Nursing Self Care Techniques to Prevent Burnout

• Learn the World Health Organization’s dimensions of burnout, the common symptoms of burnout, and the dangers it represents.
• Understand the importance of establishing work/life boundaries as a nurse to protect your personal time and mental health.
• Review other self-care techniques, such as meditation which recent studies show improves the well-being of nurses across multiple metrics.

Healthcare organizations are constantly negotiating with employees over how to bring in and retain nurses. Burnout is a popular topic of these negotiations as staffing shortages worsen and nurses are pushed out of direct patient care by unsustainable working conditions.

Burnout affects nurses at the organizational and individual level as they put their heart and soul into patient care day after day. Nurses need to understand the most common causes and symptoms of burnout in order to better protect themselves.

This article will help nurses better understand what causes burnout, symptoms they can watch out for, and techniques they can use to help alleviate the symptoms of burnout.

Causes and Symptoms of Burnout

The World Health Organization recognizes three primary dimensions of burnout:

• feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion
• increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job
• reduced professional efficacy

These dimensions may manifest themselves in a variety of symptoms, such as exhaustion, apathy, resentment, headaches, and difficulty sleeping. All of these symptoms create dangerous outcomes for nurses and their patients. Burnout can lead to lower patient satisfaction, increased likelihood of hospital-acquired infections, and increased mortality rates.

In 2021, Nursing CE Central conducted a survey to understand better the impact burnout had on nurses.

These are the most common causes of burnout reported:

• Low staffing/High Workload
• Emotional/Physical Exhaustion
• Workplace Culture/Benefits

These causes are never individual nurses’ fault but instead come from institutional challenges. 38% of nurses said they had not brought their concerns about burnout to the administration. These nurses represent a huge gap in communication that may help incentive administration to negotiate solutions for the common causes of burnout.

Nearly 20% of nurses surveyed were actively looking into leaving the nursing profession due to burnout, while another 30% were looking to move to a less stressful nursing position. These unsustainable numbers showcase a dire need to alleviate burnout for nurses.

Moments of high stress are to be expected in a career like nursing, where nurses know they are directly impacting the lives of their community every day. However, high stress without any solutions or change to mitigate the negative impact on nurses is not sustainable.

Nurses have been protesting for safer, more sustainable working conditions at the organizational level through minimum nurse-to-patient staffing ratios and mandated protections for nurses’ personal time. These negotiations are vital for the continued well-being of nurses as a whole, but what can individual nurses do to help alleviate the symptoms of burnout?

Technique 1: Establishing Boundaries

While nurses often want to do what’s best for their team and their patients, it is also important to establish boundaries between your work life and personal life. Setting boundaries can look like not going in to work on your day off or utilizing your paid time off for vacations and self-care days.

It can be challenging to maintain these boundaries, especially when working in an understaffed unit where burnout is rampant. Still, it is essential to remember that your patients deserve you at your best, which can only happen if you protect your time and take care of yourself outside of work.

Establishing boundaries can also mean not taking work home with you. It is only natural to care about your patients and want the best for them, but when you clock off work it’s vital that you don’t bring it home with you. Take this time to focus on your relationships outside of work. Your friends and family can be a fantastic support network and distraction from the stress of your work life.

Technique 2: Meditations

Meditation is a common self-care strategy that pulls influence from multiple schools of thought and cultural backgrounds. One type of meditation, transcendental meditation, was developed in India during the 1950s and involves repeating a mantra in your mind to focus the body into a state of restful alertness.

A new study in the Online Journal of Nursing has found that transcendental meditation may effectively reduce burnout and improve a nurse’s overall mental health. The nurse participants found that meditating at least once daily over three months improved their well-being across multiple metrics.

These metrics included:

• Reducing emotional exhaustion
• Reducing depersonalization
• Reducing symptoms of depression
• Reducing symptoms of anxiety
• Improving sense of personal accomplishment
• Improving Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale results

Results from this study align with similar ones on transcendental meditation’s impact on burnout in teachers.

Meditation is not a one-size-fits-all practice, but all nurses could benefit from taking 20 minutes out of their day to prioritize their own wellness. This time can be spent meditating, journaling, or other self-reflection techniques that allow you greater insight into your own needs.

Technique 3: Purposeful Joy

Nurses lead very stressful lives and often think about what needs to be done next at each moment of the day. However, nonessential tasks that bring you joy must also be prioritized.

Hobbies such as art, hiking, learning a language, or anything that interests you can be used to bring joy to your day-to-day life. You may also find joy in activities such as going to the movie theater, seeing a concert, or a friend’s birthday party.

If you’re struggling to find time in your busy life to prioritize joy, then you may find yourself without the energy to do your essential tasks. Joy can rejuvenate us and motivate us to do our best every day.

Hobbies and activities that bring you joy can also help you connect to your patients, creating deeper bonds and fulfillment in your work that may also hold off feelings of burnout.

The Bottom Line

There is no magic cure for burnout, but these techniques may help you take care of yourself outside of work and protect you from the worst symptoms of burnout. Studies continue to show that self-care, like meditation, helps nurses combat burnout and stay working with patients which makes this profession worthwhile.

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