How to Improve Nurse Wellness at Your Facility: 5 Tips

Nurses comprise the largest portion of the U.S. healthcare labor force. When they experience a decline in their physical and mental health, it has a profound ripple effect on their patients, families, and organizations. For this reason, your facility’s growth and success depends on your commitment to nurse wellness.

In this article, you’ll learn tips for cultivating a culture of wellness that will not only nurture the health and mental well-being of your nurses but will also plant the seeds for improved patient satisfaction and health outcomes.

Five Tips on How to Improve Nurse Wellness

As a healthcare leader, you should be encouraged by the fact that there are practical ways to support nursing wellness. Here are five strategies to help your team get started.

1. Promote a Safe Work Environment

Designing staff wellness initiatives provides an excellent opportunity for you and your administrative team to take stock of your organization’s work environment. Survey your nursing staff to see if they feel safe working in your facility. Facilitate an open discussion to cover any concerns they may have. You can’t nurture a healthy and positive work environment for nurse wellness if they don’t feel safe on the job.

Example: One way for your organization to work toward a healthy work environment is by incorporating the Nurses Bill of Rights, drafted by the American Nurses Association (ANA), into your facility’s policies and procedures. Address important topics like:

• Bullying and workplace violence.
• Safe patient handling and mobility.
• Drug diversion prevention and treatment strategies.
• Environmental health.
• Disaster preparedness and response.

2. Develop a Nursing Wellness Team

Form a committee of nursing leadership and clinical staff from each department to design and implement your facility’s wellness program. Nurses are resourceful agents of change — soliciting their feedback when developing wellness solutions is the key to creating a successful program that’s effective and meaningful to their colleagues.

Also, by encouraging your nurses to lead this innovation, your facility’s leadership team demonstrates that it:

• Listens to their collective voice.
• Cares about their well-being.
• Is a committed partner in addressing their needs.

Your clinical staff will need assistance in planning, financing, and endorsing their wellness activities for nurses. As your nursing team lays down the necessary groundwork, your leadership remains essential to the program’s succcess.

Example: Develop a facility-wide structural empowerment council as part of your organization’s shared governance model to encourage staff buy-in. In this clinical council, staff should be alloted paid, protected time away from patient care responsibilities to focus on improving their workplace culture and developing wellness initiatives that are lasting and meaningful.

3. Recruit Help to Support Your Nurse Wellness Program

As your wellness team creates a program to support your nurses, they’ll likely require external health and wellness resources to drive their initiatives. The more strategies your team incorporates into your wellness plan, the more your program will interest and engage your nursing staff.

Examples:

• Utilize free tools provided by the American Nurse Foundation to improve nursing well-being and resilience.
• Facilitate a meeting between your wellness team and your organization’s health plan account manager to determine how to incorporate proactive care strategies and wellness services into your program.
• Contract a wellness instructor to teach your staff practical stress-reducing and health-promoting practices, such as box breathing, meditation, mindfulness, and yoga.
• Partner with a digital wellness company to offer your staff free online coaching to enrich their health and well-being.
• Personalized nurse health coaching has been proven to increase staff engagement, productivity, and retention. Consider adding this staff position to your team.

4. Encourage Restorative Shift Breaks

Prolonged periods of stress have been proven to negatively impact physical and mental health. Restorative breaks, defined as pauses from physical and mental activity that result in a relaxed state, can significantly reduce nurse burnout. Frequent break periods also provide these additional employee benefits:

• Reduced alarm fatigue
• Improved short-term performance
• Increased alertness and mental clarity
• Optimized time management skills
• Enhanced interpersonal collaboration and communication
• Improved performance on several key performance indicators
• Reduced risk of errors

Example: Planting a garden on your facility grounds for nurses to visit during their breaks can reduce emotional exhaustion and provide clinicians with a sense of peace and stress relief.

5. Enhance Scheduling Strategies

Encouraging a sincere conversation about nurse wellness must include the topic of nurse staffing. Nurses state that work-life balance and scheduling flexibility are among the top factors impacting job satisfaction. Discussing this issue can be challenging for healthcare leaders, but strategizing how to fix glaring issues can help you and your wellness team know what to prioritize when developing potential solutions.

Examples:

• Include four-hour shifts as one of your scheduling options to cover patient and resident assignments while nurses take meal and rest breaks.
• Work with your team to optimize staffing during structured activities to boost nurse engagement. Utilize additional break relief staff to encourage employees to participate in your nursing wellness programs during their break periods.
• Create a reliable nursing float pool to avoid staffing shortages and cover any gaps due to full-time staff vacations, maternity leave, or sick time.
• Include one to two mental health and wellness days as a part of the nurse’s PTO benefits.

Stay Informed About Nurses’ Well-Being at Work

Now that you have the information necessary to implement a nurse wellness program at your facility, you’ll want to stay up-to-date on other effective ways to support your team. Follow along in our free newsletter for more evidence-based strategies for reducing healthcare burnout and improving nursing job satisfaction.