Saturday, July 1, 2017
How Often Should You Change Your Sheets?
How often should you change your sheets?
March 30, 2017 Health News Team
On average, we spend one-third of our lives in bed. So frequent sheet cleaning seems like a no-brainer. But some bedding, like your mattress pad or comforter cover, could skip a few loads. We stripped your bed (no, not literally) to see how often you really need to clean it.
We shed skin cells, sweat and oil every night. Keep your sleep space clean, and avoid dust mites, by washing your sheets once a week. If anyone in your household is sick, wash sheets (or at least the pillowcases) daily.
Cleaning instructions
Use the hot water option on your washing machine, and the hot cycle on your dryer. This will help kill germs, although it could shrink your sheet's fibers.
Pillow stuffing can attract allergy-causing dust mites, so they should be washed a few times throughout the year.
Cleaning instructions
Check your pillow's label — most down and synthetic varieties are machine-washable. Use the gentle cycle, hot water and liquid detergent. Wash two pillows at the same time for balance, and put them through the rinse cycle twice. To dry, use the low setting on your dryer, and add two clean tennis balls to avoid flattening.
Pillow and mattress protectors extend the life of your bedding, and help ward off dust mites. Even though they're covered by sheets and pillowcases, you should still wash your protectors once a month — especially if you have allergies or a pet.
Cleaning instructions
Covers and pads can have a variety of washing options, so check the label. But in general, most can be machine-washed in warm water, and dried on the low setting.
If you're washing your comforter cover as frequently as your sheets, you may be washing it too much. If you don't use a top sheet, then yes, wash the cover once a week. But if you do use a top sheet, wash your comforter cover once a month.
Cleaning instructions
As a general rule, wash your comforter cover the same way you wash your sheets — with hot water and a hot dryer. If your cover is decorative and you're worried about shrinking, use lower temperatures and detergents meant for delicates.
As long as your comforter has a cover, you shouldn't have to wash it as often as your sheets. Instead, wash it a few times a year — as frequently as you should be washing your pillows. Without a cover, your comforter needs more cleaning. Wash it once a week if you don't use a top sheet, and once a month if you do.
Cleaning instructions
Not all comforters are built the same, so check the label. Otherwise, your washing machine — as long as it has a large enough capacity — should do the trick. Wash on the gentle or delicate cycle using warm, not hot, water. Dry it on low heat with a few clean tennis balls to plump it up.
Sheets
Cleaning frequencyWe shed skin cells, sweat and oil every night. Keep your sleep space clean, and avoid dust mites, by washing your sheets once a week. If anyone in your household is sick, wash sheets (or at least the pillowcases) daily.
Cleaning instructions
Use the hot water option on your washing machine, and the hot cycle on your dryer. This will help kill germs, although it could shrink your sheet's fibers.
Pillows
Cleaning frequencyPillow stuffing can attract allergy-causing dust mites, so they should be washed a few times throughout the year.
Cleaning instructions
Check your pillow's label — most down and synthetic varieties are machine-washable. Use the gentle cycle, hot water and liquid detergent. Wash two pillows at the same time for balance, and put them through the rinse cycle twice. To dry, use the low setting on your dryer, and add two clean tennis balls to avoid flattening.
Pillow and mattress protectors
Cleaning frequencyPillow and mattress protectors extend the life of your bedding, and help ward off dust mites. Even though they're covered by sheets and pillowcases, you should still wash your protectors once a month — especially if you have allergies or a pet.
Cleaning instructions
Covers and pads can have a variety of washing options, so check the label. But in general, most can be machine-washed in warm water, and dried on the low setting.
Comforter covers
Cleaning frequencyIf you're washing your comforter cover as frequently as your sheets, you may be washing it too much. If you don't use a top sheet, then yes, wash the cover once a week. But if you do use a top sheet, wash your comforter cover once a month.
Cleaning instructions
As a general rule, wash your comforter cover the same way you wash your sheets — with hot water and a hot dryer. If your cover is decorative and you're worried about shrinking, use lower temperatures and detergents meant for delicates.
Comforters
Cleaning frequencyAs long as your comforter has a cover, you shouldn't have to wash it as often as your sheets. Instead, wash it a few times a year — as frequently as you should be washing your pillows. Without a cover, your comforter needs more cleaning. Wash it once a week if you don't use a top sheet, and once a month if you do.
