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How to Avoid Burnout in a Challenging Environment


By: American Nurses Association – Article shared

While correctional nursing comes with a unique work environment and patient roster, it also comes with additional stressors and issues that can lead to compassion fatigue, corrections fatigue, or burnout.

Compassion Fatigue

Compassion fatigue occurs when nurses continuously tap into their empathetic emotions on a constant, and regular basis – so much so that these feelings begin to feel depleted. Especially nurses working in a correctional facility may be exposed to the suffering of others so frequently that this depletion of their feelings of compassion may occur. This can be harmful in that it can affect their overall sense of happiness, and strain a caring nature that they may typically exhibit.

Corrections Fatigue

Similar to compassion fatigue, corrections fatigue comes to play when nurses are routinely exposed to a stressful, depressing or negative environment. This can slowly impact their feelings of happiness, wellbeing and can build up feelings of stress, anxiety, depression or even pose a threat to their mental health.

Burnout

Burnout is defined as a state of emotional, physical and mental exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress. Some signs that someone may be suffering from burnout include:

  • Difficulty relaxing
  • Prolonged irritability
  • Persistent anxiety
  • Sleep problems

How to Prevent Burnout & Fatigue

It’s important for correctional nurses to continue the following preventative and restorative measures to reduce or keep from experiencing burnout.

  • Build a support system: When nurses are starting to experience stress, one of their first reactions may be to pull away from others. It is important to keep friends, family and colleagues involved in their lives. Talking and spending time together regularly can help to reduce stress and put their challenges in a positive perspective.
  • Practice mindfulness: Nurses should treat themselves similar to how they treat patients and always be asking questions and aware of the responses. Activities such as journaling, meditation and exercise may help to calm and ease a troubled mind.
  • Find non-work-related activities: It’s important that the mind has a chance to break away from the same structure of the work environment from time to time. Correctional nurses should look for activities such as a club, organization, or sport to do that will keep them active outside of their workplace.
  • Look for signs of problems – and get help: If a correctional nurse is doing appropriate self checks they should know the signs that burnout is getting close. If a nurse, or their friends, family or coworkers recognize that their friend is close to burnout, there are support systems and resources that can help. Start by encouraging a visit to a medical professional to determine if any measures should be taken to prevent larger problems such as depression, panic attacks or substance abuse.

While burnout may sound like a small, almost mundane problem, unfortunately it can lead to far more serious problems, so it’s important to keep an eye out, and take preventative measures. All the issues that Correctional Nurses face are outlined, explored, and advised upon in our Scope and Standards, Correctional Nursing 3rd Edition, now available here.  An invaluable resource, don’t miss it!  Correctional nurses especially, understand that this work environment is one that can lead to a higher chance of burnout – stay vigilant!

Categories: Career Advice

Study in Nursing School

Blog shared from Nurse Jannah’s Osmosis webinar on successful study habits every nursing student should adopt. 

As you’re about to enter into an awesome and powerful field, you’re probably wondering about how to study in nursing school so you won’t get overwhelmed. Adopting smart study habits early on in your education will set you up to be a successful learner, test-taker, and practicing RN. Why not get them right from an expert nurse educator?

Why getting into nursing is a big deal

Did you know that, according to AACN Fact Sheets, nursing is the largest healthcare profession in the United States, with 3x as many RNs as physicians? This really speaks volumes about the big role nurses play in healthcare, but also about the challenging road to becoming one.

Nurses work in so many different settings and are in charge of a lot of things. They collaborate as a team, but they operate independently of medicine or other fields.

No wonder there’s tons of information to master in nursing school!

All of this can be overwhelming and confusing to any student: maybe it’s too much to learn in a short time, or maybe you’re not sure where to start. Maybe you feel like things aren’t sticking to your memory, or you don’t know what to use to learn, with so many resources available.

As our expert nurse educator shares in our Osmosis webinar: “This happens to a lot of us”. Here are 8 key tips that Nurse Jannah recommends on how to best study for nursing school.  

