According to the AACA, in 2022, 80% of nurses in the United States were white/caucasian. With nurse burnout already a problem nationwide, being a minority in the industry can create even more unique challenges. That includes things like racism from patients or co-workers, discrimination, and even economic hurdles depending on your background and where you grew up.
All nurses must care for themselves and infuse wellness into their daily work. However, it might be even more essential for minority nurses to integrate holistic approaches into their careers.
With that in mind, let’s explore the importance of a holistic approach in healthcare and provide actionable insights you can use to enhance patient well-being and improve overall nursing effectiveness.
What Is Holistic Nursing?
As a nurse, you may be tempted to scroll past the ideas of holistic healthcare practices. But, holistic practices have been used for centuries to help people look inward for physical and mental wellness. Holistic nursing combines Western medicinal practices alongside complementary and alternative care solutions. Holistic nurses go beyond the physical and physiological aspects of medicine and focus on the values and beliefs of their patients. Nurses who practice holistic care also hold themselves to an extremely high standard and lean into five core values of practice:
Holistic philosophy and education;
Holistic ethics, theories, and research;
Holistic self-care;
Holistic communication;
Holistic caring process.
Paying attention to a person’s entire being can make a big difference in how they feel, especially when in a compromising medical situation. It’s one reason more midwives are taking holistic approaches to pregnant women. A holistic nursing approach can also help to improve your entire department, especially if you’ve been struggling with issues as a minority nurse. When holistic practices are implemented, people will start to look at you as a whole person and value your well-being rather than focusing solely on race identity.
Planning Healthy Holistic Practices
If you want to integrate more holistic practices into your career, it starts by leading a more holistic lifestyle yourself. Changing lifestyle habits and career practices, as well as even influencing your department, can feel overwhelming at first. One of the best ways to start taking a holistic approach to your work and life is to set goals for yourself. SMART goals can keep you motivated and help you recognize when you’ve hit milestones and achievements. SMART goals are:
Specific;
Measurable;
Attainable;
Relevant;
Time-Bound.
For example, if you want to focus on specifics, ask yourself what you want to achieve with holistic practices. Why is it essential to make a change, and who will you involve?
You’ll be able to measure your goals through achievements. Maybe you’ll start to feel better, personally. Perhaps you’ll see a change in work culture or the challenges you typically face as a minority. You might even begin to see your patients differently, which can help you fight back against burnout and find more joy in your daily interactions.
As you set goals and develop a strategy for holistic approaches, keep in mind that holistic medicine doesn’t have to somehow diminish your medical knowledge. Rather, it should serve as a complementary approach beyond basic treatment. A holistic approach to healthcare can inspire you to integrate more holistic practices into your daily routine on and off the clock.
Holistic Practices That Can Make a Difference
When you look within to begin your holistic integration, it starts with self-care. Again, this is essential for all nurses. But, when you face some of the unique challenges of being a minority nurse, self-care becomes even more necessary to maintain your mental and physical well-being. Thankfully, these practices don’t require much extra time or effort. Integrate some of the following into your everyday routine:
Prioritizing sleep;
Eating a healthy diet;
Journaling;
Connecting with colleagues;
Deep breathing;
Showing self-compassion.
Daily affirmations can also make a difference, especially when you’re heading into a long shift or dealing with difficult co-workers. Say things like, “I choose to trust my skills and abilities,” or “I know I am a skilled and compassionate nurse.” It might take some time to get comfortable with affirmations, but they will go a long way in improving your overall mindset. When you are kind and compassionate with yourself, you’re more likely to pass on that care to your patients.
Practicing mindfulness is another excellent way to lead a more holistic life and career. Mindfulness can help you manage stress and anxiety and keep you focused on the present. You’ll be less tempted to think about something a patient or co-worker might have said that bothered you or worry about the “what ifs” of your next shift.
There is no question that being a minority nurse comes with a few obstacles. However, by integrating holistic approaches in your life and career, you can reduce personal stress, improve patient care, and change the course of your department and practice.
When it comes to brain health, nurses talk a good game with their patients, but what about the nurse’s brain? Just like all aspects of physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health, nurses must face up to the fact that they’re human beings, too, and their brains and bodies need thoughtful care just like anyone else’s.
How do you take care of your precious nurse’s brain?
Brain Health Basics: Not Just for Patients
Brain health is something we all need to prioritize. Since many nurses like you experience significant levels of on-the-job stress, disturbed sleep, and fatigue, it’s all the more important to consider how to keep your brain healthy and vibrant. After all, brain health isn’t just for your patients.
