Tired of putting out fires?

When you first started out in your nursing career, how could you have known that the majority of your time would be spent running around doing non-nursing tasks. Figuring out staffing, managing difficult personalities, just getting supplies for gosh sakes- these are not the nursing skills we learned in school.

So if you’re looking for a little stress reduction in nursing, here are some of my favorite ways to reduce nursing career overwhelm. While the strategies may seem unrelated in any specific way to our nursing careers, they are highly effective in creating work life balance so that we can ease the pressures from our jobs as busy nurses. So here we go…

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• To reduce stress in nursing, we have to be able to handle the healthcare environment. The busyness, ever-changing, fast-paced settings we work in are here to stay. To be able to cope with, and even thrive in, these types of environments you have got to relive stress outside of work. Make it a point to do at least ONE thing for you every single week. Can you take a bubble bath? Listen to New Age music? Get a massage? Do one thing for yourself this week.
• A stress reduction tip that may make you cringe, but is highly effective, is to eliminate distractions. I just entered the 21st century when I got my first tablet this past weekend. I love the device, but there are these crazy pop ups that happen every time I get some sort of update. I had to go in and turn this off on every single individual app. When I am doing one thing, I do not want to be distracted by another. It leaves me feeling frustrated. And you shouldn’t either. Multi-tasking is distracting at the least, and annoying to irritating at the most. Focus on doing one thing at a time and you will enjoy a much lower stress level.
• Say ‘yes’ to yourself. As nurses, we want to help everyone. Except ourselves. Two questions we get asked are answered in the exact opposite way in which they can help decrease our stress levels. Here they are: ‘Do you need any help?’ Answer: ‘No, I am fine.’ ‘Can you do this for me?’ Answer: ‘Sure.’ Almost automatically we respond in a way that puts ourselves and our stress in jeopardy. Start pausing before you answer to see if helping out again is going to push you over the overwhelm edge.

What would you add to this list? How do you reduce stress in nursing? What has helped you with your own stress relief and that of your nursing career? Leave a comment below. Enjoy your health today.