Nurses Becoming Better Fit Nurses
Twelve hour shifts are long. Patients get violent. Equipment breaks down or is unavailable. Eating breaks are few and far between.
These are all reasons why it is important for a Nurse to be have physical fitness. And today, we're addressing it. Each person is different. It's not a fat percentage that makes you fit. It's about having the skills you need to be successful at the job.
As much as we don't like these things, they are all parts of the Nursing profession since Nursing began. War Nurses definitely were short staffed and over worked. Not to mention the trauma that they must have dealt with personally in those circumstances.
Part of Nursing is being strong. Both mentally and physically. Nurses are placed under severe mental stress, witnessing death and trauma, while trying to stop it. Sometimes a Nurse and Doctor are successful and sometimes they are not. And that's not the only mental stress they have. Harassment from patients, and bullying between coworkers also cause mental stress.
What's more is that not only do Nurses need tremendous mental strength, they also need a strong physical body to do the work. A twelve hour shift may have as many as 15,000 steps! That's a lot. On top of that, they might have also needed to transfer a patient to a different bed and push several wheelchair patients to their bed. Oh, and of course moving all of the safe patient handling equipment to position lifts is in there too.
This is a physical job, and Nurses need to be trained and prepared for it.
It's important that our Nurses have Injury Prevention Training. Our course covers all of the basics in avoiding injury as much as possible by practicing functional movement patterns, and techniques to protect the spine and reduce stress.
If you're a Nurse in the NYC area, give us a call and we'll set up a Functional Movement Screen for you so you can identify your personal risk for injury!
Do you have any injuries that occurred at work?? How important do you think strength and injury prevention training is for the Nursing profession?