According to sources like Harvard Health, the Massachusetts Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, and numerous studies and articles, brain health isn’t rocket science. The brain is a sensitive yet resilient organ, and for people like nurses who need their brains functioning optimally, the basics are a great place to begin.
All of the research seems to agree that the following comprise the foundation of brain health:
Exercise
Cardiovascular health
Nutrition
Sleep
Social activity
Novel mental stimulation
Exercise: Exercise contributes to cardiovascular health and muscular strength, of course, and it also supports sleep, mental health, and stress reduction. Making sure you get plenty of exercise (at least 150 minutes per week, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) is enough to keep your body moving, tone muscles, and provide significant benefits to your organs, including your awesome brain.
Cardiovascular health: With one American dying every 33 seconds from cardiovascular disease, it’s no wonder it’s the leading cause of death for most of the population.
Nurses work hard and sometimes eat and sleep poorly and fail to exercise, so this isn’t something you can ignore. Night shiftwork is associated with increased risk. Thus, many nurses who work the graveyard shift need to consider how to maintain cardiovascular health.
Nutrition: Nurses are well-versed in biology and understand that brain health depends on the brain’s hungry cells being bathed with nutritional goodness. It’s also no secret that nurses eat poorly when working long shifts without meal breaks. As such, preparing healthy meals quickly goes out the window.
How well do you eat, and how do you feel your nurse’s brain is being fed? It’s an organ you rely on to be a good nurse, and you ignore its nutritional needs at your peril.
Social activity: When we work hard, care for our families, and tend to the needs that modern life demands, our social lives can suffer. However, research demonstrates that increased social activity can lead to higher amounts of grey matter in areas of the brain related explicitly to the development of dementia.
Decreased social isolation, increased mental acuity, and other benefits directly result from your social activity. Thus, hard-working nurses still need to nurture their social lives, friendships, and other connections.
Novel mental stimulation: Research is unambiguous about brain plasticity and the benefits of novel mental activity for brain health. Reading, challenging yourself to do new things, and otherwise engaging your brain are ways to stimulate and keep your brain sharp.
As a nurse, you can read research, study for a certification, or even return to school. You can also read books that interest you, listen to music, take part in brain-stimulating activities like hobbies, and make sure you’re doing things that are cognitively engaging. Lucky for you, nursing itself is generally a very mentally stimulating occupation that requires you to respond to novel situations, interact with others, solve problems, and think critically.
Love Your Brain
Your nurse’s brain is worth much more than its weight in gold. This precious organ is the key to your success, the seat of your brilliant nurse’s mind, and the central organizing powerhouse of all human activity.
Your brain brought you to where you are, including the education, learning, skill-building, life experience, networking, job hunting, and personal and professional growth it took to make you who you are.
Your brain is essential for all bodily processes, as well as the mechanisms of communication, learning, emotion, and the processing of all external stimuli. No matter how stressful life and work, you must prioritize keeping your brain healthy and in optimal condition.
To protect your brain and overall health, you can engage in the practices and habits that will protect against dementia, stroke, heart attack, and other conditions. The rewards are innumerable, and the risks of not doing so are beyond measure. Prioritize your brain, and you’ll reap the dividends for the rest of your days.
The first full week of December is traditionally the time when national Hand Washing Awareness Week is celebrated, and it seems like it always comes at a perfect time. With the country in the middle of a holiday season that is coinciding with a rise in respiratory viruses including Covid, influenza, and RSV and also an uptick in gastrointestinal outbreaks, a reminder about proper hand washing is helpful for everyone.
Even if you think hand washing isn’t something that’s all that important in the face of all the germs circulating, it’s actually one activity that, when done effectively, can reduce the chances of catching or spreading germs and infections in any setting.
Public awareness campaigns such as the Henry the Hand and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Life is Better with Clean Hands, help folks understand the whys and hows of proper hand washing.
From working in a healthcare setting to coming home from the grocery store, thorough hand washing is an important step in taking care of yourself, those in your care, and the wider population.
What exactly makes one hand washing routine better than another? According to the CDC timing and technique do make a difference. Here are some essential times to focus on washing your hands thoroughly:
after using the bathroom or changing diapers
before, during, and after cooking (especially if you are touching raw meat)
before and after seeing a patient
when you return home from being outside or in a public setting such a store
It might seem like you’re washing your hands endlessly, but as you pick up germs on your hands throughout the day, a good cleaning is needed. It’s easy to forget to wash your hands. No matter how ingrained it may be, a hectic work day, returning home and unloading groceries, and an unexpected interruption can all disrupt your normal routine. Repitition is key to helping you associate certain times and activities with paying attention to your hands and that routine is key.
