-care in a way that will blow your mind.

  1. Socialising with others. A dynamically balanced human being does not live on an island. People who eat healthily, exercise, and get enough sleep but go about declaring themselves proud loners are not taking care of themselves perfectly. We all need a vibrant or at least a good amount of human interaction with others as they also help us see the world through their eyes which is good for our mental strength.
  2. Knowing when to draw the line. Many people have problems setting boundaries because they don’t want to offend others or they don’t want to be excommunicated or be branded bad names by family, friends or colleagues. As a result, many are offended and their egos are bruised in many ways but they swallow it up because they still want to appear as that nice relative, coworker or friend. Setting healthy boundaries and speaking up or letting people know you are not happy and going to bed with a smile is the most underrated self-care tip of all time.
  3. Leaving situations that are not ideal without looking back. Be it a friendship, a relationship, a home, a job, or a school, if it is causing you sleepless nights, costing you peace and making you unhappy on many levels learn to walk away and be prepared to start afresh. One sleepless night is too many to spend it anxiously looking for a solution to pacify non-ideal situations.

Remember not to mistake self-care for self-indulgence or being selfish, just like what WHO said, it is important to maintain a healthy body and mind but not by transferring it to someone else. Read more of our self-care tips on some of our previous blogs.