How to Calm Your Patient’s Pre-Surgery Anxiety?

Feeling anxious before surgery is common for patients, as they start to feel nervous and restless, even if it is not their first time going under the knife. Anxious patients suffer from symptom like – 

• Irregular heartbeat
• Increased blood pressure
• Nausea
• Shortness of breath
• Sleep problems

However, this anxiety is not good either for the patient as well as for the healthcare professionals. It can be worrying for patients, especially those with cardiovascular problems. It can have adverse effects on patients’ overall health and post surgery recovery.

It is usually the responsibility of a nurse to calm down the patient before surgery and ease their worries. As a nurse, you would have already studied about such situations at nursing school. However, here are a few tips for you that can help to calm down the patients.

• Be punctual - It is advised not to leave a patient waiting before the surgery. It only fuels their nerves and makes them more nervous. As a nurse, you should be on time, so that you can ease patients’ fears on time.
• Converse with patients - Make conversation with the patient before surgery. Small talk will ease their worries and help you create a therapeutic bond with them. Listen and acknowledge their concerns regarding the surgery to get to know what is really troubling them. Let them know that it is okay to be nervous and they will be well taken care. Your reassurance combined with empathy will reduce their anxiety considerably and they will calm down.
• Be informative - Many patients like to know what will happen before and during the surgery, as lack of knowledge makes them uneasy. You can provide them information and help ease their worries. Educate them about the surgery and instructions to distract them. Such information will help them de-stress and relive the anxiety.Moreover, if they are too nervous to ask questions, take initiative to inform them yourself. You can also show them relevant images or videos to educate them about the procedure.
• Use relaxation techniques - There are a variety of relaxation techniques that are used by healthcare professionals to calm patients before a surgical procedure. It includes focusing on breathing, meditation and muscle relaxation. These techniques can slow down the breathing and control the heart rate. You can use such techniques to calm your patient.
• Music therapy - To ease patients’ pre-surgery anxiety, nurses can use music. It is seen that people, who listen to relaxing music before surgery are relaxed and less nervous.

As per the nurses who are experienced in the profession, there could be more things that can calm patient’s anxiety before surgery. These things can only be learnt with practice and experience while working in a nursing facility. 

If you are a nurse and willing to pursue a rewarding career in nursing in Canada, the best way is to go for International Nursing Programs of your choice. There are Canadian nursing programs that allow nurses to study as well as work in Canada. To know your options, you can explore the nursing courses in Canada for International Nurses offered by INSCOL.

Consider These Advantages While Choosing a Career in Travel Nursing

Not just to visit new places, thousands of nurses are choosing this career to gain diverse training experience in different practice environments while enjoying excellent pay and great benefits. As a nurse if you aren’t sure what it can do for your career and personal growth, here are some advantages of travel nursing you can consider.

It’s Obvious, You Get a Chance to Explore New Places
Nurses in this profession can pick their assignments to travel in any region and can select it as per their priority, whether it’s professional growth, remuneration, climate, or personal interests. Additionally, weather is also a big factor in many nurses decision to choose travel nursing, where some might prefer working in sunny locations and some might want to experience living in a winter wonderland for a couple of months. There are some nurses who choose travel jobs depending on their hobbies and interests. Like, they can enjoy scuba diving or surfing if they get a job in places with coastal region. They will also be able to explore different locations, which means that a well-traveled nursing professional will be able to gain training and develop skills normally not found in any one facility.

Huge Potential of Career Advancement
Travel nursing is a kind of profession that allows all types of nurses to create a clear career path for themselves. They have the option to select the type of practice environment that best suit their professional growth. Travel nurses can choose to work in a large full-service medical facility or a small rural hospital. The challenges of a small 30-bed hospital are different from that of a 300-bed hospital. They will also be able to interact and work with diverse patient populations and to have access to all kinds of procedures and technology. For them, travel assignments are meant only for a couple of months, thus, they don’t feel stuck in a place they dislike for whatever reason.

Biggest Advantage is the Personal Growth
As a travel nurse, you can enjoy a level of flexibility and freedom that regular staff members don’t have. Travel nurses can think of taking an off between the jobs to spend some quality time with their family, go on vacation, or finish a personal project.

On the other hand, getting on new assignments gives them the opportunity to be paid competitively as compared to their earlier job. This helps them to grow in terms of their earning and make a good living out of it. In later point in life, a travel nurse can also decide a location or facility to settle with a permanent nurse job. However, like other career paths in nursing, travel nursing not for everyone. There are people who prefer to live and continue to work in one place.

For more such tips and information on nursing profession, you can visit INSCOL blogs. Moreover, if you want to study and work abroad, you can find detailed information about specialized nursing programs for international nurses at inscol.com.

Innovative Ways to Ensure Patient Satisfaction in Nursing Profession

If you are in a nursing profession, you already know how every hospital and healthcare facilities are concerned about delivering high level of patient satisfaction, which is tied to better outcomes and even the profits. However, it is always a challenging task for a patient care provider to ensure such deliverable. Let’s relate this to an innovative concept and see how it would prove useful in nursing.

We all go to restaurant to enjoy with family and friends and have a good time eating the favorites. In the middle of your meal, the manager walks to your table to know how’s the food, how do you like the service or if anything that you feel to speak about. Unless if something was really bad, you would end up saying that everything is fine and you liked it very much. This strategy is something that is used by almost all the restaurateurs to ensure quality and customer satisfaction with their service and food that eventually makes you coming back. Due to this, the staff knows the manager is doing this; thus, they perform at their best.

