Health

How Nurses Can Stay Healthy

Nurses have a very hard job to do, and a lot of pressure and responsibility come with their role. They will be helping people in the worst moments of their life and making them feel better physically, mentally, and emotionally. As you might expect, that can mean that nurses take a toll physically, mentally, and emotionally as well. Yet, although this can be hard, a good nurse will want to keep going and work hard to help as many people as possible. 

In order to do this, a nurse must take care of their own health as well as everyone else’s. If they don’t, they’ll burn out and become exhausted, which means a long time away from work. Sometimes it can even mean the end of a career, either through choice or necessity. That’s why your own health and wellness needs to come first as a nurse, even if that might be a hard pill to swallow. With that in mind, here are some things that a nurse can do to keep themselves healthy to do the best job they can for their patients. 

Regular Exercise

It’s a very dedicated kind of nurse who will finish a 12-hour shift (or longer) and then head straight to the gym for a workout. For most nurses, by the time they finish work, all they really want to do is have a rest, especially if they are at work again the next day. However, if anyone knows the truth about how good regular exercise is for a body, it’s a nurse, so it seems ironic that they are the people who tend to exercise the least. 

Luckily, there are ways around this problem. Although working out at a gym is great if you can do it, it’s just not something that a nurse can do on a regular basis – not just because they are tired, but because their shifts mean that doing anything regularly is challenging, including joining in with an exercise class. 

However, there are other ways to exercise, which will mean you as a nurse can stay healthy and give your all when it comes to patient care. It will depend on what you like to do, but some examples include:

  • Cycling to and from work – walking is also good if you walk briskly
  • Following online workout videos when you have a spare 10 minutes
  • Using the stairs rather than the elevator (and running up the stairs if you can)

Some nurses might feel that the physical aspect of their day-to-day work is enough exercise, and that is true to an extent. You do move around a lot during the day, especially a nurse who walks an average of 12,000 steps a day, which is a good start. Still, this physical activity is not usually something that will make the heart beat faster, and that’s what’s important when it comes to staying fit. This is why a nurse needs to do more exercise on top of their job. 

Sleep Well

Shiftwork can wreak havoc on your circadian rhythm, confusing the body so that it doesn’t know when it’s day or night and when you should be sleeping. You’ll get tired at the wrong times, and when you go to bed, you might even find you’re not tired at all. This will lead to a restless night, causing you to be even more tired the next day, so the cycle continues. 

The problem is, it’s important to sleep as well as possible when you’re a nurse. When you sleep well, your body’s immune system becomes stronger (meaning you won’t be so susceptible to picking up sickness from your patients and other people in the hospital). On top of that, your muscles and organs can rejuvenate during the night, ensuring you are healthy and strong when you wake up, ready to tackle your work. Plus, the fact that you slept well means you’ll feel more positive and alert, both of which are important to nursing.  

It’s already been said that sleeping well as a nurse can be difficult, so what can you do to make things better? One thing you should be doing is relaxing after work. You’ll produce more hormones that tell your body it’s time to sleep, and falling asleep will be a lot easier. Things you could do will depend on what you personally find relaxing, but reading a book, soaking in the tub, watching a movie, exercising, cooking, or anything else will work. As long as it calms and relaxes you so that you can get a good night’s sleep, it’s worth doing. 

You should also make your bedroom as comfortable as possible. Invest in some blackout curtains on the windows so that the room is as dark as it can be, and make sure your mattress is a good one – if it’s older than seven years, it’s time to replace it. Also, try to keep your bedroom clean and tidy, as this will help you sleep – subconsciously, you’ll be more relaxed when you’re not surrounded by mess and clutter. 

Change Jobs

If being a nurse is making you sick, either because you catch a lot of illnesses from your patients, it’s too much for you physically, or it’s taking an emotional toll and potentially leading to mental illness, it might be time to change jobs. As much as you might love what you do, your health is too precious to let it be affected by your work, so you’ll need to make some changes if you wish to stay in your job and not quit. Naturally, these changes will depend on your health and feelings about the healthcare profession, in addition to the type of job you have within the healthcare sector.

For example, if you still want to work in healthcare, but you know that nursing is making you ill, you can take everything you’ve learned and all the experience you’ve gained as a nurse and take an Executive Master of Health Administration to move you in a different direction. With this approach, you can still help people, but in a different, less hands-on kind of way. You can arrange working schedules, recruitment, and policies and generally oversee how a department or whole hospital runs. The senior health admin role is still a job with a lot of responsibility, and it will be hard work, but it’s a great alternative to nursing if you need to step away from the front line of healthcare. 

Alternatively, if your career has run its course and run you down in the process beyond the point of return, perhaps you need to get away from healthcare altogether. You need to think carefully about whether or not this is something you truly want to do because if you leave, it might be hard to come back. 

It won’t be impossible to return to nursing, of course, but healthcare changes so much and quickly that if you leave for a short while to try something else, you will find a lot to catch up on when you get back. This will be a big decision to make, but if you do decide to look elsewhere, don’t forget that the many soft skills you would have picked up and honed during your time as a nurse will give you a leg up on the competition for a variety of other jobs. 

Have Hobbies

As emphasized, nurses work very hard, and they work long hours. However, they can also have plenty of time off between shifts, and although some of that time should be spent with family or relaxing, some of it could be spent enjoying a favorite hobby. In fact, this is something that can be very good for a nurse’s health, and therefore it’s definitely something to consider. 

If you don’t currently have anything that might be called a ‘hobby,’ it’s time to start searching for something you would enjoy. If you do have a hobby but perhaps don’t focus on it as much as you could, it might be time to change your priorities. 

Ultimately, hobbies are good for people. They allow for relaxation, they offer a good way to have fun, and they will de-stress you when you are focusing on your hobby since you aren’t thinking about other things that might be causing you anxiety. Plus, enjoyable pastimes also give you a better sense of work-life balance – which is a must for any job, not just nursing.

When you can step away from work and relax, you’ll be much more productive when you return. No matter how much you love doing your job, if you don’t make time for fun in your life, you will burn out sooner or later, and that could be a disaster that you may struggle to recover from

Although some hobbies require you to be in a certain place at a certain time to take a class or other joint activity, others can be done on your own time. Collecting things, playing various sports and exercises, enjoying art, having fun with video games, reading a good book, and many more activities can all fit around your shifts, giving you a chance to do everything you want to do for fun and stay mentally healthy at the same time while performing well in your job.

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