The Heartbeat Blog

The health care profession is known for being a high-stress place in which doctors, nurses and other professionals are often put into uncomfortable situations. Disagreements between doctors and nurses are common, and nurses often struggle to create positive relationships with difficult patients. On very hard days, nurses may even find themselves at each other’s throats as their stress threatens to get out of hand. Creating healthy, connected relationships requires focus and determination. It will never happen by chance. These five [...]

Because health care deals with both life overall as well as the quality of one’s life, ethical issues are sure to arise. Patients often struggle to know which treatment they should opt for and who they should tell about their health care crises. Even more difficult is the ethical dilemmas that health care providers face. The struggle to keep patient confidentiality high while still getting informed consent and advocating for a patient’s best interests is often great. While the laws [...]

Compassion fatigue is an emotional and a physical state experienced by those who have been caring for one or more individuals for a lengthy time. It certainly refers to a state of tiredness and exhaustion while also pointing to tense feelings and overall distress. Some may refer to it as burnout while others refer to it as a type of traumatic stress. While some people discount these feelings of compassion fatigue and their physical effects on the body, those who [...]