Developing Confidence As A Nurse

Registered Nurse Claire shares her inspiring and uplifting advice for developing confidence as a nurse, covering everything from positive affirmations to the importance of challenging yourself.

Hi everyone. Welcome back to another video. My name is Claire Carmichael, Registered Nurse and nurse lecturer, and if you are new to the nurses.co.uk website, please go and check out the other vlogs and videos, not just from myself but from a whole range of different people. There’re so many amazing videos out there to see.

So today's video is all about confidence. Why, what, how, it's going to link back to the NMC code of conduct as always, and the six Cs of nursing.

Why Might You Feel Unconfident?

Now, we will all have some point in our lives where we feel not as confident as usual, or our self-esteem might be a little bit low, and I think that's pretty normal, especially within nursing, because there's so many different skills and clinical things you have to do, and there's going to be new things that you learn that you've never done before. So, you are going to be unconfident at that because you've never done it before.

Not only just clinical skills, but as a Student Nurse as well, if you are revising for exams, anatomy, physiology, or it could be you are a new Student Nurse first year, maybe learning how to write assignments, and so you are going to be so unconfident in different areas, because you've never done that sort of thing before. Or you may be a mature student and haven't been in education for a very long time, so your confidence may be lacking there as well.

So, there's many different reasons why we lose confidence in ourselves sometimes, but that's okay. Hopefully in this vlog we're going to address those things and hopefully give some tips to help you grow and build that confidence.

NMC Code Of Conduct 2018

So what does the NMC Code of Conduct 2018 say? This is something I printed out myself so that I've always got it.

In section nine: "Share your skills, knowledge, and experience for the benefit of people receiving care and your colleagues. To achieve this, you must..." [section 9.4] "Support students and colleagues, learning to help them develop their professional competence and confidence."

However, if you're going to help someone develop that, you need to be confident in what you are doing as well. This is why we need to build our own confidence in all different areas.

Next, “Promote professionalism and trust”. I'm going to skip to that page. Professionalism and trust. So in this, it says, "This should lead to trust and confidence in the professions from people receiving care, other healthcare professionals, and the public."

So you have to be confident in what you're doing to make sure everybody is confident in you.

The Six Cs Of Nursing

Next up, within the six Cs of nursing, there's nothing about confidence. It's care, compassion, communication, courage, commitment, and competence. However, I would say confidence comes under competence because if you're competent at something, you are going to be confident in something.

The Royal College of Nursing says, and this is from 2012, "Competence means all those in caring roles must have the ability to understand an individual's health and social needs, and the expertise, clinical and technical knowledge." And this is to be able to deliver effective care based on research and evidence.

And I would agree with that. I think you need to be competent. You need to know what you're doing. You need to justify everything that you're doing and know the evidence behind everything you're doing. And that's what we're taught as Student Nurses, and that's going to help us gain confidence when we're talking to our patients and explaining things.

What Could Affect Our Self-Esteem?

Something that might affect our confidence is when we have low self-esteem. And this is happening quite a lot from what I've seen out there on social media. And social media itself has a negative effect on that, and it's causing people to have a low self-esteem, because they're seeing so much negativity, especially in nursing. The negativity is rife at the minute on social media, unfortunately.

So, I think one of my biggest tips for that is just take some time out from social media. Just forget all the negativity.

Some other things that might cause low self-esteem and lack of confidence is the people around you, friends, family, or your upbringing. If you've got critically harsh people around you that are criticizing you constantly and making you feel like you are not good enough or you're saying the wrong thing and making you question yourself, that is going to have a massive impact as well.

So, again, try to take some time out. Try not to listen to those ‘Negative Nancy's’ in your life, and surround yourself with positivity, and remind yourself that actually, you do know what you're doing. You are capable. And if you don't know something, it's okay because you're going to learn it.

And sometimes it's just us. It's just us. I know I'm that person that gets imposter syndrome quite a lot when I'm doing new things, and I think, "Oh, I don't think I'm good enough be to be doing this."

I get such imposter syndrome, especially in my new role as a lecturer. So to help you if you are this person, if you have low self-esteem, here are just some little things to help you have a healthy self-esteem about yourself, which is going to build your confidence.

If you start replacing those negative thoughts with positive affirmations about yourself, you're going to rewire your brain, and it's going to hopefully help your self-esteem. Build it up, and then your confidence will build with it.

