How Nurses Can Inspire Patients to Take Better Care of Themselves

Becoming a nurse is a big commitment to yourself and life in general. It is a profession that will always keep you engaged in learning new things. Along with substantial knowledge of medical concepts, you will also keep developing a lot more skills that will help you improve things at work. International students who study in Canada and pursue postgraduate nursing courses get a fair exposure to the fact that nurses are the closest allies to their patients. The influence left by nurses on their patients makes a lot of difference in the progress of their healing and recovery.

Nurses have various ways to inspire their patients to take better care of themselves. Let us emphasize this fact more. Listed below are some of the practices that can be helpful for you.

Identifying & Addressing Patient Needs

The needs of every patient will differ depending upon their health history. The first step here would be to acknowledge this. Furthermore, you must know that most of the patients are already aware of it, but there are a few who might want to hear it from you. So, as a nurse, you must explain to your patients everything about their health using the right approach. Any advice or suggestions coming from your side should be helpful, and unlike heaps of things they must have already heard from their family members.

The best approach to identifying and addressing varying patient needs is to create plans. Creating plans can help you understand what your patients already know and what they don’t. Based on this information, you’ll be better prepared to know how and what are you supposed to say things, which your patients must know and haven’t been told so far.

Effective Patient Follow-Ups

Unless you’re a busy nurse working in the ER, patient follow-ups are very important. Why we’d like to exclude ER nurses from this point because it is quite realistic to be unable to take patient follow-ups in an ER specialty.

Patient follow-ups in various departments and specialties can take the form of a phone call, email, or message. It is always a good idea to keep follow-ups more personalized and not generic. Doing so will make your patients understand that you are trying to go above and beyond to help them feel healthy again. It will also instill in them a feeling of wanting to take better care of themselves.

Integrated Patient Communication

Communication is essential to encourage improved patient care experiences. Effective communication with your patients is one of the easiest ways to inspire them. Becoming a nurse demands you improve visibly on your communication skills. Nurses who are good communicators can progress swiftly in their careers. The main benefit of being able to communicate well with your patients is that you can build up trust with them. They would want

to hear advice and suggestions from you because they would trust that when it is coming from you, it will only help them get better.

How to Deal with Angry Patients?

 As a nurse, it can be pretty challenging when your patient takes out their anger on you. It is all the more difficult if you are suffering from something like a nurse burnout because then the anger inflicted on you by patients will seem more difficult to handle.

If you think that a patient is reaching boiling point then it is necessary to recognize any signs early on while also attempting to diffuse the situation at the earliest. In case you are sensing that a patient is getting agitated, there are some ways that can help in dealing with them.

Below, we will mention a couple of workable tips to deal with angry patients. Go through them to know more about handling angry patients.

1. Give Them Time: There are some times when a patient’s anger becomes a call for attention or support. Being around an angry patient is never easy but you have to understand that the patient needs time.

If you neglect the patient then you could increase your risk of liability. In case something goes wrong, you must also spend more time going over the plan of care with the patient and discussing progress and prognosis.

2. Be Empathetic: If a patient is suffering from a mental or a physical problem then tapping into empathy and understanding what the patient may be feeling can help you tailor an ideal response.

If a patient is suffering from a problem then they can overreact to minor things. If they are feeling anxious about something then you can attempt to figure out what is causing that outburst. This can be helpful if you are a charge nurse.

3. Be Calm: You must also resist any urge to get defensive or even raise your voice while speaking to your patient. However, if you think that things are going out of control then you can defend yourself against threats and intimidation.

Try to speak softly and allow your patient to complete what they are saying. You can continue treating your patient with respect and calmness so that they overcome their anger as soon as possible.

4. Interact Positively: Many angry patients are prone to losing steam but some of them could carry on for hours in case you allow them to. You should attempt to close the conversation by asking what the patient needs or how the patient wants to solve a problem.

Nursing education teaches nursing students to suggest options for what can be done to solve the patient’s complaint. Make sure that you summarize some steps so that the patient knows you are serious about addressing problems.

5. Acknowledge Their Feelings: Patients have a need to be heard and understood. You can stand shoulder to shoulder with someone who is upset and not confront them face to face.

Try to understand what ignited the anger of your patient so that you can recognize how they feel. As a charge nurse, you must let the patients know that you understand the reason for their feelings.

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Conclusion:

Angry patients are difficult to manage but their anger can be diffused and managed with finesse, experience, and knowledge. The more you work as a nurse, the easier it will become to manage the anger of your patients.

Blood Sugar Stabilizing Foods that Nurses Should Eat During 12-Hour Shifts

Nursing is a demanding profession. There is a need for nursing professionals to get many things done on an everyday basis while being on the move within a healthcare setting. In the middle of a high-pressure work setting, it is important that nurses take care of themselves by consuming food that stabilizes and even strengthens their bodies.

If you are working for one of the jobs for nurses that require you to attend a 12-hour shift then you should be monitoring your food intake consistently. Eating the right food or the food that stabilizes the blood sugar can have a tremendous effect on the blood sugar and your overall health.

