What is self-care?
Does it only mean your beautification of face, nails, and hairs? No! Self- care is the ability to pay attention to the health and wellness of oneself before approaching to help others. One such profession, where the healers take active part in helping people combat their illness is health care professionals. Most often, medical practitioners forget to pay attention to their own health and well-being due to the overwork load befallen on them. This can be seen especially in times of the coronavirus pandemic, where doctors and nurses toll day and night to treat the patients without any break. Self-care is the care of physical, mental and social well-being of the individual.
There is a saying, if the foundation is strong, then the buildings are stable, similarly for the healthcare professional to deliver good treatment, it’s very necessary that he/she is healthy and are stress free. This allows them to think clearly and make quick and productive decision. If the practitioner is stressed, it interferes with the ability of them to treat well. Self-care is not selfish. If a person is drowning, rescuer fastens airbag onto himself before jumping into the water. Similarly, for health care professionals, it’s very important to adjust their mask before adjusting the patient.
3MEDS- best medicine app in India, recommends few measures to pay attention to self-care.
Take adequate rest:
To replenish the lost energy, it’s mandatory for the body to have proper rest. Exhaustion often leads to improper decision making and lethargic attitude while treating. This in turn results in poor quality of the treatment provided. When practitioners are considered angel, patients look up for happy smiling face of doctors, but if the doctors are stressed, they won’t be able to do so. No matter, how busy the schedule is, make time to get adequate sleep. And it’s not selfish.
Meditate:
Meditation like yoga helps to relieve the stress and aids in providing balance to the body and emotions. It also helps to think clearly and improves concentration. Concentration is very important part of medicine. The more the practitioner is distracted, the more it affects the decision making.
Have food at regular intervals:
Lack of glucose in the body reduces the reasoning capacity of the brain. It also makes the person weak. Often health care professionals miss their lunch or breakfast or dinner due to heavy schedule. This habit over a long period will affect the efficiency of the body and impact the health of the practitioner. Therefore one must take break to pay attention to needs of one’s body.
Have conversation with loved ones:
In current scenario of the pandemic, often medical practitioners are isolated from their kith and kin. Other than this, there are many incidents of abuse reported on doctors. All this leads to unnecessary stress to get rooted. Having a healthy talk with loved ones reduces the stress and provides the sense of belonging. Make use of digital platforms, video calling apps to get connected and reduce negativity.
Have healthy diet:
Not only food, but healthy food with adequate nutrients is essential for the optimum functioning of the body. Your body needs care just like every other human being on earth. Medicine is not carried out by robots, but by humans like us. Therefore taking care of nutrition is very important.
Exercise:
Often doctors recommend exercise for healthy lifestyle, but fail to implement in their routine due to the excessive work pressure. Make time for exercise out of your schedule. A short walk, a small distance jog, will work wonder and help in rejuvenating your senses. Deep breathing exercises have been termed effective. It helps in relaxation of your muscles. Doctors, due to their busy schedule forget to breathe fresh air especially in times of pandemic with continuous covering of nose with mask. Therefore, it’s quite important to breathe fresh air.
Conclusion:
Self-care is not selfish. This has to be remembered by every practitioner of medicine out there. What do the folk do, if the medicine practitioner is ill? This will have impact on lives of many people. Medicine is not copy-paste, it’s all about skills which only certain people can accomplish. Therefore to utilize this skill, one must be fit and fine. 3MEDS- online medicine store in India calls for all the medical practitioner to pay attention to their well-being to be able to help others. Nurture yourself. Only a well nurtured tree provides shade, whereas the poorly nurtured tree tends to wither over a period.