Cleaning instructions
Not all comforters are built the same, so check the label. Otherwise, your washing machine — as long as it has a large enough capacity — should do the trick. Wash on the gentle or delicate cycle using warm, not hot, water. Dry it on low heat with a few clean tennis balls to plump it up.
Thursday, June 1, 2017
The Three E’s Of The Nurse Commitment
The Three E’s Of The Nurse Commitment
Deciding to become a nurse is more than a career decision, it’s a decision about the way you’re going to approach life in general. The nurse commitment starts when you first enroll in undergrad classes toward your nursing degree, and it continues throughout your career through retirement and beyond.
The nurse commitment can be broken down into the “three E’s”: education, endurance, and empathy. Nurses are some of the most educated professionals, undergoing ongoing training and personal career development throughout most of our lives. Like the physicians we work alongside, we have extensive education and training in the biomedical sciences, including both theoretical knowledge about the workings of the human body, and hands-on practical training in administering healthcare.
We also have endurance in spades. Nursing is a profession that is mentally, emotionally, and physically demanding. Between twelve-hour night shifts, life-or-death decision making about patient care, and the emotional experience of caring for a patient and eventually losing them to their age or illness, we deal with a lot of mental and emotional stress. That takes endurance and a lot of it.
Finally, there’s also empathy. Nurses are caregivers by nature. We’re healers, people who tend to the sick and injured. We work closely with the patients we care for, cultivating a therapeutic relationship that provides emotional and medical support on their road to recovery. To be a nurse, you must have empathy. It’s not a job that’s well suited to people who are impersonal and cold.
Education
Nurses are highly educated professionals, and most have at least a bachelor’s degree. Ongoing education is a central aspect of a career in nursing. As medical techniques and technology grow and evolve, nurses need to remain up to date with the latest new developments.
Many nurses choose to further their education partway through their career. Nurses with bachelor’s degrees often end up pursuing a master’s, and some even go as far as obtaining their PhD.
Continuing Education
There are a wealth of courses available for working nurses to continue expanding their knowledge and skill sets. Many nurses choose to pursue additional credentialing in specialized areas of nursing. The American Nurses Credentialing Center offers numerous certifications and certification renewals in a variety of areas, including (but not limited to):
- Nurse practitioner certifications in areas like psychiatric nursing, gerontological nursing, and family practice.
- Clinical nurse specialist certifications in areas like pediatrics, psychiatry, and gerontology.
- Specialty certifications in areas like home health nursing, school nursing, diabetes management, community health, psychiatry, pediatrics, and mental health.
Conferences & Seminars
There are also many conferences and seminars in which nurses can participate to gain new insight into the latest new developments in the world of nursing. Many are available as webinars, meaning you don’t have to travel to participate in them. The American Nurses Association (ANA) maintains a list of upcoming conferences and webinars here.
Endurance
Nurses also need a whole lot of endurance — mental, physical, and emotional. Nursing is surprisingly physically demanding, keeping us on our feet all day and moving around from place to place. We also do things like help patients from their bed into a wheelchair, which require physical strength.
Nursing is also mentally demanding. We need to make fast, accurate, informed decisions about the course of patients’ ongoing care, and in some cases, those decisions are life or death. Many of us are in leadership positions, where we also need to make decisions for our entire teams.
And then, there’s emotional endurance. We have to stay upbeat, friendly, and positive, putting our patients at ease even if we ourselves are literally having the worst day ever. And then, there’s the experience of losing a patient. Many of us, especially those of us in specialties like gerontology and oncology, have cultivated strong therapeutic relationships with patients who we ultimately lost. All of these things take emotional endurance, the form of endurance that nurses need that’s probably the least talked about.
Empathy
Nursing requires empathy. This isn’t a profession for cold, mechanical people who don’t get along well with others. We have to be able to really understand what our patients are going through, mentally, physically, and emotionally, so that we can provide the best possible quality of care. Many of us work with challenging populations that can make this even more difficult, like patients with severe dementia or with disabling degrees of mental illness.
Embracing the Three E’s
As nurses, we embrace the three E’s as part of our role in patient care. We’re strong people, with endurance that others can only dream of. We’re educated to a level far beyond many other types of white-collar workers. And, most importantly, we cultivate empathy and compassion.
Monday, May 1, 2017
How to Deal With a Traumatic Experience As a Nurse
How to Deal With a Traumatic Experience As a Nurse
No matter what type of nursing you do, at one time or another in your
career, you will experience trauma. Whether it's the death of a
patient, the serious injury of a child or the loss of a co-worker. No
two experiences are quite the same, and each one feels just as hard as
another.
