Advancing your healthcare career may quickly take up a lot of the time and energy that you might have previously devoted to keeping healthy and maintaining a fulfilling lifestyle. If this is the case and you are worried that your dedication to career advancement will mean that your health begins to slip, here is a guide to some of the best ways that you can stay healthy while advancing your medical career.
- Take an Online Qualification
You might believe that you have to live on a campus for years on end to achieve a healthcare qualification of any sort, especially since healthcare courses usually involve a lot of practical assignments. However, when you live on a university campus, you may find that you do not cook healthy meals and that you drink more alcohol. You may also not get on with the pressures of living with other people or away from home. Then, to ensure that you are not constantly homesick, you should consider taking the same qualification online. This can even improve your mental health as you will likely find that taking a qualification at home decreases the amount of stress that you experience as you will be able to complete your studies in your own time. You will also be able to get support from your loved ones and the people around you when you need it. Most healthcare qualifications can now be taken from the comfort of your own home. So you should consider looking at online PMHNP programs that will enable you to get the qualification that you need without the stress of a traditional university experience.
- Remember to Cook
Whether you are looking for a job or taking a course, advancing your healthcare career can be incredibly absorbing, and you may quickly forget the world around you while you work. While this may be great for your career, it is less good for your health, and you may find that you are soon forgetting to eat meals or ordering more fast food and takeaways than usual. This may especially be the case when it comes to healthcare careers, as they can be incredibly demanding and may require you to work long hours. If this is the case, you should make sure that you put aside time to cook healthy meals, even if you have to set an alarm to do so. There are many healthy meals that you can make quickly if you are in the middle of an important activity, and these include everything from pesto pasta to mackerel on toast. Even if you eat a harmless meal of fast food occasionally, you should try to pair this with fruit and vegetables to ensure that you get all the vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients you need. If you are not getting enough of these, you should look into the best supplements for nurses and other healthcare professionals.
- Save Free Time
Another way you can ensure that you stay healthy when you are planning to advance your medical career is to save some free time for yourself between all of your career-advancing activities. This will then give you time to relax and unwind and prevent tension in your body and burnout from developing, which is incredibly common among healthcare professionals. It would help if you used this free time to spend time with your friends or to enjoy a hobby that you are passionate about, such as sports, theater, or arts and crafts. Even reading a good book or taking a bubble bath can help you to refresh yourself after a hard day of working at a hospital or medical center. By doing these activities, you will usually find that you are more ready to take on another day filled with treating patients and caring for those in need. Not only this but saving some free time for yourself away from work can allow you to take a step back and gain some perspective. This can be crucial for those looking at career advancement. You will be able to have a better idea of what you want out of your healthcare career.
- Hire a Recruitment Agency
When you want to stay healthy and advance your career, you should also consider whether the best option for you might be hiring a healthcare-specific recruitment agency. A medical staffing agency will do all the hard work for you when it comes to finding a job and advancing your career. They will be able to match you with a position that you have the right skills and knowledge for, and you, in turn, will not have to spend all of your time scouring general or even industry job boards for the perfect role for you. Then, if you are worried that your healthcare career will diminish your health, you should consider hiring a medical recruitment agency that can take the stress out of finding a new job. All you will have to do is to sit back and wait for them to contact you after handing in your resume.
- Find Good Employers
Some employers treat their staff better than others, and this is the case even in the medical industry. To make sure that you can work in a comfortable and healthy environment, whether in a hospital or a school, you should pick the healthcare company or provider you work for wisely. You should make sure that you look for employers who have their employee’s best interests at heart, and you should check that the working conditions they offer are good for you, not just the patients you are caring for. For instance, you should ensure that you are entitled to a generous amount of time off, that your shift patterns are fair, and that you get the number of breaks you need. It would be best if you also looked at the health and safety policies that the employer has created and the benefits that they provide, such as comprehensive health insurance and sick pay. This will then ensure that you are well-looked-after by your medical employer and that they can give you the support you need if you fall ill.
- Exercise Often
If you find that your job search and other career advancement activities keep you in the house or your workplace all day, you should make sure that you fit exercise into your day before or after work. This will ensure that you can get the benefits of exercise, which you might often tout to your patients. Benefits like a healthy heart and reduced risk of obesity, cancer, strokes, high blood pressure, and cholesterol keep your healthcare career in your sights. To be more active, you should consider going for a run or to the gym each day after you get home from the hospital or another medical workplace.