Practicing Self-Care: A Guide for Healthcare Workers

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The medical field is not meant for everyone. Only a few are called to become professionals who put other people’s lives above their own. It’s a noble career path reserved only for the strong-willed and persevering. However, as much as we want to highlight the resilience of healthcare workers, we mustn’t lose sight of knowing they are human with human needs and limitations. Caring is a superpower, but even that ability is vulnerable to the pressures of the job. When you decide to enter the medical field, or you are already a practitioner, expect a career that’s far from easy.

That doesn’t entirely mean you shouldn’t start a career in the field just because of the challenges you expect. You can still become successful, all while making sure you’re well-grounded. Self-care is essential even among healthcare professionals, so it’s important to know what you can do to stay motivated and keep yourself from burning out as you commit to saving lives. The guide below will help you practice self-care as you grow in this critical industry.

A Look at Self-Care in the Medical Field

You may have known about self-care as an important part of securing our well-being from the pressures of the world. For healthcare professionals, it’s something they mustn’t ignore despite their hectic schedules and workloads. No matter the area, whether it's dentistry or gastroenterology, self-care is the best response to the realities practitioners face on the ground. Here are a few stats showing why self-care is just as much a priority as professional development:

• According to a study published in the National Institutes of Health, about 70% of healthcare workers suffer from high stress levels, which also affects the quality of patient care. Moreover, 49% of the respondents in this study say that work is their major stressor. This is followed by personal problems at 32% and work-life balance at 19%.

• For the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 46% of healthcare professionals experienced burnout, with more than 44% opting to switch to careers outside the medical field. These numbers were obtained during the COVID-19 pandemic, a time when the global healthcare sector was on full alert.

• In another study published in Nature, strenuous work environments in the medical sector contribute to the prevalence of burnout among healthcare professionals, with many citing factors such as imbalanced duty allocations and resource constraints as major concerns. The study further explains that many of these factors can be addressed through institutional leadership.

• An article featured on the website of the Anxiety and Depression Association of America acknowledges the vulnerability of healthcare workers to major stress-inducing factors. Even on normal days, the physical and mental demands of their work are impossible to ignore. Ultimately, these can affect the level of care they are capable of providing, especially towards vulnerable and terminally ill patients. 

These offer a simple glimpse of what’s at stake for healthcare professionals and those aspiring to enter the field. It’s easy to say that no work environment is truly free from stress, but when you’re tasked with caring for the sick and you have a strong passion to help, going the extra mile for these people is inevitable. As you do so, make sure you don’t neglect your own well-being. This makes self-care all the more important as you grow in your profession. 

Counting the Cost of Stress and Burnout

When allowed to fester, severe stress can cause significant damage to healthcare workers who push themselves too hard. Aside from the physical and emotional effects it brings, burnout can also destroy a person’s relationships and may even lose their passion to serve the healthcare sector. More than that, the true cost of healthcare burnout may manifest too late. You know you've reached your breaking point when you experience the following:

• Job dissatisfaction: You might be able to reap the benefits of working hard at the start, but over time, this will cause you to lose drive in staying within the healthcare sector. The passion that drove you towards your career will begin to lose its influence, and you may find yourself contemplating a drastic switch away from the world of medicine. When dissatisfaction prevails, the time and effort you invested in entering the healthcare sector will all go to waste.

• Higher mortality: Losing your drive to keep going is one thing, but when burnout starts to affect your body, then you might not enjoy the best things in life that lie ahead. It's impossible to deny how high stress levels could increase mortality rates. According to one Costa Rican study, elevated stress levels increase a person's exposure to diseases that worsen. Stress may not directly impact your mortality, but its underlying effects could lead to the development of fatal conditions, including heart disease and cancer.  Dealing with stress is crucial to avoid an early death, so it matters to deal with such risks as a healthcare worker.

• Social isolation: Since healthcare practitioners aren't committed to a set work schedule, they will have to sacrifice much of their free time to respond to major emergencies. What's more, heavy workloads at the clinic or hospital will put a strain on their social connections. Many in the field would prefer catching up on sleep instead of spending quality time with their loved ones. Co-workers can serve as a source of much-needed socialization, but personal time with family and friends works better to fight burnout.

• Exposure to trauma: Another major factor contributing to burnout among healthcare practitioners is their exposure to traumatic events that unfold around them. At the hospital where pain and suffering manifest physically, there's a tendency for healthcare workers to carry the emotional strain they feel from patients. There are also the emotional demands of dying patients and their families that could add extra baggage to their well-being. Practitioners cannot shrug this off, but they shouldn’t ignore how these factors are making it hard for them to cope with the demands of their work environments. 

