Dealing with a pandemic, trying to keep our students safe, moving classes from face-to-face to online and back again, on top of all that we normally do as nurse educators, is stressful. Yet, we do what is necessary to keep our students on track towards their goals of becoming RNs.
As we reach the end of another semester, we realize that being a nurse and an educator is a double-edged sword. We are really good at helping everyone else succeed. According to Ross et al. (2017), nurses teach others about the importance of leading a healthy life including eating a healthy diet, getting plenty of sleep, exercising regularly and reducing stress, but they are not good at translating that knowledge to their own self-care. Now add on top of that being an educator of nursing students. We preach to our students to stay organized, take breaks from studying and get plenty of sleep. How many nurse educators can attest to doing the same? Again, we are not being very good examples if we are not practicing what we preach.