Work-Life Balance and You

I'm honored to be this week's featured guest blogger on the Georgetown University School of Nursing blog, and I'd like to take this opportunity to share the link to the post as well as some excerpts from the post itself. The subject is work-life balance for nurses, and many of you may relate to this common challenge faced by nurses and healthcare professionals.

The article begins:

When it comes to leading a balanced and healthy life, work-life balance can be challenging for those of us employed in health care. Sadly, many nurses find this an especially difficult area to improve, so coming up with concrete strategies to combat poor work-life balance is crucial for preventing burnout and increasing personal and professional satisfaction.

Work-life balance is a juggling act, but one that we can truly get a firm grasp of when we consciously choose to pay it the attention it deserves.

In the subsequent sections of the post, I cover the central aspects of how to assess and improve your work-life balance in relation to the steps of the nursing process:

• assessment
• diagnosis
• planning
• implementation
• evaluation 

(To read the details of this process, you'll have to surf over to the GU blog!) 

The article concludes thus:

Work-life balance isn’t something that your employer or spouse is necessarily going to remind you about. If being on your own doesn’t seem like a recipe for success, you can enlist a friend as your “accountability buddy” as you try to implement some positive changes in your life. You can also hire a coach who will hold you accountable and assist you in the entire process of assessing, planning, and implementing the changes that you desire to make in your life.

This process is ongoing, dynamic, and lifelong, so embrace the notion of self-care and work-life balance as part of being human, and then take the necessary steps to move towards the healthy, balanced end of the continuum.

Many thanks to the Georgetown School of Nursing for inviting me to be this week's guest blogger, and I look forward to more opportunities to interact with students, nurses and readers about such crucial topics of critical importance to nurses.