Recently, a colleague and I went out to visit a nursing unit. When we arrived, there was a candle lit in the conference room and a photo of a man in scrubs. As we got closer to the makeshift altar, we realized — a nurse on this unit had just died.
My colleague became very quiet, as if shutting down. I asked her what was wrong. She started to share with me, with a shaky voice and teary eyes, how, when she worked on her pediatric unit, a nurse had overdosed in the supply room. As she told me the story, it was as though she was reliving the experience all over again. This is what secondary trauma syndrome is all about.
And nurses deal with this all of the time.
A pediatric nurse loses a patient who has been battling a chronic disease for months; an ER nurse witnesses the effects of domestic violence as a battered woman comes to get her cuts and bruises treated; a forensic nurse cares for patients who are raped and tortured.
How do we continue to care when we are constantly witnessing such unsettling experiences? How do we show up at work day after day when we know the next patient we see could be to be worse off than the one before?
First off, let me say right up front, I am not a trauma expert — nor am I someone to be giving out medical or psychological advice. If you have experienced serious secondary trauma stress as a nurse, I would encourage you to seek out support and get professional help, when needed.
But there are plenty things that you can do on your own, which is what we will cover below.
2. On the other hand, you do need sleep. Lots of symptoms related to post-traumatic stress happen at night. We can't fall asleep, or if we do, we are abruptly woken up by nightmares related to the event. If you're having trouble sleeping, you might need to get professional help from your physician. Writing in a journal, going to a support group of survivors to talk it out and limiting caffeine intake close to bed can also help. The best way to get a good night’s rest is to attempt to regulate your body's sleep schedule. Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day to get in a sleep groove.
3. Avoid negative coping strategies. Sometimes when people experience difficult situations, they turn to cigarettes, food, alcohol or drugs to cope. While these remedies may provide relief in the short-term, they will do more harm than good over time. The trauma will still be there, and if it's not dealt with, may never fully go away. Placing some sort of band-aid over it, like food or alcohol, will only mask it for a while. The stress needs to be dealt with so that it can slowly fade away.
4. Do things that you enjoy. The reason that a stressful experience creates trauma is because it's something unwanted. It's a jarring, chaotic and unpleasant experience. While the mind may want to focus on this memory (which is totally normal), we need to busy ourselves with positive distractions. Take a dance class. Go see a funny movie. Enroll in an art workshop. Do things that you enjoy and surround yourself with positive people and energy.
5. Talk about it with your team. One mistake that happens often in healthcare is that we brush traumatic experiences under the rug as ‘just part of the job’. Patients come and go all the time, so why are we having such a tough time with this particular death? Guess what? You may not be the only nurse on your unit struggling with the pain. Instead of acting as if the stressful situation didn't happen, bring the nursing team together and talk about the event. The more that these experiences can be processed, the better (and faster) the healing can occur.
Have you ever dealt with trauma as a nurse? What did you do to cope with traumatic stress in nursing? Be sure to tweet me @ElizabethScala or leave a comment below. You may just help another nurse!
Sign up for our nursing newsletter for the most recent nursing news, find your next nursing job today and check out our Nursing Career Center!
Related Articles:
No matter what type of nursing you do, at one time or another in your
career, you will experience trauma. Whether it's the death of a
patient, the serious injury of a child or the loss of a co-worker. No
two experiences are quite the same, and each one feels just as hard as
another.Recently, a colleague and I went out to visit a nursing unit. When we arrived, there was a candle lit in the conference room and a photo of a man in scrubs. As we got closer to the makeshift altar, we realized — a nurse on this unit had just died.
My colleague became very quiet, as if shutting down. I asked her what was wrong. She started to share with me, with a shaky voice and teary eyes, how, when she worked on her pediatric unit, a nurse had overdosed in the supply room. As she told me the story, it was as though she was reliving the experience all over again. This is what secondary trauma syndrome is all about.
And nurses deal with this all of the time.
A pediatric nurse loses a patient who has been battling a chronic disease for months; an ER nurse witnesses the effects of domestic violence as a battered woman comes to get her cuts and bruises treated; a forensic nurse cares for patients who are raped and tortured.
How do we continue to care when we are constantly witnessing such unsettling experiences? How do we show up at work day after day when we know the next patient we see could be to be worse off than the one before?
