5 Ways to Stay Inspired in your Nursing Career

It seems incredibly difficult anymore to stay inspired in the career you have chosen – healthcare especially. When you have call lights flashing constantly, lab calling to give you an critical result, and George’s wife at the nursing station yelling at you for not bringing him fresh ice within 2 minutes – it all adds up to one outcome: burnout and lack of inspiration. Does your day off look a little something like this?

Read on for some tips on staying inspired and growing in your nursing career:

1. Education: There’s something about going to a conference or event in your specialty that gets you fired up and ready to implement change on your unit and in your own personal practice. I recently went to a Neuroscience Symposium that had me fired up and ready to learn about as much as I possibly could in neuro nursing. I signed up for another one at the end of the month immediately – the best part is that the hospital will pay for me to go to these events and they are often catered, and you can even get nursing CEU’s from them! Why not kill 2 birds with one stone? Educating yourself will allow you to bring empowerment to yourself when you do education with a patient and their family members. It will also empower you when your own family asks you how your nursing career is going and you can tell them about all the new exciting topics you are learning about, and it also empowers you on a personal level when you know you are putting your best effort in every day for your patients and yourself.
2. Engagement in unit groups/events: On my unit we have different groups designed to increase engagement on the unit. Mentoring, education, advocates for our nursing union, etc. Sometimes with the challenges we face on the floor every single day it is a saving grace to know you have a place to go and vent and come together to brain storm how to make things better. We also have a group to involve nurses on our unit in our specific specialty and bring more education to the unit based on what we learn and come up with. Participating in a local 5K, heart walk, or giving back through the community through screenings are all ways to increase unit involvement and bring your unit together as a group.
3. Work/life balance: Sometimes it can be hard to let go of what happened at work that day and come home to your family and act as if nothing is wrong. It is okay to feel everything that has happened to you that day, to deal with it, and then to move on. Nurses have a unique point of view on how precious life can be. We take care of people at the worst moments in life and as a result we should cherish the moments we have to spend with our own families. Take back that time for your family and refresh yourself to come back into work and take care of someone else’s precious family member.
4. Take care of yourself: This is easier said than done especially if you are a mother or a father as well as a nurse, however, if we are going to preach at our patient’s about how to lower their risks for many different diseases and lower their risk for injury then we have to start practicing as we preach. Take even just a few minutes out of your week to do something you enjoy or something that makes you feel good about yourself. I like to get my nails done about once a month with some durable gel polish that will both look great for weeks at a time and also make me feel better about myself. Patient’s compliment me about them all the time. This is just an example of how you can take care of yourself better.
5. Try something new!: Nursing provides the unique opportunity to always be able to switch it up and try something new. The possibilities are honestly endless. I’ve met some veteran nurses who have done everything from NICU to Dialysis and the variety in their career is what has kept them going for 20+ years.

I hope some of these tips help you bring back joy to your career in some way and if you have any questions or comments please leave them below I would love to hear your feedback!