Nursing -- the Importance of

Nursing -- the Importance of Self-Care Nursing is a profession that requires practitioners to be physically, emotionally, and spiritually healthy if they are to provide for the needs of their clients effectively. The field can be extremely stressful in ways that take a toll on physical and emotional health. Many aspects of nursing are challenging from a spiritual perspective as well in ways that require the practitioner to be as healthy as possible to cope with some of those challenges.

Finally, professional nursing emphasizes the patient education role and the importance of helping patients understand health and wellness concepts from a holistic perspective. In all of those respects, the professional nurse must maintain his or her own health and integrity to cope with the challenges inherent in the field and to benefit their patients to the best of their abilities. Physical Health The nursing profession frequently requires practitioners to work long shift, overnight shifts, and to accommodate scheduling changes on short notice.

Similarly, it is very common for nurses to develop sleeping difficulties associated with irregular work hours and vocational stress, and to encounter difficulties maintaining their own physical health because of all of those challenges (Tong, 2007). Therefore, it is important for nurses to understand how important regular sleep, good nutrition, and other factors are to their personal physical health. Otherwise, they will not be able to perform up to their highest capacity or to provide the greatest benefit to their patients (Tong, 2007).

Emotional and Spiritual Health and the Holistic Health Perspective The nursing profession can also be extremely difficult on an emotional level because nurses are continually required to deal with people in high states of stress (Tong, 2007). Patients and their families can be tremendously demanding and coworker interactions can also generate extremely emotionally stressful. Even under the best of circumstances, nurses are regularly exposed to patients experiencing pain and they routinely encounter grief in situations involving disability and death.

All of those environmental factors can be the source of emotional stress that can also present significant challenges in terms of maintaining a grounded spirituality. If nurses hope to be able to cope with all of those stresses over the long-term, they must develop stress-reduction strategies, relaxation techniques, and supportive human relationships to maintain their emotional and spiritual health. Contemporary healthcare is becoming more and more open to the holistic perspective (Tong, 2007).

As part of the patient-education and counseling role of nurses, they should be prepared to help patients understand the many complex ways that various life issues relate to their health and the general interconnectedness of their physical, emotional, and spiritual integrity. Naturally, nurses should pay attention to all of those interrelated issues in their own lives as well. Conclusion Modern nursing is much more than a job; in many ways, it.