As a medical professional who has devoted their working life to helping others in senior living community settings, from nursing homes to assisted living facilities, the past two and a half years have been more stressful and have taken even more of a toll on levels of emotional health and wellbeing.
With this in mind, here, for your information and hope for a way to help ease your worries surrounding your own emotional health and wellbeing, is how to support your mental health while working in assisted care.
Indulge in Self Care Rituals
Obviously, unlike other vocational careers, it can be exceedingly difficult to entirely ‘switch off’ when your professional working life is dedicated to working in a senior living community. According to the assisted living community in Bergen County, some of the most common reasons for choosing a senior living community are access to care, assistance, daily programs, socialization, quality meals, and safety and security.
As a medical professional, you are therefore required to be all things to all people quite a lot of the time, and it is for this reason that you should dedicate at least five minutes, ideally more, a day to meditation, contemplation, writing your thoughts down and any other relaxing and therapeutic techniques you feel will help.
Talk to a Professional
If you feel as if your general mood is at an all-time low, or else you find yourself stuck in a circle of anxiety, then the best possible thing you can do in order to protect your mental health is to seek the advice of a professional.
There is a number of different avenues to explore should you want to seek to talk therapy, or if you would prefer, you could confide in a close colleague, other medical professionals who works in a similar setting, or else your line manager or direct boss.
Be as Organized as Possible
Just as in other situations in modern life, the more prepared, structured, and organized you are, the more likely it is that you will be able to handle whatever is proverbially thrown at you during your working shift.
As working in an assisted living community can be just as challenging as it can be rewarding, the more you structure your day and stick to a working routine, the less likely it is that feelings of anxiety will creep up on you.
Fight to Dispel the Stigma Around Mental Health
As a medical professional, you will no doubt already have come into direct contact with both individuals and, even more, unfortunately, companies who upheld the outdated and frankly insulting taboo and stigma surrounding mental health and wellbeing.
To combine your current struggles with your professional vocation, from now on, start to actively fight such stereotypes, generalizations, and the overall stigma around emotional health and wellbeing. Such a decision will simultaneously not only help yourself and your personal situation but serve to help others, both in the community in which you work and farther afield.
The Editorial Team at Healthcare Business Today is made up of skilled healthcare writers and experts, led by our managing editor, Daniel Casciato, who has over 25 years of experience in healthcare writing. Since 1998, we have produced compelling and informative content for numerous publications, establishing ourselves as a trusted resource for health and wellness information. We offer readers access to fresh health, medicine, science, and technology developments and the latest in patient news, emphasizing how these developments affect our lives.