1. Get a head start on your course material

Try to stay ahead of the game before you even have a lecture. Read the chapters or watch videos and get familiar with the content—whatever the preparation looks like, it’s important to do it ahead of time.

The reason is that it’s really hard to catch up with the study in nursing school, as there’s a lot of ground to cover, and it goes by fast.

Some of the material you’ll learn is easier to understand than others, and that’s OK. Putting in the work ahead of a lecture is the most important part, as you teach your brain to set the right foundation for gaining knowledge. And even if you don’t understand everything, you build on that and let the lecture or next piece of learning help fill in the gaps.

Osmosis illustration of a nursing student working to understand the material.

2. Try making concept maps

Instead of going with the classic way of taking notes—highlighting text and rewriting pages of notes—concept maps are one fun and easy way to study for nursing school.

A concept map is a visual representation of knowledge on a subject that helps you to organize your thoughts on it. Besides being much easier, it’s also an efficient way to understand the information (rather than memorizing it).

Start with the topic you want to learn about and, first, build on it with what you learned. After that, use your notes, videos or other resources to fill in the map and get the whole picture of that topic.

Osmosis illustration of a basic concept map.

3. Meet your learning objectives

This is something that probably many often ignored as students, which you definitely shouldn’t. When you stumble upon your learning objectives (LOs), paying attention to them is one smart way to study in nursing school.

Although it seems just like a list, LOs act much like your guide to studying, because they outline exactly what you should be able to do or competently discuss after successfully learning about them. This is a really good guide to follow especially when you have a lot of content and don’t know what you’re supposed to focus on.

You can find more practical and visual examples of these tips in our webinar.

4. Make a schedule (and stick to it)

Another tip Nurse Jannah has for you is making a schedule that really sets you up for success. This means one that is realistic and adjusted to your life, your time, your responsibilities.

There’s no standard timeframe for the best learning, so the key here is to focus on quality rather than quantity. If your daily schedule allows you to study for nursing school two hours in the morning or three hours in the evening, both are fine as long as it’s according to your real attention span.

Another important thing here is to make sure you can stay committed to your schedule for studying just as you commit to other obligations in life, in a practical way. This will keep you accountable as well.

5. Teamwork makes the dream work

Speaking of accountability, another tip on how to study for nursing school the better way is finding a study partner: a friend, a tutor, or joining a study group to keep you connected.

The best thing about study groups is that you can listen to different perspectives while discussing a topic. Actively listening to how other people think and apply knowledge helps you hone your critical thinking skills. This is one important skill to have in nursing school, as you’re taking different tests and answering different types of questions.

Osmosis illustration of students studying together.

6. Find your learning style

Everybody learns differently: some students are visual learners—and Osmosis makes that easy with 1800+ animated videos for you!—while others learn better by listening to lectures or doing activities.

Try to practice a bit of self-reflection to discover your learning style and find resources that represent it, as primary learning tools. The earlier you discover how you learn best, the easier it becomes to study and not waste your time the wrong way.

7 Practice, practice, practice

Of course, it is also about practicing NCLEX®-style questions during nursing school. Not only it challenges you to apply all the knowledge you gain, but also your ability to think at a high level and analyze data in different ways.

NCLEX®-style questions are unlike any other type of questions you’re used to seeing, which is why practicing them helps to reinforce your understanding of a concept and prepares you for the final exam: the licensure examination.

Osmosis illustration of a nursing student studying contentedly.

8. Don’t forget the basics

Understanding the basics is the biggest starting point in your studying. You need to have a solid understanding of foundational sciences first, such as anatomy and physiology, because all the knowledge you learn in nursing school is based on these and it’s also what makes learning more complex concepts along the way much easier.

And finally… you got this!

And don’t forget to watch the full webinar here: Study for Success: Habits Every Nursing Student Should Adopt.

Osmosis illustration of Nurse Jannah offering nurses encouragement on their nursing journey.
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Content shared from Osmosis

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