Identify Negative Thoughts & Their Causes

So first you need to recognize those negative thoughts that you are having. Negative thoughts are things like, "I'm too stupid, I'm too dumb for this. I don't know this. I shouldn't be a nurse."

First, you have to recognize that it's a negative thought about yourself, and it's probably not true. And then once you've recognized that negative thought, think about writing it down on a piece of paper. What is that negative thought, and where has that come from? Try and get to the root cause of why you're thinking that way about yourself.

Why do you think you're stupid? Why do you think you can't do this? Where has that come from? Try and get to the bottom of it by writing it down on paper. It can be a really empowering thing to do to make you realize, actually, I'm not stupid. I can do this.

Counteract With Positive Affirmations

Once you've recognized that, you've wrote them down and you've tried to find some sort of root cause, think of some positive things to say to counteract that. Write some evidence about yourself.

What am I good at? How do I handle situations? Write it down. Put in positive affirmations about yourself, to just completely distract yourself from those negative thoughts.

And if you start doing that every single day, replacing those negative thoughts with positive affirmations about yourself, the things that are good about yourself, you're going to rewire your brain, and it's going to start thinking differently, and it's going to hopefully help your self-esteem. Build it up, and then your confidence will build with it.

Remind Yourself Of Positive Feedback & Messages

My next tip with this is think about positive things that people say about you.

Have you had any positive feedback? Have people wrote you letters, cards, wrote things on social media about you that's positive? Remind yourself of those things.

Write them down again so you've got a list of positive words that people have said, just to remind yourself that (actually) you’re doing great.

Recognize What You’re Good At

Another way to help increase your confidence is recognize what you're good at. Because we all have our strengths and weaknesses. This is what makes a perfect team. People will have certain areas of strength; other people will have different areas of strength. You will have your weaknesses, other people will have their weaknesses, but you come together and build your strengths together to overcome the weaknesses, because we can't be good at everything.

I, for one, am not good at everything and I'm happy, but I'm not good at everything. I wouldn't want to be good at everything. I wouldn't want to be a know-it-all, ‘I'm great at everything’ type person. I don't think anyone is that person, not that I can think of anyway.

But this is why teamwork is amazing, because different personalities and skill sets just work so well together, and this is going to make a big difference to you. So come on, make a list of what things you're good at.

Be Kind To Yourself

Next tip that ties in with all of this is to be kind to yourself. We always preach this, especially me; I'm always preaching to other people just be kind to yourself. But sometimes we're not very kind to ourselves with all those negative thoughts, and imposter syndrome, and things like that. Be kind yourself. Take some time out, treat yourself once in a while and hopefully that'll help.

And there's a nice quote to go with that. I can't remember the exact quote, but it's something about a flower doesn't just bloom suddenly, you plant the seeds and then it blooms. And that's what you need to do to your brain. Plant those positive seeds so you can bloom.

Set Yourself A Challenge

Another tip for you is give yourself a challenge. Find one of your weaknesses and build on it. Overcome those weaknesses. Like I said, we're not going to be perfect and brilliant at everything. However, you can turn weaknesses sometimes into positives.

So if you are not very good at a certain skill, let's just say suture removals, for example, clip removals, for example. If you are not good at that skill and you think, "Ugh, I really need some work," give yourself a challenge to improve that skill. Go out there and practice. Get as much exposure to that challenge as possible.

Practice, practice, practice. Because I keep saying this to people, practice makes perfect. Well, you might not be perfect, but you will be better at that skill, and it won't be such a weakness, and you'll feel a lot more confident as a result.

And that's my top tip for most things, I think, especially with clinical skills, things that you're not confident in. The more you practice, the more you will get better at it, and it'll become second nature to you.

Stepping Outside your Comfort Zone Creates Confidence

Something that I really, really struggled with was public speaking. I can do videos all day long. I'm here in the comfort of my own home. The minute I step outside into a big room with people staring at me; that was my biggest fear when I went into lecturing at university. And, I'm not going to lie, that first week of lecturing in a big group of 200 students was absolutely terrifying.

But I pushed myself. You have to push yourself. You have to push yourself through that fear because your mind lies to you. Fight or flight response kicks in and you have to learn to be able to overcome it, control it, and get confident in things.

