Introduction
~ICE BREAKER QUESTION ~
Do you spend time each day doing something you LOVE?
DID YOU KNOW?
74% of people consider self-care to mean taking care of their bodies, while 57% think it means taking a mental break. 39% of men say they consistently make time for self-care while only 32% of women do.
~SELF CARE ~
Self care can be defined as, but not limited to, the practice of taking actions in protecting, and building up the well-being, happiness, and making time for self especially during times of increasing levels of stress.
Self Care Quotes:
- "Taking care of myself doesn't mean 'me first' It means 'me, too'" - L.R. Knotts
- "Put yourself at the top of you to-do list every single day and the rest will fall into place." -Unknown
- "Self-Care: doing the things that make you feel more like yourself" -Robyn Conley Downs
According to the CDC Mental Health can be defined as emotional, psychological, and social well-being. It affects how we think, feel, and act. It also helps determine how we handle stress, relate to others, and make healthy choices.
Mental Health Quotes:
- “My dark days made me stronger. Or maybe I already was strong, and they made me prove it.” — Emery Lord
- “You don’t have to be positive all the time. It’s perfectly okay to feel sad, angry, annoyed, frustrated, scared and anxious. Having feelings doesn’t make you a negative person. It makes you human.” — Lori Deschene
- “Tough times never last, but tough people do!” — Robert Schuller
- “I keep moving ahead, as always, knowing deep down inside that I am a good person and that I am worthy of a good life.” ― Jonathan Harnisch
Self care can reflect mental health.
"While we agree that self-care is essential, most of us don’t see self-care barriers the same way."
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Task
The purpose of this web quest is to introduce new ways to take time for yourself and practice self care, learn all about ways to grasp control of your mental health, and ways to not become burn out in future roles as a Registered Nurse.
Self Care: What It Really Is | Susannah Winters | TEDxHiltonHeadWomen
Self Care tasks create HAPPINESS
- Yoga
- Read
- Cook
- Bake
- Meditation
- Make your bed
- Take a bath
- Hike
- Run
- Sit outside
- Anything that consumes time that is enjoyable to YOU!
Being a Nurse is NOT an easy job or lifestyle. They say:
“the nurse is expected to perform patient care with patience and empathy, all in a highly stressful environment, with few resources and an excessive workload, thereby requiring nurses to find a balance between these factors that interfere in their working life.”
THAT is what can cause BURNOUT!
Causes of BURNOUT
Signs of burnout
Emotional exhaustion
Depersonalization
Low degree of personal accomplishment
How to Identify Burnout Symptoms
According to Dr. Bourg, symptoms of burnout can include:
Physical and emotional exhaustion:
Fatigue
Insomnia
Loss of appetite
Anxiety and/or depression
Detachment:
Loss of enjoyment
Pessimism
Isolation
Ineffectiveness and lack of accomplishment
Apathy and feelings of hopelessness:
Irritability
Lack of productivity
The 5 stages of burnout
- Honeymoon Phase. When we undertake a new task, we often start by experiencing high job satisfaction, commitment, energy, and creativity. ...
- Onset of Stress. The second stage of burnout begins with an awareness of some days being more difficult than others. ...
- Chronic stress. ...
- Burnout. ...
- Habitual Burnout.
"Why Self Care isn't Selfish" | Jessica Brubaker | TEDxGrandCanyonUniversity
Making time for yourself, taking care of yourself, and doing things for yourself create and build a healthy foundation of mental, physical, and emotional health to prevent BURNOUT!
How often do you practice self-care?
Every Few Months
Monthly
Weekly
Daily
I do not currently practice self-care
If you did NOT answer Weekly or Daily, YOU MUST MAKE CHANGES NOW!
We hope our information is useful and resourceful to those who need to learn, understand, and accomplish self care. Being able to identify when and if self care acts are being practiced. Some additional videos and informational tools can be found throughout this web-quest.
Process
Nursing is one of the most stressful professions because of its mental and physical demands. It involves tackling multiple different stressors in the workplace. Examples of these stressors are increased workload, high or unrealistic nurse to patient ratios, high patient acuity, short staffed or understaffed units, unexpected overtime or longer shifts because of unexpected events, tons of charting or documentation, managers or supervisors not willing to help out, and the occasional not getting along with fellow workmates.
