Nurses Week: Give the Gift of Good Health
Nurse Leader Insider, May 11, 2017
Want to receive articles like this one in your inbox? Subscribe to Nurse Leader Insider!
By Jennifer Thew, RN
Keeping with my annual Nurses' Week column tradition, I'd like to talk about gifts—and not mugs and lunch bags. In the past, I've written about intangible gifts such as mentorship, compassion, and happiness.
Since the American Nurses Association has declared 2017 The Year of the Healthy Nurse, this Nurses Week I'd like to encourage RNs to give themselves the gift of good health by joining the ANA's Heathy Nurse Healthy Nation Grand Challenge.
We know it's challenging for nurses to engage in healthy behaviors. The ANA's 2016 Health Risk Appraisal found that RNs and nursing students:
On average, had a BMI of 27.6 (overweight)
12% have nodded off while driving in the past month
Only 16% eat the recommended daily amount of fruits and vegetables
Less than half perform the recommended quantity and time of muscle-strengthening exercises
"We know that nurses on average are less healthy than the average American," says Jaime Murphy Dawson, MPH, director of program operations and nursing practice and innovation at the ANA.
"There's a lot of reasons for this, one being that the work environment can be very stressful. Of course healthcare services are needed 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and nursing and healthcare pose some unique hazards to workers."
The Heathy Nurse Healthy Nation Grand Challenge is designed to give nurses the tools, motivation, resources, and social connections to improve their health.
"When nurses are healthy themselves, they are more credible role models, educators, and advocates for their patients," Dawson says. "They're more likely to counsel their patients about health behaviors when they themselves are healthy."
Continue reading here.
Want to receive articles like this one in your inbox? Subscribe to Nurse Leader Insider!
Related Products
Most Popular
- Articles
-
- Don't forget the three checks in medication administration
- Five ways to safeguard your patients' valuables
- Note similarities and differences between HCPCS, CPT® codes
- The consequences of an incomplete medical record
- Q&A: Primary, principal, and secondary diagnoses
- OB services: Coding inside and outside of the package
- Skills of effective case managers
- Practice the six rights of medication administration
- Reimbursement for Facility and Professional Services in a Provider-Based Department by Gina M. Reese, Esq., RN
- Nursing responsibilities for managing pain
- E-mailed
-
- Plan of Care Supports Documentation of Homebound Status
- Q/A: Coding infusions to correct low potassium levels
- Note from the instructor: CMS clarifies billing guidelines on proper billing for drugs in a single-dose or single-use vial, including billing for discarded drugs
- Neurological checks for head injuries
- Modifiers and medical necessity
- HIPAA Q&A: Cameras in patient rooms
- Follow these tips to properly report bladder catheter codes
- Examine cardboard boxes stored on floor to avoid infection control, life safety citations
- Differentiate between types of wound debridement
- Consider two options for coding Rho(D) immune globulin given in pregnancy
- Searched