Why Self-Esteem Is Important In Nursing

“There is nothing more powerful than being honest and kind to not just to ourselves, but also to our colleagues.”

Nursing is a unique and challenging profession that requires confidence in your own knowledge and abilities. This is underpinned by healthy self-esteem, making important for nurses to know their value and worth. In this insightful and moving article, Marzena reflects upon her own self-esteem journey, and shares her useful tips for breaking the cycle of negative self-talk that nurses can find themselves in.

A while ago, I wrote in an article that self-esteem is important in your role as a nurse. At that time, I was asked by the nurses.co.uk team if I would like to record a video on what it means for me, so I decided to challenge myself.

I wrote down and went through many scripts about self-esteem in nursing and attempted to record it several times. However, from my perspective, it never felt good enough to send off to be published on the website.

Nevertheless, I would like to take a small step and at least write about my feelings and thoughts on this subject.

In this article, I’m going to discuss why self-esteem is important in a nursing role, and how we might try to tackle issues around low self-esteem.

Confidence In Nursing

For me, confidence is believing in your ability to accomplish a goal. In a nursing context, this could be something such as supporting patients and treating them to ensure a good outcome and recovery.

The nursing process involves assessment, diagnosis, planning, implementation, and evaluation. This requires a systematic approach to care, using skills of critical thinking, patient-centred approaches to treatment, goal-orientated tasks, and evidence-based practice recommendations. You can also use your ‘nursing intuition’ (commonly known as a ‘gut feeling’).

With extended training, listening to patients talk about their symptoms and needs, and previous, invaluable experience, many nurses become well orientated in complicated art of anatomy and physiology.

The Impact Of Low Self-Esteem

Nurses with low self-esteem can perceive themselves as worthless, useless, or unknowledgeable. As a result, they might feel that they cannot offer the appropriate level of care.

From a patient’s perspective, they might perceive a nurse as stressed out or unconfident in their caring abilities, which could cause suspicions and mistrust. Therefore, it could jeopardise the treatment and healing process, due to lack of trust between a nurse and a patient.

It is necessary to acknowledge the power of nurses’ confidence, but also willingness to accept where they might lack knowledge or experience, or when they make a mistake. At this point, it is also worth mentioning that the formulation of a nursing diagnosis should also consider a patient’s view and knowledge about a specific subject of discussion.

As nurses, we are expected to acknowledge other professionals’ knowledge and experience- including alternative and complementary therapies which might be as effective and healing as biomedical treatment.

There is nothing more powerful than being honest and kind to not just to ourselves, but also to our colleagues.

Controlling Fear

Fear is one of the biggest challenges for Newly Qualified Nurses, but it is something that can be bought under control.

It is important to find the balance between assessing the risk, allowing patient to take ownership for their wellbeing, and controlling our fear of failure.

Criticism, from the self and your peers, can sometimes be a helpful, but without appropriate boundaries and self-care, it can be paralysing. Negative self-talk blocks learning and growth, and it is never ok to kick someone when they are down, as this can affect staff self-esteem, retention at workplace, and level of sickness leave due to stress and burnout.

Everyone Makes Mistakes

A single mistake should not be used as evidence that a nurse is not competent, and it should not be used as a basis to make judgements about a practitioner as a whole person.

In reality, errors of judgement tell only a tiny part of our complex and varied stories. One of the most meaningful questions is “Would you think it was fair to treat another person in the same way you treat yourself?”

Rather than judging ourselves, it might be more effective to focus on things we do very well, and then to plan how we might improve areas where we lack knowledge and confidence.

It is not healthy or productive to draw a general conclusion about ourselves based on our weaknesses and the negative aspect of our practice.

Only paying attention to the things we do wrong keeps us in a loop of losing the opportunity to learn - most of the time there is always something we do well, but sometimes we might need help from other nurses, as well as friends and family, to find it and nurture it.

Due to the enormous pressures we tend to face, we forget that kindness towards ourselves and colleagues at work could improve our wellbeing…

How To Break The Cycle Of Low Self-Esteem

So, how have I been trying to break the cycle of low self-esteem as a nurse?

1. Honesty, kindness, and time:

There is nothing more powerful than being honest and kind to not just to ourselves, but also to our colleagues at work.

Leaving low self-esteem behind us requires plenty of work around self-development and time needed to run this process. Self-critical thinking is a learned habit, so it could take a while to replace it with more healthy self-care habits.

2. Create a community of compassionate people who look after each other:

Compassionately acknowledge the fact that we all have difficulties that are a normal and understandable result of our life experiences. In my experience as a nurse, I have been honoured to observe the healing process of other people who experience scarring trauma, as it also lets me reflect and shows that with the appropriate support, people can build themselves up.

With kindness, compassion, and care to ourselves and our colleagues, we can promote healing and create a community of powerful, competent and trustworthy practitioners who could build the future of healthcare settings- places where people feel valued, listened to, and empowered to feel confident in their practice and willing to learn.

3. Journaling and reflecting on your emotions:

Finding the time to reflect and write down your thoughts can be a helpful part of staying in touch with ourselves and observing any progress we make. As human beings, we tend to forget our daily thoughts and insights, however keeping some record might be beneficial to noticing any patterns. Writing them down can also help us to gain a different perspective.

Writing down, drawing, or even painting our thoughts and emotions could generate some new ideas, boost creative problem solving, and introduce some innovative solutions.

4. Gratitude for small things in our lives:

‘Gratitude is the ability to experience life as a gift’ (Zito, 2022)

Being grateful about simple daily events, which could be as simple as smiles from others, appears to have positive impact on social, emotional, and psychological wellbeing (Jans-Beken et al., 2020).

Although I find nursing a challenging profession, I am also grateful for being able to look after others and spreading compassion, care, and kindness. There are not many workplaces where people can be employed to truly support vulnerable people and I believe that, as a nurse, I am lucky to experience that.

Never Give Up

Finding a balance between healthy self-awareness and damaging self-criticism is a skill needed by many practitioners in healthcare settings. Due to the enormous pressures we tend to face, we forget that kindness towards ourselves and colleagues at work could improve our wellbeing and help us build a healthy workplace where everyone feels supported and valued.

This could give more nurses the empowerment they need to take some initiative in providing care, as well as reducing staff sickness and burnout, and improving staff retention.

Although I failed to achieve my aim to record a video about the meaning and benefits of good self-esteem in nursing, I am determined that one day I will eventually feel confident enough to do so.

Remember, never give up. Being a nurse is not an easy job and it requires many skills, but with the appropriate support and compassionate colleagues around us, we can achieve things we struggle to imagine today.

Thank you for reading.

If you’re interested in building your self-esteem as a nurse or would like some tips on looking after your wellbeing, you can join our Academy.