Becoming a successful nurse has a lot to do with being in a good physical and mental state. Hence, you must try to consume healthy food that can keep your blood sugar in check. In this blog, we will see the blood sugar-stabilizing foods that nurses should eat during a 12-hours shift.

1. Fruits and Vegetables: Everyone who consumes whole fruits including blueberries, apples, and grapes has a low risk of having high blood sugar. Most fruits contain a lot of water and fibre to balance out naturally occurring sugar which is called fructose.

Consuming fruits and vegetables can help you in getting protected against heart diseases and even diabetes. So if you are new at one of the jobs for nurses, make it a point to eat healthy by consuming whole fruits and vegetables in your diet.

Some of the blood sugar balancing fruits and vegetables that you can add to your diet include apples, grapes, berries, avocados, broccoli, kale, and spinach.

         2. Whole Grains: Whole grains can be an amazing source of fibre and other important nutrients such as B12 vitamins, iron, selenium, potassium, magnesium, and folate which are responsible for keeping the blood sugar in check.

Even during completing the nursing study in Canada, you must be taught that eating food rich in whole grains helps in keeping heart disease at bay, manage high blood pressure, and some forms of cancer.

Hence, you must try to consume whole grain versions of food as much as possible. Some of the whole-grain foods that you can eat during 12-hour shifts include oatmeals, crackers, quinoa, brown rice, barley, buckwheat, millets, whole wheat bread, etc.

         3. Protein-Rich: Proteins are macronutrients that are important for building muscle mass that helps in limiting carb consumption to burn off more fat. Protein does not increase blood sugar levels and it can also help a person feel fuller for a long time.

Consuming protein-rich foods at your jobs for nurses can slow your digestion and also prevent any post-meal blood sugar spikes along with increasing the feeling of fullness. Some examples of high protein foods include fish, tuna, egg, beans, lentils, nuts and seeds, soybean, etc.

           4. Flavourful and Low-Calorie Drinks: Keeping yourself hydrated by drinking water is a good option but infusing the same water with fruits and vegetables is a great option too. You can cut a lemon or cucumber and put it in water or also make ice cubes while adding some flavouring to them.

In case you are not a hot tea drinker then you can also try cold tea with lemon or a cinnamon stick. Not only will this kind of beverage be low in carbohydrates but it will also help fill you up so you do not crave anything else.

Conclusion:

Working a 12 hours shift can be a tiring endeavour. As a nurse who is responsible for taking care of patients, you must first ensure that you are healthy too and for that, stabilizing your blood sugar levels is important. Make sure you consume healthy foods during your shift so that your blood sugar levels can be optimal and stabilized.

Reflective Practice In Nursing

To provide effective and efficient care services in medical profession is the need of the day. Reflection plays a vital role towards realizing our values. Since long many theories have been developed by the eminent writer like Bolton (2010). It helps us to compensate our mistakes and inspire us not to repeat them. Especially in nursing profession skills and knowledge both practically and theoretically are most important to deliver quality and individualized care. Therefore, it is extremely essential to comprehend how nurses can achieve client centered care through Reflective Practice.
Reflective Practice is inherent in nursing profession. It is how nurses can introspectively reflect on patient care. It is a new critical thinking regarding nursing profession. Though it has individual understanding while dealing care of the patient and their concerned family members. Reflective Practice in nursing profession is to assess the professional approach in caring of patient. It is the impression of that reflects regarding the skills and attitude of nurses which counts towards their caring treatment. At this point it reflects the feeling, how the nurses interacts and analyze the current condition of the client and develop the individualized plan of care. This is how the Nurses Professionalism is perceived by the other people.
In Reflective Practice one has to use conscious thoughtfulness and through this they can judge themselves for further improvement and become more efficient in patient care. It is how nurses show their responsibility, knowledge and skills to provide the best possible services to the patients. Johns (2004a) stated that reflection is being mindful of oneself, either within or after experience, as if a window through which the practitioner can view and focus oneself within the context of a particular experience, in order to confront, understand and move toward resolving contradiction between one’s vision and actual practice. Therefore, it is understood that Reflective Practice is an ongoing process for nurses to understand the strengths and weaknesses to improve upon further for their future success and enhance their nursing skills. Nurses are to make independent decisions to the best of their ability, knowledge and skills – self development and self awareness are the significant factors to achieve finest Reflective Practice in nursing profession.
Reflective Practice is more relevant for Health professional education and practice. It is ongoing process in nursing profession to achieve competency through Reflective Practice (Boud,1999).It improves thinking power to take corrective actions to improve in their performance. There are assortments of models of reflection described by researchers such as Johns model (2000), Kolb in (1984), Rolfe in (2001), the six thinking Hats (DeBono, 2000) and the Gibbs cycle of reflection (Gibbs, 1998). Gibbs model is the most extensively used to reflect. At the end it is concluded that Reflective Practice is essential in all the professions; however it is more important in case of  nurses who are entrusted in caring sick and ailing people.