As a nurse, being obvious with hand washing is reassuring to patients and helps set a standard of practice in your unit. As a nurse leader, making hand washing a priority for you and your team will help protect them and is also an important step for patient safety. Hospital acquired infections including staph infections and C. difficile are easily spread through contact, so keeping your hands clean at work is critical.
Since so many healthcare organizations use alcohol-based hand sanitizer, most nurses are used to that quick disinfectant when they are on the job. And while hand sanitizers are great at killing most germs, sometimes soap and water will be necessary. When your hands are heavily soiled, have a chemical on them, or what you are doing requires hands that are as sterile as possible, then soap and water is the best option. Soap and water helps you remove dirt, germs, and anything on your hands because you can lather up, scrub, and then rinse it all away.
For such a simple task, hand washing is an outstanding way to stop the spread of germs and help promote health among your team, your family, and your patients.
Infection prevention is one of the standards of nursing practice. Keeping infections from starting or from being passed along through contact is essential to keeping nurses and patients healthy. International Infection Prevention Week (this year marked on October 15-21) is an annual event to highlight the best practices to prevent infection and to bring awareness to the issue of infection prevention.
Infections are largely preventable, Marie Wilson, MSN, RN, CIC, FAPIC, an infection preventionist in the Quality Division of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, and a chair of the communications committee for the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC). Wilson says her career path was determined in part by her time as an ICU nurse. “I saw too many patients become afflicted with infections as a result of the disease process or from care,” she says.
Education, says Wilson, is one of the top ways to help stop infection from spreading. “We saw a glimpse of this in the beginning of the pandemic,” says Wilson. There were constant reminders of hand washing, social distancing, and covering your face to prevent the spread of disease. “Those are all things we became very familiar with,” she says.
Hand hygiene continues to be one of the most important actions in infection prevention, says Wilson. For nurses, hand washing is a focused, professional step in patient care. What is important to remember? “Taking the time to observe the five moments of hand hygiene when you are interacting with patients and washing your hands at the right time,” says Wilson. When nurses do this, they model the right behavior for peers, patients, and their families as well.
But putting the best approaches into practice isn’t always perfect. Misinformation can work against infection prevention, even despite the best intentions. For instance, Wilson says there’s no need to reuse personal protective gear or masks when there’s not a shortage. Now, she says, supplies are available, so using new items is the best option. And wearing two masks, like a mask over an N95 that has been fit tested, can actually worsen any infection prevention as the top mask can negatively impact the fit of the N95.
Sometimes Wilson says she sees gloves used as a replacement for hand hygiene which is not effective for infection prevention.
And in a chaotic environment, nurses can forget to wash their hands. Or they might use an alcohol-based hand rub out of eyesight of a patient who then asks the nurse to wash their hands for reassurance. “Be receptive to feedback,” says Wilson. And although there seems to be debate about alcohol-based hand sanitizer versus soap and water for effectiveness, Wilson says they each are excellent–the biggest issue is to just use them. “In a healthcare setting, alcohol-based hand rub is preferable,” she says. “It’s easy to do and effective. When the hands are visibly soiled, use soap and water as the hand rub may not penetrate the heavily soiled areas.”
In addition to hand hygiene, cleaning and disinfecting areas with proper disinfectants keeps germs from spreading. But, says Wilson, be sure to know what you are using so it is the most effective cleanser and be extra careful to never mix cleaning agents. This is a great safety rule for nurses to pass along to patients, as the fumes created from mixing solutions that contain bleach and ammonia can be deadly.
Vaccines are also a top way to prevent disease and infection for individuals themselves and for the greater public. “They are so highly effective and protect people,” says Wilson.
Infection prevention has some basic actions, but the layers of it are complex and require constant attention. Wilson says she is grateful for all nurses do to help control infection and their persistence through the hardship, staff turnover, and burnout nurses have endured in the past few years. Their work continues to make a difference in infection prevention.
As the population in the United States ages, healthy aging is going to become a concern for a growing segment of people and the healthcare teams that care for them. September’s Healthy Aging Month designation brings an awareness for nurses who want to offer appropriate care for their aging patients and who also want to be mindful of healthy aging practices for their own health.
Dr. Sharon Bronner, DNP, MSN, ACHPN, GNP-BC, RYT-500, is a member of the Gerontological Advanced Practice Nurses Association (GAPNA), and she shared some insight with Minority Nurse about how gerontological nurses play an essential role in helping folks age with a focus on health and wellness.
