A profession like healthcare forces you to make any changes to your life, both professional and personal, but as so many people give themselves wholeheartedly to their career in the healthcare profession, whether it’s as a doctor or a nurse, this can be at the expense of their own health. Medical professionals should, in theory, know how best to look after themselves but this is very rarely the case. So let’s show you some of the best ways on self-care for medical professionals can look after themselves in every single way.
Self-care for medical professionals:
1. Focus on Strength
Physical strength is critical, and what we have to remember is that rather than opting for a model in the modern world that seemingly rewards pushing yourself to the brink in terms of exercise, you need to adopt an approach where you are very slightly exerting yourself. This is the very key to building back stronger. Because if you exhaust your internal resources, you won’t be able to build back up stronger, or at the very least, it will take a lot longer, especially when you factor in long shifts or night work.
This is why strength, in a physical sense, as well as cardiac health, can make you a force to be reckoned with. Cardiac surgeon Dr Zachary Solomon MD offers simple approaches to improving cardiac health through exercise, but it doesn’t involve completely exerting yourself seven days a week. Strength is something we must build up very gradually and we recognize that when we’re doing too much, we have to put the brakes on.
2. Recognize What Makes You Function Best
We spend so much time giving ourselves to others that we might lose track of what is good for us. Look at those things that make you even-keeled throughout your day, whether it’s in terms of your energy or your mindset. This is why self-care is one of those things that becomes critical for healthcare professionals. Recognizing that if you completely give yourself over to others with little thought as to your own resources, you’re not going to function for too long, and burnout will inevitably follow.
Look at an even distribution of your energy, which means actually eating a good breakfast that is balanced in nutrition but also acknowledging that if you are constantly pushing yourself to the limits, you have that time that is well and truly for you. When you get home, switch everything off and allow at least 10 minutes of decompression time. Something like mindfulness is great here because it focuses your energies on being you rather than thinking in the past or in the future.
3. Practicing Wellness
It’s not enough just to do it when you are feeling stretched beyond your capabilities but actually recognizing that it is something you need to do every day. We all need to look after ourselves, but this is why, just like in the health profession, putting those safeguards in place before a patient gets worse is the best method of all, and you should be following it too. That’s why practicing wellness is important self-care for medical professionals.
