A Roundup of Our Favorite Nurse Blogs

At Crazy Compression, health and wellbeing are key components of why we continue to create the socks that we do. Compression socks help keep the blood flowing, alleviate pain from long hours on your feet, and aid in recovery, keeping you moving and in better health. But a healthy body and a healthy heart requires much more then cute crazy socks. 

We’ve rounded up a few of our favorite blogs, written by and/or for nurses, that combined target a holistic approach to living a healthier life. 

A Healthy Work Environment

Healthy Workforce Institute promotes teamwork amongst healthcare workers. The Institute’s blog highlights tips on how to be supportive, kind, compassionate, as well as communicating in respectful ways. Its mission is to reject bullying, incivility, and workplace violence. By providing tips to make the workplace healthier, the Institute’s goal is to alleviate burnout and tackle professional challenges faced by healthcare leaders. Dr. Renee Thompson, host of Healthy Workforce Institute, has 27 years of experience and is the author of several popular books on bullying and professional development. 

Your Mental Health

Nursing from Within addresses nurse burnout and provides a change in perspective, helping nurses rediscover the passion they once felt for their nursing careers. Being a caregiver is a hard job and requires intentional care for your emotional wellbeing. 

Finding your inner strength is important, and that’s why we love this next blog. MindingTheBedside.com provides helpful tips on how to manage stress, difficult emotions and thoughts while learning how to regain compassion. Practical guides to quieting the mind, such as meditation, are addressed. Compassion for patients is important, but so is compassion for yourself. This blog is all about taking care of yourself. By caring for yourself and your needs, your compassion will naturally flow out to those around you. 

And if what you are truly in need of is a good heartfelt laugh, head over to Gomerblog.com, where nursing topics are met with a good dose of irreverence from multiple authors. After all, laughter improves blood-vessel tone, perhaps due to the release of endorphins. You know, those same hormones you get following a good run. 

The best medicine is a combination of mindfulness, laughter, and a run. Your blood vessels will thank you for it, especially if you’ve got them wrapped in a hug from Crazy Compression Socks. 

Find Happiness and Fulfillment in Your Career

Now that we’ve covered a healthy work environment, a healthy mindset, and the importance of laughter (and running), finding happiness and fulfillment in your career is essential to avoiding burn out. Here are a few blogs we think will help you reach your full potential. 

Digital Doorway is an award-winning blog run by Nurse Keith, who uses his coaching skills to guide others towards identifying what is most important in their lives as they create and manifest their own unique life vision.  He has also been the host of three podcasts:

1. The Nurse Keith Show: offering weekly nursing career advice and inspiration. 
2. Mastering Nursing: offering a 22-episode interview-style podcast with inspiring nursing thought leaders.
3. RNFM Radio: offering a popular nursing podcast focusing on careers, entrepreneurship and healthcare innovation, which ran from 2012 to 2017.

The Inspiration Nurse, Donna Cardillo, RN, travels the world helping others learn to be happy in their careers while reaching their full potential. For 15 years, she was the original “Dear Donna” columnist at Nurse.com and is an expert blogger at DoctorOz.com. We are partial to her personal site donnacardillo.com, where she approaches the nursing profession with humor and insight. 

One of our favorite blog posts written by Cardillo is Nature Calls: 5 Health Benefits That Will Do Your Body Good. We couldn’t agree more! Get out on those trails and enjoy the fresh air, just make sure to grab a pair of Crazy Compression socks before you go to keep those ankles from swelling. 

Physical Health

Often caregivers take care of themselves last, worrying about the health of others long before they worry about their own. We want you to keep your body and your feet healthy on the job! To dig deeper into how to best do this, we’ve turned to the blogging community to hear directly from other nurses and how they balance their own care alongside that of their patients. 

Elisa, at Your Nurse Friday, shares her experiences as a nurse living in the beautiful city of Santa Fe, New Mexico, and starting her first business, Nurses With Heart Home Care. We are particularly fond of the post Why Nursing is Like a Marathon, where she shares her experience running in the Big Sur International Marathon. 

Of course, we love watching people pursue their goals! That’s why the Hot Flush Running Nurse is so inspirational. Fiona describes herself as a 48/49-year-old perimenopausal nurse who began sharing her 39 weeks of training for the Berlin Marathon in September in January 2019. Catch up on her journey and cheer a fellow nurse on! You may just find inspiration to create a similar goal for yourself in 2020. 

We hope you found this blog roundup as inspirational as we have. There are a lot of amazing nurses and caregivers out there to applaud and from whom to find inspiration, while reminding each and every one of us how vital the profession is. If you are feeling run down and tired remember to care for yourself. Find a way to laugh, hug and pamper your feet, and give yourself some extra compassion.