You will agree with me that when you visit a hospital, you want qualified personnel taking care of you. However, things change so fast in the medical arena, making knowledge obsolete. Healthcare practitioners need training to bring them up to speed with new breakthroughs and development in healthcare. Disaster strikes when short-term healthcare goals compete with long-term health care goals. Healthcare institutions find themselves with increased patient populations that not only strain the nurses but also make it hard for the hospital to give nurses permission to get more training.

Being a nurse is as important as being a surgeon for something mighty.Nursing - It’s not about how they do it, it’s about how they make you feel about it. It was smooth sailing until April 2016, when Nursing and midwife council gave a head up to the revalidation policy. A policy that wasn’t just an amendment to PREP– Post Registration Education and Practice, but something that was built on the requirements of it.

So, what exactly does revalidation mean?

Working shifts can play havoc with your biological clock – till you reach a point where your body’s internal clock cannot decide when you should be awake and when you should sleep. Over time, sleep deprivation can lead to serious consequences – both in terms of your health, as well as your safety. Incidences of circadian misalignment is not healthy for you and has been associated with increased risk of developing cardiovascular, metabolic and gastrointestinal disorders, some types of cancer and several mental disorders.

The job of a nurse is never easy and there are multiple factors that can make or break a nurse’s shift – the demands and neediness of a patient’s family members, the behaviour of the patient and, the health and fitness of the nurse itself. With stress being a constant factor, it can lead to nurse’s making mistakes or worse, burning out and quitting the job altogether.

Nursing is a very noble profession, but also very taxing. As the medical world advances forward, nurses are required to constantly update themselves with these changes. The current shortage of healthcare personnel, increased professionalism, new technology and an aging population is not making it easier for nurses today. In order to remain efficient and not burn out, nurses need to find a healthy balance between their work and personal life. Although it may sound easy, balancing between your work and personal life requires effort and tenacity. You need to work on your priorities, your goals, your insecurities and your needs. As life moves forward, maintaining the balance becomes a continuous process. An imbalance between the two can lead to a whole lot of negatives – stress, unhappiness, frustration, anger and a decrease in productivity and professionalism. How to balance work and personal life will differ from person to person. However, there are a few things that are common for most. Working on these will help you achieve a better balance and allow you to enjoy both your work and your personal life to its fullest.