Today, you will embark on a journey into the importance of self care and its effect on mental health.
To start, in your own words, I want you to tell me what is self-care? You can write your answer on a piece of paper.
First, you will need to take a quick 19 Question Survey about Work Health.
https://screening.mhanational.org/screening-tools/work-health-survey/?ref
Second, you will then compare and identify if you have experienced some similar characteristics and features with the image below:
https://thenurseslockerroom.wordpress.com/2013/04/02/anatomy-of-a-nurse/
Third, I need you to take the Hang-man challenge about self-care: https://www.bookwidgets.com/play/t:1pfjIRQCiBDHN2YRwsx6p0FU-9max9vvWjisQTypG4pDQ0U2WkND
Fourth, I need you to go on a 10 day self-care challenge. In this challenge, you will perform a specific self-care technique in a day. With continued repetition, you will gain experience and familiarity with the skill or technique.
1. Slow Deep Breathing: there are different types of deep breathing exercises that you can use to help reduce anxiety and stress.
a. 4-7-8 Breathing Exercise:
b. Pursed-Lip Breathing:
c. Lion’s Breath:
d. Alternate – Nostril Breathing:
2. Meditation
- Mindfulness meditation technique helped decrease stress and reported improvements in terms of burnout, depersonalization, personal accomplishment, empathy, belief of psychosocial care, mood disturbance, consciousness, and emotional stability (Freeman et al., 2020).
Here is an article that talks about the use of a Mindfulness Meditation Program that helped VA hospital healthcare employees reduce stress and burnout: https://doi.org/10.1177/2165079919874795
- Having a hard day at work? This quick 5 minute meditation is a great way to de-stress anywhere! Try it out now:
3. Yoga
- According to an article by Saravanakumar et al. (2018), "Yoga involves controlled extension and flexion of major muscle groups during yoga poses (asanas), controlled breathing techniques (pranayama), awareness of the body and proprioception. Asanas are mainly intended to improve and maintain well‐being, flexibility, strength and vitality, while pranayama is believed to help concentration by calming the mind". Another type of Yoga that can be helpful in reducing stress is Laughter Yoga or Hasya Yoga. This type of yoga uses prolonged voluntary laughter accompanied by deep breathing and ending with meditation and relaxation (Lynes et al., 2019).
Article Link for Laughter Yoga or Hasya Yoga: https://doi.org/10.1097/01.NUMA.0000558481.00191.78
Here is a yoga video for healthcare providers:
4. Progressive Muscle Relaxation combined with Music therapy
- Two of the most proven steps in reducing stress and promoting relaxation is the use of Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR) and Music Therapy. According to an article by Ozgundondu & Gok Metin (2019), "PMR is one of the mind-body practices that involves voluntary stretching and relaxation of all the muscle groups in the body, from head to foot". They also talked about music therapy and its use of rhythm, melody, and harmony in causing improvements to the neuroendocrine system to bring changes to feelings and thoughts, helping mind and body relax as one (Ozgundondu & Gok Metin, 2019).
Here is an article that talks about the use of Progressive Muscle Relaxation combined with Music Therapy as a tools to help decrease stress and burnout in ICU nurses: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iccn.2019.07.007
5. Aromatherapy and Massage
- Aromatherapy involves our sense of smell and olfaction with the use of essential oils and various fragrances. Massage, on the other hand, involves the stimulation of stress receptors, which can raise vagal activity and decrease cortisol levels (Li et al., 2019).
Here is an article that talks about the effectiveness of Aromatherapy and Massage in managing stress levels in the nursing profession: https://doi.org/10.1111/jocn.14596
6. Take a warm bath
- Water has various healing properties and health benefits. Warm water during a bath can increase blood flow within the body which can cause muscles to relax and unwind. Various toxins within the body can also be excreted during a warm bath. This happens when warm water helps open up skin pores, allowing the harmful toxins and body waste to come out. "Stress causes the muscles of the body to contract and a hot bath can relieve those symptoms and keep the muscles loose" (Lamothe, 2018).