First off, let me say right up front, I am not a trauma expert — nor am I someone to be giving out medical or psychological advice. If you have experienced serious secondary trauma stress as a nurse, I would encourage you to seek out support and get professional help, when needed.
But there are plenty things that you can do on your own, which is what we will cover below.
Here are five tips to help ease the pain of traumatic experiences in nursing:
1. No matter what, you need to get up and moving. Experiencing trauma (especially repeated trauma) can be debilitating. We want to crawl into bed and never get out from under the covers. But this is no way to deal with the stress. In fact, it will make it worse. You need to get up and moving, even if that just means taking a shower and then a walk around the neighborhood. And, if it is a sunny day, spending a bit of time outside in nature can actually improve your mood as you soak up the natural vitamin D.2. On the other hand, you do need sleep. Lots of symptoms related to post-traumatic stress happen at night. We can't fall asleep, or if we do, we are abruptly woken up by nightmares related to the event. If you're having trouble sleeping, you might need to get professional help from your physician. Writing in a journal, going to a support group of survivors to talk it out and limiting caffeine intake close to bed can also help. The best way to get a good night’s rest is to attempt to regulate your body's sleep schedule. Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day to get in a sleep groove.
3. Avoid negative coping strategies. Sometimes when people experience difficult situations, they turn to cigarettes, food, alcohol or drugs to cope. While these remedies may provide relief in the short-term, they will do more harm than good over time. The trauma will still be there, and if it's not dealt with, may never fully go away. Placing some sort of band-aid over it, like food or alcohol, will only mask it for a while. The stress needs to be dealt with so that it can slowly fade away.
4. Do things that you enjoy. The reason that a stressful experience creates trauma is because it's something unwanted. It's a jarring, chaotic and unpleasant experience. While the mind may want to focus on this memory (which is totally normal), we need to busy ourselves with positive distractions. Take a dance class. Go see a funny movie. Enroll in an art workshop. Do things that you enjoy and surround yourself with positive people and energy.
5. Talk about it with your team. One mistake that happens often in healthcare is that we brush traumatic experiences under the rug as ‘just part of the job’. Patients come and go all the time, so why are we having such a tough time with this particular death? Guess what? You may not be the only nurse on your unit struggling with the pain. Instead of acting as if the stressful situation didn't happen, bring the nursing team together and talk about the event. The more that these experiences can be processed, the better (and faster) the healing can occur.
Have you ever dealt with trauma as a nurse? What did you do to cope with traumatic stress in nursing? Be sure to tweet me @ElizabethScala or leave a comment below. You may just help another nurse!
Sign up for our nursing newsletter for the most recent nursing news, find your next nursing job today and check out our Nursing Career Center!
Related Articles:
- How to Deal with Rude Co-Workers as a Nurse
- 10 Signs You're Suffering From Nursing Burnout
- The Weight of Nursing
Saturday, April 1, 2017
Nurses Get It....
10 things only nurses understand
flickr | Tatsuo Yamashita
How do you KNOW you’re a nurse? Well, there are some things only nurses can understand…and these are 10 of them!
10 things only nurses understand
10. That feeling of getting a patient totally cleaned up and neat in the bed, only to have a flood of liquid stool overcome the chuck pads.
9. How useful Vick’s VapoRub can be. Put it in a mask to kill bad smells! Rub it on sore feet for pain relief! Use it as a sandwich spread when you’re really desperate!
8. What a rarity it is to give report to the same person on the same patients three days in a row.
7. How often nurses make the decisions that doctors don’t think about or are too afraid to make.
6. Just how easily most things in life can be MacGyvered.
5. How omnidirectional hearing is a learned skill. Is that beep coming from 8? No, it's coming from 21.
4. Why good health is the biggest blessing any person could ask for.
3. How much difference there is between a 12-hour and a 16-hour shift.
2. That zombies aren't a threat to the human race. They're just residents with bad skin.
1. How amazing it is to have an old patient walk back into the unit to say thanks.
flickr | Tatsuo Yamashita
How do you KNOW you’re a nurse? Well, there are some things only nurses can understand…and these are 10 of them!
10 things only nurses understand
10. That feeling of getting a patient totally cleaned up and neat in the bed, only to have a flood of liquid stool overcome the chuck pads.
9. How useful Vick’s VapoRub can be. Put it in a mask to kill bad smells! Rub it on sore feet for pain relief! Use it as a sandwich spread when you’re really desperate!
