What are the best ways to build resilience and cope with stress as a nurse?

1 Identify your stressors

The first step to cope with stress is to identify what triggers it and how it affects you. Stressors can be internal or external, and they can vary from person to person. Some common stressors for nurses are long hours, high expectations, lack of resources, conflicts, and exposure to suffering and death. To identify your stressors, you can use a journal, a stress diary, or a self-assessment tool to record and reflect on your experiences, feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. By doing this, you can gain more insight into your stress patterns and sources, and plan how to address them.

2 Manage your emotions

The second step to cope with stress is to manage your emotions effectively. Emotions are natural and inevitable, but they can also be overwhelming and disruptive if not regulated. To manage your emotions, you can use various strategies, such as deep breathing, relaxation techniques, positive affirmations, mindfulness, and cognitive reframing. These strategies can help you calm down, reduce negative emotions, and enhance positive emotions. They can also help you cope with difficult situations, such as grief, anger, or guilt, by allowing you to acknowledge, express, and process your feelings.

3 Seek support

The third step to cope with stress is to seek support from others who can understand and help you. Support can come from different sources, such as family, friends, colleagues, mentors, supervisors, or professional counselors. Support can provide you with emotional, practical, or informational assistance, depending on your needs. It can also help you feel less isolated, more valued, and more confident. To seek support, you can reach out to your network, join a support group, or access available resources, such as employee assistance programs, peer support programs, or counseling services.

4 Develop coping skills

The fourth step to cope with stress is to develop coping skills that can help you deal with challenging situations and reduce their impact. Coping skills can be problem-focused or emotion-focused, depending on whether you want to change the situation or your response to it. Some examples of problem-focused coping skills are setting goals, prioritizing tasks, delegating responsibilities, negotiating expectations, and seeking feedback. Some examples of emotion-focused coping skills are humor, distraction, hobbies, exercise, and meditation. You can use a combination of coping skills that suit your preferences and circumstances.

5 Enhance your well-being

The fifth step to cope with stress is to enhance your well-being by taking care of your physical, mental, and spiritual health. Well-being is essential for resilience, as it can help you prevent and recover from stress, as well as improve your overall quality of life. To enhance your well-being, you can adopt healthy habits, such as eating well, sleeping enough, staying hydrated, and avoiding substance abuse. You can also engage in activities that nourish your mind and soul, such as learning new skills, reading, listening to music, or practicing your faith.

6 Embrace growth

The sixth and final step to cope with stress is to embrace growth by learning from your experiences and finding meaning and purpose in your work. Growth is the ultimate goal of resilience, as it can help you transform challenges into opportunities, and setbacks into strengths. To embrace growth, you can reflect on your achievements, challenges, and lessons learned, and identify your strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement. You can also align your work with your values, passions, and goals, and seek feedback, mentoring, and coaching to advance your career.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?