A Fab Five about Self-Care
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A blog written by Sara Fleming, Nurse Practitioner, Senior Lecturer in Palliative Care, Flinders University.
Sara Fleming is a Nurse Practitioner with 24 years of clinical experience in Paediatric Palliative Care. She is currently working with Flinders University as Senior Lecturer in Palliative Care, and with Palliative Care Australia on Paediatric Projects. Sara recently spoke at the End-of-Life Essentials and Australian Collage of Nursing joint webinar on self-care.
I read a quote about self-care several years ago that has stayed with me. “You cannot serve from an empty tank- serve from the overflow”. This is a good thought but one that has needed a reality filter because, for most of my life, my tank has rarely been full because I was so busy sprinkling out the other end!
Health care practitioners are generally time-poor and “self-lastish” so here’s some points from a wrinkled Nurse Practitioner about ways you could think, feel and act as an investment in you, while also being real about what’s achievable and what it takes to get there:
- Responsibility: Understand that having a role which achieves compassion satisfaction means that you must be accountable to yourself and your surrounding peoples. You chose to do this work; own it, accept the reality of the experience of it, and let yourself focus on the sense of value and purpose it brings.
Understand this about yourself and take personal responsibility for the balance required.
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Discipline; put things in place which remind you daily to attend to your needs, commit to doing restorative activities (the things which restore health, strength and well-being) and work them into your lifestyle.
They need to be clearly visible on daily to-do list, plan on calendar, or a whiteboard. The key to embedding this into your routine is to identify what you did that was restorative when you come back from days off … not just what you did. Reflect on these and be accountable to some-one about how it’s going.
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Compassion; warmly turn inwards to this attribute to truly ensure that the same level and quality of fellow feeling that you deliver to your patients flows equally to yourself.
Be understanding to you; it’s ok to recognise that today you don’t have capacity to take on a task, maybe you need to walk the long way round the premises to get back to the office, tell yourself out loud that you are doing well or that it’s ok to be sad.
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Readiness; self-care can simply be about moments and they can be intentional. Plan them; have things on your phone- a playlist of music to soothe or bring joy, a photo album that remind us we are loved, that there’s a beautiful world out there, a gratitude app which gives a more hopeful space.
Make a first aid kit of really nice things to eat, drink, smell, hold, hear, look at- and have it sitting at work for rescues in a moment. Know who your first responders are- to hold your space- maybe they are online?
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Teamwork; being real means also being vulnerable and allowing other geese to fly at the front and land with us when we need a break. Honestly, the tank gets empty, and we need our daily work to include the readiness to accept the cuppa from a colleague who waited for us to get back… or to be the mate who waited.
Think each day about how you could make a workmate's day better - reach out.
We are multi-dimensional, worthy people with a need to reconcile that work is a part of who we are, and who we are is more than work. We need to hold ourselves with persistent kindness. Find out more about encouraging and supporting self-help strategies in the End-of-Life Essentials new Bereavement Care module.
Sara Fleming
Senior Lecturer in Palliative Care
Flinders University