How Your Attitude As A Practicing Nurse Affects The Wellness Of Your Patients
At Pegasus, we value diversity in our professionals. Hiring individuals from all backgrounds and life experiences helps meet the needs of the diverse population we serve. Our nurses are part of positive, supportive, and inclusive teams that provide superior care to our clients.
Pegasus skilled in-home nurses in Hidden Hills and elsewhere offer all levels of assistance. They strive to stay positive in all they do. Our career home health care nurses understand how their attitude as a practicing nurse affects the wellness of their patients.
It’s easy to throw out cliches like “chin up” or “look at the bright side” when someone seems down. And reminders like those sometimes improve a person’s outlook. But shifting from a negative mindset to a positive mindset is a skill that takes effort to maintain.
In its simplest terms, a hopeful mindset results from increasing your awareness of the positive things in your life. But optimism doesn’t make negative things just go away. You do have to deal with them.
How To Cope With Negative Feelings
However, maintaining a positive outlook does enable you to cope better with negativity. Your negative feelings arise in various ways. Regardless of the cause, they can have a harmful effect on patients and everyone else with whom you’re in contact.
- Cognitive restructuring
- Dealing with negative emotions
- Recognizing and coping with negative emotions
- Roots of negative emotions
- What are negative emotions
Other tips suggest techniques such as visualizing positive outcomes in your patient.
Health Benefits Of A Positive Attitude
A positive attitude generates a multitude of health benefits for you. Among these are:
- Improved psychological health and ability to cope.
- Increased resistance to illness.
- Reduced risk of dying from cancer, cardiovascular disease, infections, and respiratory conditions, resulting in a longer life span.
- Reduced depression, distress, and pain.
Being positive helps you feel better emotionally, mentally, physically, and spiritually. You’re then better able to care for your patients. Your patients also experience the same health benefits as their positive feelings increase.
Your patients are individuals who need your help in one way or another. Although many home healthcare patients are elderly, Pegasus offers services to individuals of all ages and conditions. All have experienced a temporary or permanent loss of independence.
They are dealing with the inability to care for themselves. Accepting help is often difficult for many individuals. They may also be trying to cope with other major life changes, such as the death of a spouse.
Many seniors or individuals who have a terminal diagnosis know things aren’t going to get better. They may feel that their life is meaningless. Your encouragement and supportive attitude can inspire hope and improve how they feel.
Many patients turn to you for comfort and compassion. Others are afraid of what the future holds for them. Keeping a positive attitude when interacting with them reduces their worry and stress.
Stress can compromise immune systems. It also potentially exacerbates your patient’s medical conditions. Every positive thing you do or say uplifts them, which serves to improve their well-being.
How To Increase Positive Feelings
Your attitude is a model for patients. You don’t have to be a Pollyanna. Simply greeting them with a smile and cheerful comment makes a difference.
Some patients will respond in kind, and you’ll see a tangible improvement in them. Even those mired in their despair will potentially improve if you stay upbeat. Examples of ways you can help individuals improve their outlook, and thereby their health, include:
- Emphasizing the importance of living in the moment. There’s comfort in memories of good times. But it’s essential that revisiting the past is a source of pleasure, rather than despair over losses. It’s equally important to avoid excessive worry about the future.
- Encouraging an attitude of gratitude. Help them start a gratitude journal.
- Fostering an appreciation of the little things. Point out things they may be taking for granted, such as clean sheets.
- Helping them avoid letting the things they can’t control keep them from what they can control.
- Helping them connect with family and friends.
- Reminding them that life is about more than their health. There’s joy to be found even in difficult circumstances.
Your patients aren’t the only ones who benefit from finding ways to stay positive. You can maintain your positive attitude in many of the same ways you help your patients improve their outlook.
Join Us And Experience The Benefits Of Providing In-Home Healthcare
Pegasus professional in-home caregivers in Hidden Hills and our other locations make a difference in the lives of their patients. They know that a positive attitude can improve the well-being of individuals. The health of their patients is the top priority of our career home health care nurses.
Pegasus is a licensed Home Care Organization and a Joint Commission Accredited Home Health Care organization. We are proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We are hiring caregivers from all walks of life who are dedicated to making life better for others.