7. Take a quick nap or improve sleep
- Rest and sleep are two of the most important techniques to help rejuvenate the human mind and body. It helps promote muscle relaxation and reduce muscle tension, thereby reducing stress and recharging the mind and body cells. However, nursing and sleep don't get along quite often. Nurses and other healthcare providers often lack adequate quality sleep time because of long shift hours, changes in shift routines (night shift to day shift for some), and having a hard time falling asleep or maintaining quality sleep. According to an article by Sun et al. (2019), "Shift nurses who have sleep problems are at greater risk for making medical errors, compromised health care quality, patient safety problems, and receiving occupational injuries".
Here is an article that talks about sleep problems in nurses and tips to help promote restful sleep: https://doi.org/10.1111/jonm.12656
8. Exercise:
a. Tai Chi exercise
- An ancient Chinese martial art that has been used as a safe form of exercise to promote health and wellness. It is characterized by slow, intentional movements, mindfulness, meditative breathing, imagery, and a focus on balance, with helpful physical and psychological benefits including positive effects on cognition, depression, anxiety, sleep, cardiovascular health, and fall prevention (Miller et al., 2020).
Here is an article that talks about various health benefits of Tai Chi exercise for nurses: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cnur.2020.07.002
Here is a quick 5 minute Tai Chi video for nurses and healthcare providers:
b. Qi-Gong Exercises
- Qigong is a system of cultivating and working with internal energy and includes improving aspects of posture and controlling breathing techniques, as well as practicing gentle movement, self-massage, and meditation (Sowada, 2019).
Here is a video showing 3 simple Qi Gong exercises for stress relief:
9. Japanese Hand Technique (Jin Shin Jyutsu)
- Jin Shin Jyutsu is an ancient Japanese art that harmonizes the life force energy of the body, mind, and spirit. It had ancient references but was initially developed by Jiro Murai in Japan in the early 1900’s and was introduced in the United States in the 1950’s by his senior student Mary Burmeister (Millspaugh et al., 2021).
Here is an article that talks about the ancient art of Jin Shin Jyutsu and how it was used to help reduce nurse stress: https://doi.org/10.1177/0898010120938922
10. Identify your own way to relieve stress
- Aside from the 9 techniques mentioned above, there are still numerous different techniques available that one can use and incorporate in their routine to help decrease stress and burnout. These other techniques are: reading a book, writing a journal, eating a healthy diet, drinking and hydrating with fluids, going out to your favorite place, doing your favorite activity, and socializing.
- Socializing is a technique that sometimes we tend to forget and not think about as a stress reduction tool. However, we should continue to maintain and improve on using socializing and human interaction. We are programmed to interact and communicate, and through these interactions, we tend to share various feelings and release some tension within our body. We also get to hear from others tips, tricks, and suggestions that can help us solve our own problems. According to Lee - Baggley & Thakrar (2020), "Studies show that activating the social safety system or a secure attachment system enables a cascade of biological, physiological, and neurological changes that help us activate the parasympathetic nervous system, and thereby, feel greater calm, more connecting, and better comforted and soothed". The human interaction and connection helps form groups which can help relieve stress through back and forth communication.
Evaluation
Follow the link below and test your knowledge:
http://www.quiz-maker.com/QC9R6XPGO
Evaluate which of the 5 stages of burnout below you may currently be experiencing and take a moment to reflect on that. Is there anything you need to change to help alleviate stress? Use some ideas presented to make a game plan for moving forward to reduce stress and burnout.
Conclusion
As we have outlined, mental health and self-care are intertwined. When we have good self-care practices in place, our mental health benefits and when our mental health is suffering, we may struggle with wanting to perform self-care activities we once enjoyed. Healthcare workers are particularly at risk amongst the ongoing pandemic with anxiety and depression highly reported among staff (Lai et al., 2020). Self-care is vital, and taking moments through out the day to pause and self-reflect on how we are feeling can improve life satisfaction (Hedderman, O’Doherty, & O’Connor, 2020). We each have different things that we find enjoyable. Take time to reflect on what you enjoy spending free time doing, using some ideas we presented as examples. Designate time each week to do some of those things, write it down in your schedule to block off that time. You deserve it!
If you or a co-worker are experiencing a mental health crisis, there are resources out there. Many employers offer counseling services through the health insurance program. If you are unsure where to seek mental health services, contact The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). They provide 24/7 - 365 confidential referral information to a community group in your area based on your current needs. Call 1-800-662-HELP or follow this link to find help near you https://findtreatment.samhsa.gov/
Credits
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