Stories

How is your experience of your work colleagues?
Are they venters or moaners?
Love to hear your stories
Drop us a line...

We need to ask why...

Why is it that massive amounts of money are being spent on recruiting nurses - yet the monetary compensation for working overtime, night shifts and weekends remains the same and is cited by nurses as a reason why they are leaving the profession.

Check it out

We came across a wonderful web site today

Great ideas, advice and support blended with the right amount of humor.

Check it out www.impactednurse.com

Point of difference

Ever wanted something different in your life?

Funny thing is unless we take action and do something different things remain the same

John Dryden stated that the definition of insanity is ‘doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results’

What do you want to change in your life?

What one tiny little baby step can you take today to make this happen?

Essential Life Success Strategies

People generally want success in their lives.

But what is success . . . ?

For each of us the answer will differ and that's OK.

The issue will be when we view success as the goal. For it does not necessarily follow that success equates to happiness. When and if we reach our goal of success it often brings unexpected challenges and happiness is not necessarily the outcome.

What is important is to ensure you know what success means to you and view success as a way of life, rather than as a goal. Life, it means so much to some and so little to few. We only get one.

How do you make the most of your life?

How do you live a 'successful' life?

How do you milk every last moment for maximum enjoyment and learn the lessons you were meant to learn?

Top tips for success at life

• Define what success means to you
• Be clear -- is success a goal or the way you life your life?
• Remember who you are and what you hold dear to you
• Find the courage to live your values on a daily basis
• Pay yourself first with daily compassionate self care: great food and water, exercise, quality sleep, good friends and relaxation.
• Know yourself, both your light and your dark side
• Gain the knowledge but then practice, practice, practice. It's the doing that will be transformative.
• De-stuff your life -- those of us who reside in the Western World have lives full of 'stuff'-- people, commitments, clutter, busyness . . .
• Realize your life is made up of your time, seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks and so on which is exactly what happens . . . and so on your life goes -- how do you want to spend each precious minute? What do you want to do with your time or in other words your life? Learn to minimize the waste of time which is essence is your life-- learn to say no: politely, gracefully, tactfully but with meaning
• Take charge of your life's blueprint, what are your needs / direction?
• Take what you want from your past & move forward. What is it that you will take forward?
• Use the power of a reframe and the magic of humor
• Connect with those around you and the environment
• Rejoice in every single moment -- good, bad & ugly

Personal responsibility

Our last post was about personal power

Wanted to share with you a quote from Stephen Covey which sums it up nicely:

"Our ultimate freedom is the right and power to decide

how anybody or anything outside ourselves will affect us."

Exercise your personal power today, the more you exercise it, the stronger it will become

and the more confident you will be in using it

We would love to hear about your challenges and successes

The team at Nurses Self Care

Personal power = less work stress

A sense of control is one of the main factors in determining work place stress
Feeling in control minimizes stress
The interesting point here is that we are all capable of feeling in control, often however we choose not too
As a consequence we give our life over to others
Switch your personal power switch on
Its not about what others think about or say about you
Other people's opinion of you is none of your business
Don't get caught up in something you can't control
Take back your life today!!

Do you have examples of when you have exercised your personal power?
The team at Nurses Self Care

Support

Support and a sense of connection is one of the very best self care strategies. How's your support system?
There are many nursing communities out there.
The internet is increasing the options of support.
Check out www.codeblog.com
or www.pixelrn.com these are just two of many on line nursing communities available

The team at Nurses Self Care

Work stress - doing the impossible

I walk with a group of friends each weekend. We chat and laugh and get to experience the great outdoors together. This week I had a text from one of my friends saying they couldn't make it because they had to go into work. I got to thinking about this and started to wonder why...especially considering statistics in Madeleine Bunting’s book ‘Willing Slaves: How the Overwork Culture is Ruling Our Lives’, that reveal: the number of people working over 48 hours has more than doubled since 1998, from 10% to 26% and unbelievably one in six workers are working greater than 60 hours per week. These are scary statistics given that both American and Australian studies link extended work hours with an increased risk of a range of health consequences including: fatigue, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, fatigue, stress, depression, musculoskeletal disorders, chronic infections and diabetes.^1,2

So...why do we do it? Why do we put work before our own health care needs? Why do we put work before the basic practices we need to care for ourselves?

The team at Nurses Self Care

1. Dembe, A.E., Erickson, J.B., Delbos, R.G., & Banks, S.M.(2005). The impact of overtime and long work hours on occupational injuries and illnesses: new evidence from the United States. Occupational and Environmental Medicine; 62: 588 - 597.

2. Dawson, D. McCulloch, K., & Baker, A. (2001). Extended working hours in Australia: counting the cost. Centre for sleep research University of South Australia.

Life essentials

Do you feel torn between the competing demands in your life?
Nurses are known for their compassion...
to others; however we often have to learn to be compassionate to ourselves
Start by implementing the skills of compassionate self care on a daily basis.
A good place to start is simply to treat yourself as you would treat others
then practice, practice, practice until it becomes a habit

The team at Nurses Self Care

Are you your number 1 priority?

Do you feel you neglect your own needs in preference to those of your family, friends and patients? You can't be a good nurses without caring for yourself...
Much as we like to get rid of statements like "you can't" in this particular instance its true
We need to put ourselves at the top of our care list
Make sure you are your number 1 priority today

The team at Nurses Self Care

Hello & welcome

Hello and Welcome to our very first Blog.This has been a dream of ours for some time, and so the level of excitement here is palpable!!

We created this blog to help YOU put yourself first in YOUR life

In 2006 we foundered www.nursesselfcare.com with the intent of providing information, tools and support for nurses based on a core belief that it all starts from a place of self care.

Let us know what you think are the issues in nurses lives and your thoughts and questions in ensuring that Nurses Care for themselves with the multiple demands they face

The Team at Nurses Self Care