And that's the biggest tip that I can think of for that sort of situation because it's something that really works, and it'll be terrifying. You will be terrified throughout the whole thing of it. You will not sleep; you will kick yourself afterwards. You'll be putting yourself down afterwards. But you know what? The more you do it, the more you think, "This is okay," and the more you get confident at doing it.

I feel way better now. I'm only five months in, but I feel way better now. I don't get half as anxious now that I did at the start. I'm feeling more confident in my public speaking. And don't get me wrong, I'm still nervous, I still worry a little bit, but it's nowhere near as bad as I was.

The more you practice something, whether it's poster presentations, clinical skills, handovers, or anything else you've got, the more you practice, the more you do it, the better you're going to feel, and the more confident you're going to feel.

Because guess what? And you might not like the sound of this, but nothing grows in your safety zone. If you are constantly sitting in the safe lane, not pushing yourself out of that lane, you're never going to grow confidence. You're never going to develop, and you're never going to progress in your career, potentially, because you're always in that safety zone of what you know.

Just push yourself out there: get the training if you need further training, get the support if you need further support. Push yourself out of that comfort zone and it'll just make such a difference. And your body will get used to doing that so that you are not constantly in that fight or flight mode anymore, and you'll just start to relax into it.

The more you practice, the more you do it, the better you're going to feel, and the more confident you're going to feel.

Helpful Resources

NHS 2021 also have a really good video called Unhelpful Thinking. It's an audio guide to help you through and replace those unhelpful thoughts with positive thinking. And within this video it says that when you are thinking so negatively about yourself, you start to believe what you are telling yourself.

And we must get out of that pattern because otherwise it's going to have a massive effect on our wellbeing and it's going to bring us down. It might stop us for applying for different jobs, for example, going to events. It might stop us from applying for a promotion. Because it's really important that we tackle this and help you raise that confidence, think more positively about yourself, and just smash it.

Something else that I've just discovered, literally just from quickly listening to that NHS clip as well, is something called the Amazing Bad Thought Busting Program. And this just gives you some tips as well:

• So the first thing they say, "Label that thought. Label the bad ones.”

• Two, “Leave it. A bad thought needs attention, so don't give it any." Good point.

• Three, “Stand up to it. Bad thoughts are bullies. You can beat them." Absolutely.

• Four, “Give yourself a break. What would someone who really loved you say? Trust them and let them help you beat the bad thought.”

• Five, “Look at it differently. Give yourself advice you'd give a friend." I know I'm that person. I'm very good at giving advice. Don't listen to it myself. So try and correct that. "Ask yourself if it'll matter in six months’ time. What would other people say? And are you looking at the whole picture?"

And that is the five steps to look at your negative thoughts, hopefully help you think differently and positively about yourself in future.

Nurses Need To Be Confidence

And all of this is so important, because as nurses, we need confidence to be able to do our jobs daily.

Within the NMC as well, they say that we should be confident and competent in what we do, like I was talking about earlier, because we are dealing with human beings at the end of the day. We need confidence in what we're doing, because if we are not confident, that's how mistakes can be made out there.

Because at the end of the day, we've got patients, we're there to help our patients. And not make mistakes. And mistakes are just so easily made anyway.

Not that it's a huge problem because we're all human. We all make mistakes, but if you can do something to prevent that, the better.

Find Support & Give Yourself Time

And my last, last tip, if you are really struggling, you're really unconfident, and your self-esteem's down on the floor, please get support.

Get some support from the university, from nurses, colleagues that you're working with. Get support from mental health teams if you need it. There's different CBT, or cognitive behavioral therapies, that you can go to, to help you build that confidence and self-worth.

But please don't beat yourself up too much. This confidence and your self-esteem will all build over time as well. Like I was saying earlier, the more you practice, the more you do things, the more you continue, you're going to be well away. By the end of the three years, if you're a Student Nurse, you are going to be a different person to when you were a first year and applying.

You're going to be far more confident. You might feel that you don't know it all still, because we aren't going to ever know it all, because university only gives you the bare basics. I don't like saying basics because nursing's never basic, but the bare foundations of nursing to let you be released onto the register as a nurse. The rest you learn and you train on the job.

So please don't beat yourself up. You will never know it all, and you will continue to learn every single day of your lives, because nursing is lifelong learning.

I hope that's helped in some way. Hopefully you've gotten some tips, or advice, or help from this video.

But like I said, please get support and help if you're really struggling, and I hope you have an amazing day.