Tag: nurses week

Wellness Tips for the Busy Nurse

During Nurses Week, we honor the hard work and dedication required of every nurse. The long hours and challenging shifts can wreak havoc on the body and mind. Many nurses live in a chronic state of stress, which can manifest through headaches, insomnia, decreased immunity, hypertension, and risk for heart disease. Here are a few ways to incorporate wellness into your daily life.

Create a Routine
By establishing a wellness routine, you’ll be more likely to stick with it. Any of the following little tips can easily be added to your day—it’s not all or nothing! Most will take just a few minutes, and some can be incorporated during your commute to work. Creating a wellness routine only requires a commitment from you to take better care of yourself.

Just Breathe
The act of conscious, deep breathing can actually change your mood from tired, anxious, and unnerved to energized and calm in virtually no time. Sit tall, draw your shoulders back and down, and lengthen through the crown of your head. Eyes opened or closed, begin breathing deeply in and out through the nose. Take about 20 rounds of breath and notice how you feel.

Make a Mantra
This could be something as simple as “I am enough” or even “It’s going to be a great day.” Your mantra could even be a single word such as “peace” or “serenity.” Write it on your mirror, put it on a Post-It, say it when you first wake up or when you’re feeling stressed. There are several studies that suggest that having a personal mantra allows you to reduce stress and anxiety naturally.

Fall in Love with Lavender
Studies have shown that lavender can help with stress, depression, and anxiety. Buy pure, organic essential oil at your local health food store. Diffuse it in your home, or put three to four drops on a tissue and keep it in your car console so you can get a few whiffs during your pre-shift deep breathing. You might even consider dabbing a drop or two on your scrub top mid-shift for a little pick-me-up.

Epsom Salt Soaks
Pour a cup of Epsom salt into a warm foot bath and soak for 5-10 minutes. Your feet will thank you! Epsom salt (magnesium sulfate) relaxes the muscles and may reduce swelling. If you have a little more time, add 2 cups to a warm bath before bed. Add a few drops of lavender oil and you’ll sleep like you never have before.

Elevate Your Legs
Give swollen, aching feet a lift to reduce swelling at the end of a long shift.  You might also consider compression socks keep the blood flowing. While your legs are elevated, gently stretch your feet and calves. For a quick massage, try rolling a tennis ball (or frozen water bottle) under your foot, paying special attention to the arch.

Stretch It Out
This is good for before, during, and after work: Take 5 minutes or so to do some gentle stretches for your neck, arms, wrists, back, and legs. Try this: Grab a chair and place it in front of you. On an inhale, reach your arms up overhead, lengthening through your spine and crown of head. On an exhale, fold forward, placing your hands or forearms on the chair. Take 10 or 20 deep breaths here. Bend your knees and slowly roll back to a standing position as you inhale. Do your best to practice good posture during the day.

For when you have more than a few minutes, these tips are vital for overall health, too:

Prioritize Nutrition
Keep prepacked snacks available to grab and go, especially high-protein options like nuts, dried fruit, or protein bars. Don’t skip your lunch break, if at all possible—fill up on water and filling fruits and veggies. Look into using a slow cooker to have meals hot and ready when you get home after a long shift, or build up a stash of freezer-friendly meals. And please try not to deprive yourself of a much-needed bathroom break!

Maintain Your Mental and Emotional Health
Caring for women and babies can be stressful enough—don’t let anyone or anything else add unnecessary discomfort to your day. Find support for your challenges. Identify someone you can trust at work. Everyone deserves to know that someone has their back. If you have issues with workplace bullying, depression, or addiction, don’t let another day go by without reaching out to a trusted source of support, be that a friend, family member, employee assistance program, helpline, or spiritual community.

Keep Your Skills Sharp
Yes, part of wellness means continuing to grow and excel in your chosen field! AWHONN offers more than 40 hours of free CNE activities in the Online Learning Center on a wide variety of topics. When you just have a few minutes, check out Nursing for Women’s Health or JOGNN articles—you can even read them using the app! AWHONN members can access the full archives of these two scholarly journals online at AWHONNjournals.org.

Lori is a registered nurse with years of experience in newborn intensive care and postpartum nursing. She writes regularly for AWHONN; American Nurse Today; and her blog, Neonurse. She has also been featured in The Huffington Post. She is a 200-hour Yoga Alliance-certified yoga teacher, a certified prenatal and postnatal yoga teacher, pediatric CPR instructor, and a member of International Childbirth Educators Association (ICEA). Her passion is teaching new parents about their babies and guiding them in the process of becoming a family.

A Special Thank You to Our Preceptors

Elizabeth Rochin, PhD, RN, NE-BC
Vice President of Nursing, AWHONN

After long days or nights, and years into a career, we as nurses may forget what initially brought us into nursing. If you want to remember, simply ask a student. In fact, I had the opportunity to ask fourteen nursing students just today why they chose nursing as a career path.

Here is a sampling of what they said:

  • “I wanted to make a difference in someone’s life.”
  • “There is nothing more pure than helping someone in need.”
  • “I knew since I was three years old that I wanted to be a nurse. I think I inherited it, my mom and grandmother are nurses.”
  • “This is my second degree. I discovered in myself a very strong need to help others, and went back to school. This was the right decision.”
  • “I was originally in sales and marketing, and realized that I loved making connections and promoting relationships. This was the perfect way to do both.”
  • “The first time a patient said, ‘You’ll make a great nurse,’ I knew I made the right decision.”
  • “I can’t imagine doing anything else. This is the perfect way to give back.”
  • “To use my hands to help heal a patient, or help to bring a new life into the world, I can’t think of anything better.”

