Articles that support you—not just your work

Inspired innovation: Teamwork reaps universal benefits

The 2025 All Pro Nursing Team winners have been announced. As our first-place team noted in their application, “Good nurses inspire themselves, but great nurses inspire each other.” That’s exactly what each of this year’s award recipients has accomplished—they’ve provided…
Diana L. Fors, RN

I remember: Reflections of a hospice nurse

As I drive down the road I pass familiar houses. The homes flood me with memories. I remember the faces. I remember the look in your eyes. The smile when I came through the door. The pleading look when the…

The Secret Garden: A staff-only wellness and respite space

Nurses provide care despite the challenges of their environment. Despite additional training and support, noticeable stress remains due to the nature of managing challenging patient behaviors and the rise in workplace violence. As leaders in behavioral health at our organization,…

Self-compassion in practice

The nursing profession is built upon the premise that nurses improve the healing process by providing compassion and comfort to others during times of suffering. RNs give their time, energy, expertise, and compassion to patients and their families shift after…

Wellness challenges

The 2022 National Nursing Workforce Survey found that 50.8% of respondents felt emotionally drained, 45.1% felt burned out, and 56.4% felt “used up.” Wellness challenges can foster healthy competition, teamwork, and community-building, but success requires variety, simplicity, voluntary participation, and…

Connections ease nurses’ burdens

“Hello, I’ll be your nurse today.” These six words signal to a nurse’s brain that they’re no longer an individual but rather part of a collective engaged in a fascinating rollercoaster of assessment, intervention, and evaluation of the human experience.…

Self-acupressure to reduce stress and fatigue

The fatigue and stress experienced by nurses require self-care, but lack of time or space may prove challenging in a clinical setting. Self-acupressure offers an option for boosting energy and enhancing calm without much time investment.
protest over nursing salaries

What’s your reason for nursing?

An often-repeated anecdote about how Florence Nightingale decided nursing was to be her life’s work is an incident that occurred in 1837. In her diary entry on February 7 of that year, she wrote “… God spoke to me and…
Keep calm

Keep Calm and Caring

Slogans are terse and memorable phrases typically associated with political campaigns and advertising. They’re the progeny of aphorism and axioms. Some of these catchphrases have become such a part of everyday lingo that we “just do it” without even thinking.…

Prevent compassion fatigue through self-compassion

Consider these simple practices.  Takeaways: Nurses are at high risk for developing compassion fatigue, which can have a negative impact on nurses, patients, and organizations. Self-compassion practices are an evidence-based intervention for compassion fatigue. When nurses take steps to care…
forgiveness

Be your own nurse: Forgiveness

COVID-19 has taught us many lessons. Some of those lessons are painful and some are hopeful. In the time of pandemic, focusing on the healing of the self means that multiple areas of pain and struggle must be explored. How…