Combating Stress

Stress amongst nurses is one of the most underappreciated yet impactful issues nurses face. It surfaces in so many aspects of a nurse’s work and personal life. The emotional demands are boundless and the physical demands/fatigue can be burdensome. The ethical/moral stresses of the job are always in the back of nurses’ minds as well. And that’s not even taking into account how nurses try to “turn it all off” when they are home with families and friends. This stress often affects the health of nurses and sometimes even the outcomes of patients and patient care. Furthermore, it undermines nurse retention rates and can even hurt the financial well-being of healthcare organizations.

How ANA is helping:

Healthy Nurse, Healthy Nation™ (HNHN) is a social movement designed to transform the health of the nation by improving the health of the nation's 4 million registered nurses. This free initiative is open to everyone. Join at www.hnhn.org.

HNHN:

Broadly connects and engages individual nurses and partner organizations to act within five domains: quality of life, safety, physical activity, sleep, and nutrition
Provides a web platform to inspire action, cultivate friendly competition, provide content and resources to nurses, gather data, and connect nurses with each other, employers, and organizations

Here is a sampling of some of the blogs HNHN offers on stress relief:

Products

Books

Self-Care and You: Caring for the Caregiver
Nurses are the consummate caregivers, often sacrificing their own health and wellness while taking care of others. Self-care means choosing behaviors to counter emotional and physical stress, from exercise and nutritious eating to practicing self-centering activities. Given the emotional stress and strains inherent in your profession, it is important that you make self-care a priority. It is vital to your well-being and enables you to effectively continue your day-to-day practice of healing and caring for others. . Self-Care and You applies an integrated approach to the practice of self-care. This handy guide is organized in six self-care pathways and loaded with detailed examples, guidelines, tips, techniques, and insights about each pathway to help you assess and guide your life long journey to self-care!

Information Overload: Framework, Tips, and Tools to Manage in Complex Healthcare Environments
This book has been recognized by the American Journal of Nursing as one of the best nursing and health care publications of 2015. "Information Overload" earned first place in the 2015 AJN Book of the Year Award category of information technology/social media. The AJN Book of the Year program is a prestigious competition that garners the attention of the nursing community and supporting health care publishers. According to AJN Editor-in-Chief Shawn Kennedy, MA, RN, FAAN, "AJN's Book of the Year awards is our opportunity to acknowledge high-quality publications and to share that with the health care community."

Errors of Omission: How Missed Nursing Care Imperils Patients
This book, relying on over ten years of intensive research, shows the links between missed nursing care, decreased patient outcomes, and poor nursing retention. Author Beatrice Kalisch, PhD, RN, FAAN, deftly provides actions to assist you in your practice to prevent missed nursing care.

Articles

Empowerment Reduces First-Line Managers' Stress
First-line nursing managers who have been structural empowerment experience less stress, according to a study in Applied Nursing Research.

Compassion fatigue : Are you at risk?

The HealthyNurse® Leader

Creative wellness: A missing link in boosting well-being

Managing stress in health care with meditation: Got a minute?

Building personal resilience

Emotional wellness