Be a Better Nurse By Embracing Happiness

Nurses are very busy! The call light’s always ringing, patients need care, charts and record keeping take up valuable time — and just when you think you’ve caught up, there’s a code and the whole day’s right off track. Being busy isn’t enough: you need to be professional, skilled, caring and compassionate! But do you also have to be happy?

Happiness feels good, but it feels even better when you share it. That’s according to Dr. Robert Holden, author of Shift Happens in a recent interview in the Journal of Nursing Jocularity. He says that happiness is our gift to those around us. This is particularly relevant for healthcare professionals: your joy is a gift for those youre caring for.

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.

Professionalism is highly desirable. This is especially true in a tight job market: there are more nurses than nursing jobs, and it’s not unusual for a nurse to find herself ‘called off’ to save the facility money. Many nurses hesitate to embrace joy and use humor for fear of not being professional enough and jeopardizing their professional lives.

That’s not the message you would hear from Patch Adams A life long advocate of the healing power of humor and play, Patch has dedicated his life to transforming the medical establishment. Empowered nurses — happy nurses, if you will — are the front lines in patient care; the people who make a real, direct impact on patient’s health. When a nurse is centered in joy, they are more empathetic, handle the stresses of nursing better, and are enabled to serve as a resource and inspiration for the people they work with.

Dr. Holden posits that we all have a place within us where we are already happy. Happiness does not have an external source. In fact, if we stop the search for happiness, we immediately begin to feel ourselves become happier — because the search for happiness in and of itself 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.