Nurses Practice Self-Care

After reading the articles, do you feel nurses practicing self-care can impact patient outcomes, negatively or positively? Explain your response.

After reading the article and both practicing nursing on a weekly basis, I absolutely feel that nurses practicing self-care impact patient outcomes in a positive manner. It is my belief that you first have to take care of yourself before you can be useful to anyone else. Nursing is a very stressful yet extremely rewarding profession. Nurses face a multitude of stress factors that can lead to nurse burnout on a daily basis from understaffing, tough assignments, increasing nurse to patient ratios, long hours, demanding patients, and difficult relationships with other medical professionals. In 2011, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration Bureaus of Labor Statistics found that healthcare provider stress and fatigue were correlated with both medication errors and leads to patient infection (Crane & Ward, 2016). Additionally, in the study conducted by Hyman and others, research showed a correlation between improving the overall health of the medical personnel lead to a decrease in workplace burnout (Crane, Ward 2016). Therefore, I feel that better patient outcomes will result when nurses

I remember feelings a multitude of feelings such as anger, frustration, sadness, and guilt. After completing the self-inventory questionnaire, I determined I do not always deal with stressful situations in the best manner to facilitate optimal self-care. However, I often practice some of the self-care activities such as deep-breathing and taking a break to reevaluate the stressful situation that just happened. Additionally, I always try to keep my sense of humor, as I find that it is very helpful in making your day