Self Care Is A Personal Health Maintenance Technique

Self-care: Personally, I feel that I have been told by different sources how important it is to practice self-care as a Ph.D. student. However, I feel that I am not following the advice properly. I noticed that I reached high levels of stress during the year as a first-year student. In addition, now that I need to balance clients, courses, and research, I am worried that I will burn out easily. For that reason, I am going to engage myself in one or two pleasurable activities a day for two hours. Thus, I will go for a walk with my partner on weekdays (those days that I come home earlier) and I will go on a hike with him during weekends. The days that I will spend the entire day at the clinic, I will meet a friend for a coffee and we will go out to a coffee shop. In addition to these activities, I will utilize the hot tub available in my

One article defined self-care as “the care of oneself without medical, professional or other assisntance or oversight.” (Godfey, CM et al, 2011). While reviewing different articles the conclusion was that the definition of self-care could

The theory focuses on the ability of a person to meet his or her own needs. Developed in the year 1970, Orem’s theory focused on the three various concepts, namely self-care, self-care deficit, and the nursing system. Self-care is a group of activities or processes that a person performs to maintain health, life, and wellbeing (Orem, 2001). For instance, self-care is being demonstrated when a chronic heart failure patient checks his or her weight daily, takes prescribes medications, and avoids salty foods. Self-care deficit happens when an individual is not able to provide effective self-care (Orem, 2011). Nurses are able to assist patients in this state by educating them with their disease condition and treatment compliance. A nursing

Self-care maintenance is operationally defined as “those behaviors used by patients with a chronic illness to maintain physical and emotional stability” (Riegel et al., 2012, p. 195). An expanded definition used is that “Self-care maintenance refers to those behaviors performed to improve well-being, preserve health, or to maintain physical and emotional stability” (Riegel et al., 2012, p. 195). The operational definition of self-care monitoring is that it “refers to the process of observing oneself for changes in signs and symptoms” (Riegel et al., 2012, p. 195). Another definition of self-care monitoring used is “a process of routine, vigilant body monitoring, surveillance or ‘body listening’” (Riegel et al., 2012, p. 195). “Self-care management is defined as the response to signs and symptoms when they occur” (Riegel et al., 2012, p. 195). The expanded definition of self-care management is “involves an evaluation of changes in physical and emotional signs and symptoms to determine if action is needed” (Riegel et al., 2012, p. 195). While the differences in these definitions are minor, semantic clarity requires semantic consistency in the theory (Fawcett & Garity, 2009); therefore, the definitions should be the same throughout. The precise goals of self-care maintenance or self-care management are not identified; however, the goal of self-care monitoring is

The nursing process does not merely treat the patient as a physical body, but rather treats the patient holistically. The central philosophy of Dorothea Orem's self-care deficit nursing theory "is that all patients want to care for themselves, and they are able to recover more quickly and holistically by performing their own self-care as much as they're able" (Dorothea Orem, 2012, Nursing Theory). However, although self-care may be the core of Orem's theory, the decision to engage in self-care must be facilitated by the patient's social and physical environment, of which the family can play a critical role in shaping.

The profession of nursing requires a capacity and joy for caring and healing others both mentally and physically. Nurses spend their careers caring for patients and their families often in the worst and most frightening periods of their lives. Nursing responsibilities can be lengthy, stressful and physically and emotionally demanding. The demands of the nursing profession coupled with the nursing shortage and longer work hours put even more stress on nurses. Despite these extreme demands, many nurses do not fully appreciate the importance self-care. Yet without proper care for themselves, nurses are not able to provide the best care for their patients.

Self-care is a crucial for paramedics to undertake. Not only to be able to provide care to high standard for patience. But to ensure themselves don't become a patiences. The stresses and casualties that come along with being a paramedic mean that the only way to have a success and prolonged career is to regularly undertake in self-care. If you wish to advance your careers it is vital you “should be regularly educated about psychological self-care and injury prevention” (p.39). Especially in the pre-hospital environment where you get to leave your comfort zone and experience the worst of humanity. Self-care can not only save and expand your career but can also save your life. When you must witness traumas and injuries daily it can take your

Once I decided to pursuing a career in counseling, throughout my entire undergraduate program nearly every class I took stressed the importance of self-care in the field. Although, at first I didn’t think that much about it and had an attitude of “what’s the big deal,” until I begun practicums and internships. This is when I saw how quickly someone could become burned out if they failed to take care of themselves. Even though the high demands of work, school, and internship take their toll, this is still where my passion lies.