For the most part, your ability to overcome is part of your professional growth in the field. You just have to focus on the right approaches that will help you stay grounded, no matter how hectic the work gets. 

Tips to Guard Yourself from Pressure

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By now, self-care is non-negotiable in your practice. You need to focus on the best ways to prevent burnout and help you stay committed. Not all of these self-care tips may work in your context, but they are worth trying out, especially if you’re new to the sector. 

1. Focus on Your Physical Health

Your resilience to the demands of your practice will depend largely on how well you nurture and condition your body. At times, being too busy causes you to neglect your physical well-being. Not only do you find yourself sacrificing sleep, but you also forget to take your meals and settle for comfort food that hardly has any nutritional value. It seems ironic that, while you’re in the business of taking care of other people’s health, you ignore your own. If you want to be successful in your practice, treat optimal physical health as the cornerstone of self-care.

Make the most of the free hours you have to get as much sleep as you can and provide your body with the right kind and quantity of nutrients, especially ones that give you sufficient energy and help you stay alert throughout your shift. Sure enough, caffeine won’t be a good replacement for B Vitamins and Iron, which are essential to staying active. What’s more, good rest and a balanced diet should be paired with exercise. Aside from enhancing endurance, you will need substantial amounts of endorphins to help you stay positive throughout the day.

2. Manage Your Time Well

Adopting healthier habits won’t be possible if you barely have enough time to follow through with your routine. The best solution to this is to be mindful of the time you’re given. Consider it a resource that’s too precious to waste. Without careful planning, you could leave yourself little room to slow down and practice the self-care habits you’ve adopted. This might seem far-fetched, especially if your practice is prone to sudden schedule changes, but there are ways to help you stay productive without burning yourself out.

There are task tracking apps you can try out that will notify you of high-value tasks that need to be done, as well as time-blocking features that come in handy if you’re assigned different task types. Take care not to allow these tasks to overlap with your set breaks. You should also know that you don’t have to report on anything that lies outside your official job description. Refer a different person for the task, or simply say that you’re focusing on a high-priority assignment. For the most part, it’s your boldness to refuse any request that will help you reclaim more time for rest and self-care.

3. Set Long-Term Wellness Goals

Along with a structured routine, you should also have a set of goals to become physically and mentally healthier than you are now. It helps if you could have a good idea of what habits you want to change or do away with. From there, you can break down these goals into manageable chunks. For one, if you want to improve your focus and stop procrastinating, your micro-goals should include limiting social media usage and spending time learning about complex cases that your hospital or clinic is handling.

This might seem easier said than done, but you can chart your path to better wellness easily if you rely on a checklist. Consider building a yearly wellness checklist that lets you focus on self-care habits that align with your situation. You can use this checklist to track how many times you should see your doctor and undergo therapy sessions for anxiety and burnout. You may also include your workout goals as well as your progress in terms of abandoning destructive habits such as smoking.

4. Build a Ready Support System

Your value as a health worker isn’t defined by the number of overtime hours you apply for. Even in the heat of intense pressure, you should always recognize how valuable you are to your co-workers. Work becomes less hectic when you stand in solidarity with fellow healthcare professionals. You will find solace in the camaraderie you share as essential workers and acknowledge the human side of your practice. By knowing that you have a support system, you can lighten the mental load that your practice is pushing down on you. 

Never take for granted every opportunity for making small talk. It’s these short moments that allow you to share wisdom with your colleagues and uncover the personal struggles they are going through. As your support system grows, your conversations become richer with wisdom and assurance, especially if you befriend more experienced co-workers who won’t hesitate to advise on self-care. 

5. Engage With Your Thoughts

Your overall wellness is impacted by your mindset. When burnout sets in, you may resort to desperate acts as a way to vent out the feelings you’ve bottled up for so long. If you lack an emotional outlet, you’re likely to allow your emotions to spill over, affecting your co-workers and even causing harm to your patients. As you focus on building physical resilience, never push aside your emotional needs. You can talk to a co-worker or a licensed therapist if you have thoughts bordering on deviance. 

A creative outlet could also help you loosen up. Keep a journal that allows you to debrief yourself on negative or praise-worthy events during the day. You can also go for activities like baking or painting as means for putting your mind at rest and channeling negative emotions without harming others.