Nurses and self-care

Nursing is a highly stressful profession. Stress can impede nurses’ ability to work effectively leading to workplace errors, burnout and nurses leaving the profession. Self-care activities can help promote the mental and physical health of nurses thereby enabling them to better cope with stress. Self-care activities include self-compassion, mindfulness, general healthy habits such as quality sleep, a balanced healthy diet, regular exercise, attending to one’s basic needs to list a few. Self-care must become inherent to nurses to equip them to better care for others.