Most of us will remember thinking about one or more of the quotes above, and will bring us back to our own days as a student nurse, and renew the passion in our work.

For the next several weeks, colleges and universities throughout the nation will graduate the newest members of women’s health, obstetric and neonatal nurses. We congratulate and welcome you to your new lives and careers. Nursing offers such diversity in career paths, and the opportunities for expert bedside care, advanced practice and nursing leadership roles have never been greater. There has never been a more exciting time to be a nurse!

But it is also important that we understand and remember that at one time or another, we were all new. None of us came into nursing knowing everything. We all needed a hand to hold us steady, and a guide to offer direction and counsel in how to move from a new graduate to a team member who could safely and effectively care for patients and their families.

Occasionally we forget what it felt like to be new. And we must be willing to remember. The greatest gifts we can bestow upon our newest nurses are understanding, time and expertise. We must commit to assisting our new graduates to grow and develop, and assist them to make the difference they want to and know they can make.

I would like to take this moment to thank all of our outstanding preceptors who strive to give our new graduates (and all new nurses, for that matter!) the best possible experiences and learning opportunities. Preceptors are those nursing team members who work with a new nurse for 12-20 weeks, and sometimes much  longer, to ensure appropriate training and competence. Preceptors are the “life blood” of nursing, and your effort and dedication to your orientees and organizations does not go unnoticed. Thank you for taking on this vital role and for shaping the next generation of women’s, obstetrics, and neonatal nurses.

Five Staff Portraits for Reston HospitalLiz  has over 25 years of Women’s and Children’s experience and  has devoted her professional career to the care of women and children with roles as a staff nurse, nursing educator and most recently executive leadership. She has presented nationally on patient experience and mentoring new nursing leaders. In 2008, Liz was named to the Great 100 Nurses of North Carolina, and is a member of Sigma Theta Tau. In addition to her clinical work and expertise, Liz has taught at the baccalaureate and graduate levels at East Carolina University College of Nursing. She is board certified as a Nurse Executive by the American Nurses Credentialing Center.

My Top Five Exercising Tips to Improve Your Mind, Body, and Spirit

Lynn Erdman, MN, RN, FAAN,

For Nurses Week, we are promoting the “year of the healthy nurse.” We are encouraging nurses, like you, to focus on having a healthy mind, body, and spirit, to support your overall wellbeing. For me, I love exercise and have become more committed to it than ever. I find that the simple activity of exercising helps to clear my head and prepares me for my day. If your body and the mind are healthy, the care you can give your patients will be improved.

Exercising has so many benefits for the body: weight management, endorphins that elevate your mood and the energy it delivers to you. Here are my personal five tips for exercising that I believe will help improve your mind, body and spirit.

  1. Establish routine. As nurses, our schedules can be pretty hectic and unpredictable, which is why it’s important to establish a regular exercise routine. This is key because when you neglect to establish a routine, it’s easier to make excuses or find reasons not to workout. For me, I go to the gym at 5 AM because that works for me. Take a step back and see what time works best for you. Exercise has to be established as a priority and built into your schedule for a day or for the week.
  2. Stand up regularly at work. As nurses, we stand up most of the day which is a wonderful way to stay active during the day. I find that getting up every once in a while is important to do at work because it keeps the blood flowing. It’s as simple as taking a brisk walk around the block, the facility or the grounds that can make all the difference. If you have the opportunity to have a standing desk, use it. I love mine. It makes it easier to walk around the office, and simple tasks that require you to go to a different part of the office are no longer hard to do.
  3. Use a medicine ball as your chair. If I am going to sit at work, I always sit on my medicine ball chair. This keeps my body still exercising even when I am sitting because it keeps my leg muscles moving and works out my core.
  4. Switch it up. When it comes to exercise, many of us are creatures of habit. We tend to gravitate towards doing the same routine on the elliptical, treadmill, or muscle work out. Regular workout is great but to maximize the time spent at the gym it’s important to include variety in your exercises to keep your muscles challenged. This helps overcome a weight loss plateau, builds new muscles, and prevents boredom from doing the same routine.
  5. Meditate for five minutes a day. Spend five minutes a day doing either spiritual meditation or just focus your mind in a direction of positive thinking. As nurses, we have stressful days. Meditation helps relieve some of the stress you face in your day-to-day life.

I have found that when I take care of my body and my mind my overall spirit is better. Nurses have hard days and multiple stress points at work. Whether its meditation, yoga, or exercise, all of these methods help improve the work-life balance we all reach to achieve.

Lynn Erdman, MN, RN, FAAN,
Chief Executive Officer, AWHONN

Lynn joined AWHONN in 2014 with more than 30 years of experience in the healthcare and nonprofit sectors.  She is a highly skilled national leader in the field of nursing and previously held key national leadership positions with three global health organizations: the American Cancer Society, the American College of Surgeons, and the Susan G. Komen Global Headquarters.  Lynn has also served in top leadership positions with several hospitals and healthcare systems.