“Gerontological nurses can promote healthy aging by assessing and evaluating the body, mind, and spirit of each individual older adult,” says Bronner, who has been a gerontological nurse for four decades. “The keys to promoting healthy aging start with food choices, healthy life choices, movement of the body, and socialization.”
Gerontological nurses also adapt their approach to tune into the ways older adults thrive, she says. For instance, older adults respond to compassionate listening, social engagement, complementary alternative modalities, and holistic care. Promoting healthy aging means that gerontological nurses want to acknowledge cardiovascular and cognitive decline and give patients information and education to help them in those areas.
“Physical activity daily can go a long way with facilitating healthy aging,” she says. “Some physical activity can include walking, mindfulness movements, yoga, qigong, light weight training, and movement of the body energy. Movement that is conducted three times a week would be ideal for healthy aging.”
For example, Bronner says, yoga can assist with regulating the autonomic nervous system, which can decrease anxiety, increase spinal flexibility, and correct spinal imbalances. Strengthening and protecting the spine can help reduce falls, which often become a traumatic event for older adults.
As the nation faces an increasingly older population, Bronner says the biggest challenges in the new millennium are nurses not prepared to work with older adults and a shortage of nursing staff in nursing homes and hospitals. “Older adults have complex medical conditions and a multitude of chronic conditions that often are not managed appropriately,” she says.
And nurses and families can introduce the idea of planning for healthcare emergencies with advance directives. These plans, she says, are often not discussed until there is a crisis or end of life is approaching. This lack of direction can cause upheaval for both the older adult and other family members who might not be sure what to do.
Families and healthcare teams can also help promote healthy aging with the implementation of telehealth monitoring of blood pressure, weight, blood oxygen level, and virtual assessment. Keeping a close eye on conditions with remote telemonitoring, whether in a skilled nursing facility or in a private home improves the patient and provider relationship while also allowing quick intervention for chronic conditions. “Monitoring geriatric conditions and symptoms can aid in the prevention of falls,” she says, “while assessing nutrition could assist with promotion quality of life.”
For nurses considering gerontological nursing, Bronner says the specialty has offered her a nursing career she loves. Gerontology has been a love of mine for many decades,” she says, “and I am able to holistically incorporate many modalities to assist with healing. The joys that resonate in my entire soul include the autonomy in my practice and the connection with the interdisciplinary team during the development of care plans.”
As a gerontological nurse, Bronner often works closely with an older adult’s loved ones and forms close bonds. That kind of support can help families if they need to navigate the end-of-life stage. “I enjoy when a family member gives hugs and appreciates the compassionate care at the end of life,” says Bronner. “The trauma of death is hard for each person involved. Providing comfort, education, and stillness (mindfulness) is a skill that I feel helps individuals through these difficult times.”
There has been a greater focus on creating healthy work environments in recent years, and nurses deserve kindness, too. Regardless of your nursing position, remember that kindness is still in style.
If you are a nursing student, new graduate nurse, educator, or chief nursing officer, remember that the foundation of nursing is rooted in caring. I don’t know what has happened to nursing over time, but we must return to caring basics as a nursing profession. Emotional intelligence and empathy can go a long way in nursing.
Research shows that kindness and helping others can decrease stress and benefit our mental health. Demonstrating kindness has been shown to reduce cortisol levels, increase self-esteem, compassion, and empathy and improve your mood.
Being kind to ourselves and caring for ourselves as nurses should be a priority.
Here are some self-care activities you can implement to be kind to yourself and others.
Sleep
Sleep is truly underrated. It is crucial to get your rest and relaxation.
Healthy Eating
It’s not easy sometimes, but try to look for healthy eating options as much as possible. I know nurses love all things caffeine. However, reducing caffeine can be helpful.
Massage
Massage can be highly relaxing and stress-reducing. Some nursing positions can be physically demanding, so try a nice massage. Some insurance will cover this as well.
Exercise
Even if you are not a big workout type, you can at least go for regular walks. Walking outside and being in nature is also relaxing.
Music
Research shows that listening to 30 minutes of music a week can reduce stress and have physiological benefits such as reduced blood pressure.
Aromatherapy
Aromatherapy has also been proven to reduce stress. Even having different lotions, such as lavender, can instantly reduce stress.
Deep Breathing/Stretching
These are easy to do and can only take a few minutes but have powerful positive effects.
Healthcare providers must prioritize putting their health first. Remember to take time off regularly. No job is worth your mental or physical health. It is time we start normalizing taking time off regularly in the healthcare industry. If you are in leadership, please encourage the staff to take time off. When the team feels happy and relaxed, they can be more productive.
Be kind to yourself so that you can have more kindness for others.
