Category: Self-Care

Surely this can’t be happening to me.  I love what I do.  Yet the signs were so insidious and I thought, as most nurses do, that I could do it all.  In the beginning, I stopped doing yoga, then meditation and then eating properly.  My self-care went down the drain.  I was irritable with my children and frustrated with myself.  […]

A study was released last year that found nurses are 23% more likely to take their own lives than the general population.  Adding to that shocking statistic is that nurses are 4 times more likely to commit suicide than people working outside of the medical field.  This is all so tragic and sad. Nurses have access to lethal medications, which […]

I previously have written that in Texas nurses filed a complaint for not being paid for breaks that they were unable to take and how some hospitals use break or lunch nurses to fill in so that the others can take a break.  Click HERE The St. Charles Health System in Oregon utilizes the “buddy system.”  They require nurses to […]

  A completely unscientific review of the nurses who I have represented for licensing issues shows that the vast majority of them worked the night shift. The areas where some nurses seem to get in trouble are: (1)    sleeping on the job – because they haven’t adjusted to the night shift schedule; (2)    taking Ambien for sleep during the day […]

What is the first thing that a physician orders when you work night shift and have trouble sleeping during the day?  The physician orders Ambien! Maybe you’ve been working long hours; walking the hard floors of a hospital and it’s taking a toll on your back and other joints.  If you have pain, which cannot be controlled by non-steroidal anti-inflammatories, […]

Frequently I hear nurses saying that we don’t have enough staff to take care of the patients.  The patients are too sick.  We have too many patients.  There are not enough supplies to care for the patients and we don’t have enough time to do everything we need to care for the patients.  These conversations are based in scarcity and […]

Health care providers are some of the key people who should be able to identify domestic violence and provide the appropriate assistance and referrals.  But what if the domestic violence is happening to that health care provider?  What if one of our own nurses is the victim?  What if YOU are the victim? As nurses, like all health care providers, […]

I guess I’m a little bit of a techie and just got a Fitbit which monitors my steps and activities. I enjoy watching my number of steps throughout the day. When I was a nurse, I would spend my time walking down large halls to see my patients and back to the nurse’s station to chart. Once I became an […]

As many of you know, I have been working a lot on my personal growth for some time. I recently discovered something about myself that I want to share with you in hopes that it may help some of you as well. It’s hard for me to believe that I never put this together until after many decades of soul-searching […]

A recent publication reported the story of a nurse who was still working in an emergency department after 23 years of dedicated service. During that time, she frequently experienced being spat upon, bitten, punched, slapped, cursed and even splashed in the face with bodily fluids. One of her latest encounters was the worst. Her patient was a man who had […]