Does it matter if a nurse is happy? There are more important things than being happy -- or so conventional wisdom would seem to imply. After all, people's lives are hanging on the line. Is laughter important when a patient's coding? Is there room for joy while providing skilled, compassionate professional care? Conventional wisdom is wrong -- if you want to be a good nurse, a great nurse, a nurse who makes a real difference in the lives of your patients -- you absolutely have to be happy.
Dr. Robert Holden, happiness expert and author of Shift Happens! discusses this matter in a recent issue of the Journal of Nursing Jocularity. His work on happiness has led him to believe that happy nurses are better nurses, and that a nurse who operates from a central core of joy is actually giving a gift to their patients.
Your smile can be medicine for a patient --even the most terminally ill benefit from being exposed to happiness and joy. That's important to keep in mind, especially if you, like many nurses, struggle with feelings of guilt about feeling happy when your patients are distinctly unhappy. Empathy and compassion do not require you to feel bad: you can still be centered in your joy while providing quality care to your patients.
It's no secret that we're in the middle of a recession, and economic circumstances are tough all over. Many nurses are fearful of losing their jobs or hours from their workweek. There's a real fear that embracing joy and laughing at life's funnier side will make a nurse appear unprofessional and put her job in jeopardy.
Patch Adams believes that humor and play are absolutely essential to health care, and has devoted his life to transforming the medical establishment. Happy nurses are better nurses: more empathetic, better equipped to handle the non-stop pressure of nursing, and, perhaps most importantly, serving as a source of strength and inspiration for the nurses around them.
We all already have a place within us where we are already happy, according to Dr. Holden. It's a Western construct to believe that happiness resides outside of ourselves: Eastern philosophy teaches that happiness resides within. Stopping the search for happiness is essential, because the search for happiness is one of the things that makes us unhappy.
One of the best things nurses can do is to focus on our own happiness. According to Dr. Holden, when our focus is service, as it is in healthcare, theres a tendency to treat others far better than we treat ourselves. Yet if we are committed to putting ourselves first " which can be very difficult " were better positioned to help others.
If we want to improve the quality of care we're giving our patients, not to mention the quality of life we ourselves have, we need to stop this manic, merry-go-round pace of providing care as fast as we can. Slowing down and embracing happiness and joy will allow us to be more loving and kind to each other. That's the first step toward improving our lives and the lives of those around us.
About the Author:
The Journal of Nursing Jocularity proves that laughter is really the best medicine! With celebrity interviews, stories from the floor, nursing jokes and humor, crazy cartoons and nurse horoscopes, it's laugh out loud funny!
View this post on my blog: http://travelnursesuccess.com/be-a-better-nurse-by-embracing-happiness
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