First thing is that you must make a commitment to being healthy, inside and out. You start to feel stressed, and cope with it much less effectively, if you aren’t well. You have to take care of yourself if you are going to have the energy to take care of others.

Time for a story …

Midori had a secret – she knew that if she allowed herself some time, she would be able to think more clearly and so would use her time more efficiently. The same is true of qualified nurses – if you allow yourself to get frustrated then you will have two problems: whatever it is you have to deal with and the problems you make for yourself by the way you are dealing with it.

Physical well-being isn’t just about joining a gym or being on a diet – it can be going for walks, doing garden work, eating fruit and vegetables, cutting down on alcohol, getting enough sleep – all of these things can help you.

Next, you have to take care of yourself emotionally. Nursing is a demanding job and we are constantly exposed to the fears, pain and suffering of other people. We try so hard to be everything other people need us to be and, when we simply can’t do it all, we start to feel guilty and frustrated.

If we make mistakes, or things don’t go well, we turn inward and blame ourselves. We want to fix things – and it’s hard to accept, as a professional problem-fixer, that there are some things that just must stay broken.

As nurses, we find it difficult to convince our hearts to accept that sometimes people die, that sometimes people seem to have been dealt very unfair hands in life, and that as nurses sometimes we can only stand by as nature takes its course. We know with our minds that it’s part of the work we do, but our hearts get hurt. This shakes our confidence and makes it even more difficult.

Then, because we think that it’s weakness to be upset, we bottle it up and try to hide it. The truth is that talking about how you feel can make it easier to cope. Sometimes you need to have a good cry, or a good moan, and get it out of your system.

Finally, you need to take care of yourself socially. You can’t survive if you are working so much that you don’t spend time with family and friends; you must spend time with people you love and who love you. You have to keep interests and hobbies, and you have to spend time away from nursing. Working bank holiday shifts should not be your hobby!

Research shows that the best way to beat stress and burnout is to have a healthy social life – friends and family are the medicine that keeps us well.

One of the greatest skills you develop as a nurse is key to preventing burnout and stress: communication. You don’t have to go into gory details, or divulge confidential details, but talking to people about your work and how you feel can help you. Have a laugh with other nurses, get involved in causes that interest you – remember that no matter how tough things get, you are never alone as a nurse. There are millions of us out here all over the world and all of us, at one time or another, go through a difficult patch.

As a nurse, you have many different types of skill: communication and helping are two of the biggies. Are you willing to help others? Can you reach out a little further? Volunteering makes you feel good and is an excellent way to beat stress. It’s also a fun way to meet people, to meet your post-registration education and practice (PREP) obligations and to expand your network and professional knowledge. Give it a try.

Where I work, we have an active crafts and activities department. The facilitator is a miracle-worker. She gives people hope, company, distraction from pain and all kinds of problems and, in the process, gets people to knit blankets for the dog and cat shelters, make cards to sell to raise more money for crafts and helps people find new talents and skills. She is wonderful and I always bring things in for her to use. Are there skills you could share to make the world better for those for whom you care?

Perhaps you are a specialist nurse? Could you provide your skill in another country as part of a medical mission?

I know you are busy, but would an hour or two really break the bank? Try volunteering to beat your stress and make the world brighter.

Burnout costs the NHS millions of pounds in sick days and lost productivity, and it costs nurses and other healthcare professionals much more on personal levels. Be the kind of nurse your patient needs you to be – be healthy.

You became a nurse to take care of people who need you – remember: you need you too!

One kind of problem that causes a considerable amount of stress in the workplace is bullying and harassment.

Let’s look at what bullying is: bullying is when inadequate and insecure people try to make themselves feel better by making other people look or feel inadequate. This is done through criticism, lies, manipulation and humiliation.

Bullying is social and emotional violence: it is aggressive, antisocial behaviour that is protected by the bully spinning an intricate shield of denial, victimhood, manipulation and charm. It can escalate into physical violence, although, more often, the bully relies on threats and intimidation. Bullying can be direct but is most commonly a subterfuge that undermines and destroys people by whom the bully is threatened.

How do these people threaten the bully? By being competent, caring, successful people: there is nothing a bully likes less than to see someone doing or feeling better than he or she is.

What kind of people are the victims of bullies? You might think it’s the weak, spineless person but in reality it’s exactly the opposite. Someone who is weak isn’t a threat – it’s the strong person that scares a bully and so it’s the strong person that the bully tries to knock down.

If people who are bullied are strong people, what kind of people are bullies? Bullies are people who don’t know how to cope with the world fairly, on even terms. Bullies are people who use power and aggression to get their way because they really don’t think they have anything else to use. You can’t reason with bullies and you can’t get them to stop by showing them what they are doing to you – they don’t care.

People who have to bully other people are weak, selfish and insecure, and have very poor self-esteem. Otherwise, they wouldn’t need to make other people feel bad. Bullies are angry and bitter and want other people to feel as badly as they do.

Bullies have many different ways of behaving, but the best way to know you are being bullied is:

That’s the real test of bullying: if you feel like you are being bullied, are losing confidence and self-esteem, and are having anxiety, then you are being bullied.

Harassment and bullying are really very similar: bullying can often be a kind of harassment, and harassment can be bullying. It doesn’t matter what you call it, as long as you recognise when you are not being treated fairly and with respect.

Harassment is when something happens and it isn’t welcome. It is an event or series of events that cause you to feel upset, belittled or threatened.

It can be a one-off event or a series of events. It can be done face to face, over the phone, anonymously, even in e-mails. Did you know that sending a sexually related joke through e-mail could be construed as harassment if someone reads it and is offended?

Sometimes it is obvious that a person is being targeted:

Sometimes it is less obvious:

Sometimes, it can be made to look ‘supportive’ or like assertive management:

As in bullying, the person being harassed might be afraid that others will think he or she is weak, so keeps a stiff upper lip and tries to live through it. If the person harassing is more powerful or has more authority it can be very difficult to speak up – but speaking up is what you need to do.