Joan Jenkins
Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center, USA
Title: The importance of self care to nurses overall well being & nursing practice
Biography
Biography: Joan Jenkins
Abstract
Self-care is essential for nursing practice because these health habits help to protect, and promote the well-being, and mental health of nurses while sustaining their ability to manage the occupational stressors of providing care to individuals experiencing acute, and/or chronic illnesses. Self-care practices such as eating balanced meals, engaging in adequate physical activity, yoga, and meditation improve the health of clinicians. They also help to promote the healing that needs to occur after nurses have dealt with traumatizing events (i.e.. pain, suffering) associated with providing care. When nurses do not practice adequate self-care activities research has shown that these clinicians can develop self-care deficits which reduce their ability to successfully manage the occupational stressors associated with providing care. This predisposes them to the development of stress related conditions (i.e. compassion fatigue, burnout), poor physical & mental health outcomes which decrease their job satisfaction, and productivity (Crane and Ward, 2016). Their compromised health reduces the quality of the care that they provide and negatively affects the health outcomes of patients.