Be A Better Nurse By Welcoming Contentment
Posted: Thursday, August 06, 2009
by Karyn Buxman
Funny Nursing Blog
Nurses are extremely busy! The call light's always ringing, patients need care, charts and record keeping take up valuable time -- and just when you think you have caught up, there is a code and the entire day's right off track. Being busy is not enough : you want to be professional, skilled, caring and compassionate! But do you also have to be happy?
Your grin can be medication for a patient --even the most terminally unwell benefit from being exposed to happiness and joy. That is's important to keep in mind, especially if you, like many nurses, tussle with feelings of guilt about feeling happy when your patients are clearly unhappy. Empathy and compassion do not require you to feel bad : you can still be focused in your joy while providing quality care to your patients.
Many nurses are also reluctant to embrace joy and inner happiness for fear of not appearing professional. In a difficult economy where jobs are in short supply, can we, as health care execs, afford to lighten up and laugh?
Increased empathy, enhanced anxiety management, reduced rates of burnout, and a minimization of nurse-to-nurse hostility and interpersonal workplace conflict are all positive complications of being a happier nurse. Patch Adams has long suggested for happiness and joy in the medicare system, and has gave his complete life to spreading that message.
We all already have a place within us where we are ecstatic, according to Dr. Holden. It's a Western construct to believe that happiness resides outside of ourselves : Eastern philosophy teaches that happiness resides within. Stopping the hunt for happiness is crucial, because the search for happiness is one of the things that makes us unhappy.
Health care suppliers are notorious for putting the wants of everyone else before their own. There are patients to care for, doctors to manage, patient families to comfort -- and frequently at the end of the day, a nurse is the first carer for her very own family! But if we want to do a good job caring for others, we want to commit to putting ourselves first. This is difficult, but you have to make the change if you need to be in a position to be a good carer for an extended period of time.
The pressures of health-care are intense. There's such a lot to do : you've got to operate at an almost manic pace just to keep up. This forces us into machine-like roles -- but medicare can not, should not, be automated. Right now, we want to start being more loving and kind to each other. This will benefit the patients -- and it'll benefit us!
Nurse Jokes is a website dedicated to proving that laughter is really the best medicine! With celebrity interviews, stories from the floor, nursing jokes and humor, crazy cartoons and nurse horoscopes, it's laugh out loud funny! Provided by Karen Buxman, a Nurse Keynote Speaker
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