Rehabilitation nurses care for patients and their families who have complex medical, psychosocial, and emotional needs. The persons in our care are usually experiencing catastrophic events or illness that may have changed their lives forever. On any given day, a rehabilitation nurse may provide physical care for pressure injuries, educate on bowel and bladder function, advocate for patient safety, counsel family members in distress, give medications, ensure safe care transitions, provide leadership within the interprofessional team, mentor new nurses, and serve on committees. We are healers that come alongside the hurting for a long journey toward adaptation. The amount of physical and emotional energy invested in making our patients and their families comfortable can take its toll if the rehab nurse forgets that, in order to give so much, he or she must have a way to stay healthy and maintain an appropriate work-life balance.

Gone are the days when it was rumored that nurses transferred from the intensive care unit or mother-baby units to the "less stressful" rehabilitation floor. Rehabilitation nursing is a physically and emotionally demanding specialty that requires nurses to give of themselves under the most difficult circumstances. We work closely with patients whose lives have been forever disrupted and who have to learn to live again with a long-term disability or chronic illness. The role we play in helping a family put the pieces of life together and move on to an acceptable quality of life is an awesome and draining responsibility.

Rehabilitation nurses have to be excellent at both assessment and communication within an interprofessional team and to coordinate care in a complex environment across settings. In addition to a unique skill set in rehabilitation, the psychological issues that arise for persons who have severe functional challenges, brain damage, loss of independence, mobility changes, and cognitive issues can be staggering. Probably more so than in any other specialty in nursing, rehabilitation nurses help patients, families, and communities to adjust to major life changes. This requires investing oneself daily and avoiding burnout in order to maintain effectiveness as a rehab nurse.

So, how do those who give so much of themselves fill back up to do this day after day with vigor, compassion, and enthusiasm? How do rehab nurses stay healthy and keep an appropriate work-life balance? I have often thought of this illustration: Our lives are like a glass of water that represents the goodness, knowledge, care, and therapeutic self that we pour into others. A full glass of water that is emptied into patients and families and staff daily must be filled up from some life-giving stream to give our best to our patients. But where do we find that well of regenerative water?

Here are some suggestions that have worked for me in the past in navigating multiple roles as a nurse, an academic educator, a mother, a student, a consultant, a business owner, an editor.

Find the Source That Fills Your Cup

Take a few quiet moments to answer this question: What fills you up? What recharges you? What energizes you? How often are you letting yourself engage in activities that make you happy? How often do you get together with people who lift you up and encourage you personally and professionally? The answer to these questions is highly individual. For some, sources of the life-giving water may be quiet times to read or meditate, time in church, or individual spiritual regeneration. For others, time with children, parents, or other family members or friends provides that reenergizing source. Others may find their best encouragement from socialization, volunteer activities, physical exercise, music, reading, art, or serving others.

We each must identify that well from which we draw the water that is poured into others. If you fail to find this source, you will eventually be frustrated, tired, and burnt out at your job. Over time, this will make you an ineffective rehabilitation nurse, not living up to your full potential and not being able to give to your patients who desperately need your caring compassion.

Decrease Exposure to Toxins

Now, decreasing toxins may sound like something all nurses do, but this strategy means that you avoid stressful situations in your personal life. If home is your place to recharge, then you need to be sure it is restful, peaceful, and happy. Avoid toxic people in your personal life whose words drag you down. Surround yourself in your nonwork hours with positive people, happy experiences, joyful events, and meaningful activities. Detoxify your environment and life by also eliminating those things that do not fill you up. People or activities that drain the water out of your cup will not leave you enough left to give to your patients and families at work. Your time away from the job site should be the time to fill your cup so that you can turn around and pour it into the lives of others.

Strive for an Appropriate Work-Life Balance

Timing of key life events is essential to having an appropriate work-life balance. For example, if you have a goal of returning to school to get a master's degree in order to further your career, it might not be the right time if you are also expanding your family and plan to become pregnant. Support of your family and friends is important in being able to juggle multiple roles such as these. We must order and prioritize our lives to achieve certain goals that require a large amount of time commitment. Many a student has returned to school for a higher degree thinking that he or she didn't need to make any life changes in order to accommodate the demands of obtaining this new goal and then dropped out or delayed progression because of unrealistic expectations.

Likewise, if you consistently work overtime and leave no time for your family or enjoyable activities, you do a disservice to yourself and to your patients. All of us need time away, need time to relax and recharge. Even if work is what fills you up, an appropriate work-life balance makes you a more well-rounded person, able to better sympathize with a diverse group of patients for which you will care.

Choose to Embrace Joy

Don't you remember that one nurse whom you have encountered in your life that seems to radiate joy? How did you feel when you were around that joyful person? Aren't we all drawn to a person who radiates warmth and compassion when they enter a room? Isn't that who we would like to care for us in crisis or illness?

Although happiness may be a feeling associated with a specific event, joy is something deeper that comes from having a full well into which one daily taps. The nurse that chooses to embrace joy will not be as affected by negative events in the workplace or at home because joy is a choice, not just a feeling. The joyful nurse refuses to let her care be affected by the situation. His or her joy is expanded exponentially by caring for others. For those who embrace joy, their cup is also filled while emptying it into others. This is one of the best strategies for maintaining our own health as rehabilitation nurses.

So, in this new year of 2018, make a deliberate effort to find ways to keep yourself healthy. Find what fills you up, avoid those things that smother or deplete your resources, strive for a good work-life balance, and choose to embrace joy. You and your patients will be the better for it.

Kristen L. Mauk, PhD, DNP, RN, CRRN, GCSN-BC, GNP-BC, ACHPN, FAAN

Editor-in-Chief

Colorado Christian University

Lakewood, CO, USA

The author declares no conflict of interest.