8. What a rarity it is to give report to the same person on the same patients three days in a row.
7. How often nurses make the decisions that doctors don’t think about or are too afraid to make.
6. Just how easily most things in life can be MacGyvered.
5. How omnidirectional hearing is a learned skill. Is that beep coming from 8? No, it's coming from 21.
4. Why good health is the biggest blessing any person could ask for.
3. How much difference there is between a 12-hour and a 16-hour shift.
2. That zombies aren't a threat to the human race. They're just residents with bad skin.
1. How amazing it is to have an old patient walk back into the unit to say thanks.
Wednesday, March 1, 2017
When Patients Self Diagnose
When Patients Self-diagnose
But hey—at least they’ve come to the right place to really find out, right? And that’s where you come in.
Nurse Mendoza discusses patients who self-diagnose, and how to respond to them calmly, compassionately, and confidently.
Have a favorite “self-diagnosis” that you’ve stumbled upon while on the job? From the “way off” to the “way out there,” share your story with us in the comments section below!
Wednesday, February 1, 2017
Now that I’m a nurse
5 things I’ll never do now that I’m a nurse
Hemera | Thinkstock
I wasn’t all that wild as a teenager and young adult, really. (Hi
Mom!) There were just some things I did that I remember with awe.
Now that I’m a nurse, I would never:
1. Go car-surfing while a buddy of mine attempts to shoot me with a homemade bazooka that fires things tied to firecrackers.
You’d think this would be self-explanatory, wouldn’t you? It’s not.
2. Mix muscle relaxants, alcohol and Tylenol.
I shudder to think that I actually did this more than once, back when I was working in a college bookstore. Something about lifting three or four tons of books a day made it seem like a really good idea.
3. Ski.
If somebody came up to you and said, “Hey! I want you to hurl yourself down this steep hill while wearing a pair of fiberglass knife blades attached to your feet!” you’d look at him like he was cray to the cray to the zee. Yet, if the same person said, “Hey! Let’s go skiing!” you’d be all over it, wouldn’t you? I was, before I saw what running into a tree could do to a brain.
4. Assume that I know anything about anything.
People think that because you’re a nurse, you’ll know everything there is to know about everything from wound glue to chest tubes to newborns. It’s not true. You might have a good overview of things when you come out of school, but specialization rapidly deprives you of any knowledge you might’ve had outside of your field. I tell doctors all the time, “Don’t assume I know jack about what you’re doing, okay?” and it’s true.
5. Take my health or my ability to move for granted.
Any day spent on the right side of the ground is a good day. I am not kidding. If you can get up, move around, take care of yourself in a reasonable manner and communicate somehow, you’re way ahead of a whole bunch of people that I see every day. I have never been so thankful for what I’ve got, and so determined to keep it, as I was after seeing a few brain-injured people in a rehab facility.
Now that I’m a nurse, I would never:
1. Go car-surfing while a buddy of mine attempts to shoot me with a homemade bazooka that fires things tied to firecrackers.
You’d think this would be self-explanatory, wouldn’t you? It’s not.
2. Mix muscle relaxants, alcohol and Tylenol.
I shudder to think that I actually did this more than once, back when I was working in a college bookstore. Something about lifting three or four tons of books a day made it seem like a really good idea.
3. Ski.
If somebody came up to you and said, “Hey! I want you to hurl yourself down this steep hill while wearing a pair of fiberglass knife blades attached to your feet!” you’d look at him like he was cray to the cray to the zee. Yet, if the same person said, “Hey! Let’s go skiing!” you’d be all over it, wouldn’t you? I was, before I saw what running into a tree could do to a brain.
4. Assume that I know anything about anything.
People think that because you’re a nurse, you’ll know everything there is to know about everything from wound glue to chest tubes to newborns. It’s not true. You might have a good overview of things when you come out of school, but specialization rapidly deprives you of any knowledge you might’ve had outside of your field. I tell doctors all the time, “Don’t assume I know jack about what you’re doing, okay?” and it’s true.
5. Take my health or my ability to move for granted.
Any day spent on the right side of the ground is a good day. I am not kidding. If you can get up, move around, take care of yourself in a reasonable manner and communicate somehow, you’re way ahead of a whole bunch of people that I see every day. I have never been so thankful for what I’ve got, and so determined to keep it, as I was after seeing a few brain-injured people in a rehab facility.