Self care is essential to the nursing profession because it is a reflection on the quality of health care nurses provide to their patients, it portrays an image to the patients on what’s necessary towards healthy living and can help nurses battle with stress and personal health. Self care can be expressed as taking care of ones self’s health and overall wellbeing. This can be shown through eating healthy, exercising daily, getting enough sleep and completing weekly activities to reduce stress. Improving your overall health can benefit nurses from overworking themselves and help minimize the affects certain stressors can have on them. By doing so, the overall atmosphere in the workplace and the quality of healthcare provided to the patients will be greatly improved.

The Self-Care Deficit Theory of Nursing impacts modern health as well as nursing more so than expected during its creation and evolution. The Institute of Medicine (IOM, 2001) demanded the need for health care to shift from acute care setting to management of disease. Consequently, today’s health care is in the midst of a paradigm shift, as it redirects its attention towards patient centered care, disease prevention and wellness promotion. The Affordable Care Act implemented regulations, enforced by financial reimbursement to ensure that hospitals have shorter lengths of stay, lower readmission rates and strategies to enhance health promotion, disease prevention and improved quality of life (Taylor, 2012). The government has placed incredible demands on the health care system as baby boomers are aging and chronic diseases are becoming more complex requiring increased use of technology and nursing support. In order to meet the legislative requirements, administrators and educators must transition to the structure and concepts provided by the Self-Care Deficit Nursing Theory, for it is in this theory, nurses are empowered to better care for the patients as they present with complex self-care needs requiring specialized assistance from highly advanced, educated nurses who prepare these patients to return home better equipped for self-care despite their chronic conditions.

Working full time and being a full time student, I realize how quickly time passes. I start my day by waking up early in the morning, heading off to work, then commuting to Fresno to attend school. As my lifestyle continues to consistently change, I find myself focusing on tasks that need to be done instead of taking time to focus on my self-care. Whether it’s getting caught up on work email or finishing an essay for school, I always put my self-care on the back burner, which results in feelings of being stressed. For my self-care plan, I want to create a plan that will allow myself time to focus on my self-care in order to reduce stress and exhaustion in my life that I experience on a daily basis.

The second component of the Orem’s theory, Self-care deficit, is the inability for individual or parent to care themselves or provide care to maintain well being or health and is the situation when nursing is needed. In these circumstances, Orem indicates that nursing care and interventions are needed when the patient is in the self-care deficit. This is accomplished by offering physical and psychological support, teaching, and providing an environment to promote personal development to meet the patient needs. Nursing care will provide aid if the patient is not able to shave or wash themselves, or a guide if patient needs support when using their walking aid. Patient may also need emotional support, training and education to provide self-care if they are able but lack the skills. Nurses must assess the type of self-care deficits and provide nursing intervention as needed.

Within the social care setting it is especially important to have a self-care plan. There are many aspects within your daily life that can affect you. In order to be able to help others it is important to take care of yourself. Self-care doesn’t need to be expensive or take a lot of time but it can have good benefits on your health. The following is a handful of things that you can do to self-care.

ENVIRONMENT Context where self-care occurs. Can hinder or support self-care activities. Includes the family, work, community, health care system. Person (client/patient) self-care deficits are the result of environmental situations. HEALTH Promoted by adequate self-care Major areas for "self-care" patient education Maintaining health Enhancing health Includes: exercise & physical fitness nutrition and weight control stress management maintenance of social support systems environmental control

Orem’s Self-Care Theory lays the foundation to measure self-care maintenance, management, and confidence. The framework of Orem’s theory contributes an optimistic patient view to their own personal healthcare and the goal of nurses, and the independent function of their patients. The identification of nursing as a science and an art are identified as well as its boundaries, and serve as unique contributions to nursing. The research that Orem completed was designed to measure self-care deficits and the quality of life to help determine the correlation between both (Seed & Torkelson, 2012).