Similarly, as a nurse, you need to ensure that the patient satisfaction is genuine and the services are focused on caring. The best way to do this is by visiting the patients’ rooms and asking them questions like -

• How good are you feeling today?
• Was the medication given to you on time?
• Does the team here helped to meet your needs.
• Is there anything specific that I can do for you?

Once you do this regularly as a part of your nursing job, you will be surprised to see how much difference this will make for your patients and their families. With this approach, you can quickly identify the problems and rectify them. Moreover, you will get the idea of how the team is performing and you will be able to work on staff development in a better way.

As a nurse, you will be able to help fellow nurses by role modeling and demonstrate that you care and want to make a difference in providing patient care. Whatever you do, all your actions build trust and earn respect with the patients you care.

While there are plethora of advantages of a higher nursing degree, the prime one depends upon what you aspire to be and where do you want to work. Thus, to realize your dream and make big in your career, INSCOL in collaboration with leading Universities/Colleges in Canada/UK/USA/AUS/NZ offers a wide range of specialized Nursing Programs in Emergency Care, Critical Care, Palliative Care, Coronary Care, Acute Complex Care, Mental Health, Leadership & Management, Gerontology & Chronic Illness, Healthcare & Rehabilitation and B.Sc./M.Sc. Nursing. Find more details at http://www.inscol.com/canada/

The Story of Neonatal Nursing

When it comes to provide care to children, it’s not an easy job for caregivers. Doctors, nurses, healthcare staff, and mental health staff all have stressful jobs to begin with, but when that profession focuses exclusively on children, it seems the stress factor increases exponentially. The best moment in the job of a neonatal nurse comes when she send the baby as well as the parents’ home as a healthy happy bundle of joy. 

This is a profession that requires more care and attention than any other kind of patient care. While providing care for an ill child, a neonatal nurse also has to offer emotional support to the parents of the child. Because of the delicateness of the patients, they are responsible of all the care and feeding of a patient in addition to routine medical tasks. When the infant becomes a bit stronger and adapt to the environment, it’s the job of a neonatal nurse to educate the parents how to handle or avoid equipment while changing, feeding, or cuddling the baby. 

On usual days, a neonatal nurse would have to attend exhausted and worried parents who come for information and answers. This is because they are the ones always available in a nursing care facility, while the doctors are still not around. However, there is little information nurses are allowed to give to the seekers. Another most heartbreaking part of the job is the demise of a patient and if it is a child, the grief raises exponentially for many. Being a nurse, the most she could do for the parents is to hold them and let them cry.

However, the same story keeps on repeating every other day. Thus, for nurses taking care of child ailments, their job is more rewarding than stressful. When they see happy faces leaving the healthcare center, that’s the biggest reward one can have in this profession.

If you are a nurse and think that you can make a difference in lives of others in helping them and caring them, neonatal nursing is the option you must take. If you are a nurse and want to pursue higher education in nursing from top colleges and universities abroad, INSCOL can give you the chance to study as well as work in countries like Canada, Australia, New Zealand, UK and USA. To know about the top nursing programs In Canada/UK/USA/AUS/NZ visit http://www.inscol.com.

How You Decided Your Nursing Specialty?

A lot depends upon the situation, the needs, the interest and the motivation to choose the field of specialty in nursing profession. From inclination towards patient care and having a rewarding career in future to real-life lessons that inspires many, there is always something that led nurses to move ahead with their choice of nursing specialty.

On a popular website Scrubs Mag, nurses were asked to share the deciding factor that made them to choose their nursing specialty. Some stated to be destined for the profession before leaving the womb, while some others made a choice after going through strenuous life events and tried different careers before landing on their ultimate career. In this piece of blog, we would share those reasons given by nurses in their own words.

Ellen J. - “I don’t think I ever wanted to do anything else. Med/surg makes it easy to help a variety of people. I love it and have for many, many years.”

Luciana W. -“I had a miscarriage and was all alone in the hospital when I met this nurse who made such an impact on me. She took the time to talk to me. She also gave me a hug. At that moment I thought to myself, ‘I want to do the same for other people, give comfort and show compassion in the most vulnerable time of their lives.'”

Sharon H.- “I am a recovering alcoholic, and as a young, intoxicated female, I was treated pretty badly by a lot of people. When I got sober, I wanted to work with other alcoholics, and so I tried to get training as a CD counselor. Nothing worked. Every door I tried got slammed in my face, and someone kept saying, ‘Why don’t you try nursing?’ So I went to the local college and applied for their nursing program, and doors started opening right and left. In 25 years as a nurse, I have tried other fields, and I always come back to mental health. It is my home!”

Rita D. -“I donated a kidney to a friend and went into nephrology!”

Lee B. -“I always wanted to be like Mary Ellen Walton and wander around the countryside on Old Blue, seeing my patients…I have been a community nurse consultant for 21 years. I wander around the back roads of our county seeing my patients…in an old Saturn.”

Sally C. – “I was affected by a child fatality and ever since have worked in pediatric operating theaters! Making a difference, caring for children and their careers is 110 percent job satisfaction!”

Renata B. -“The hospice where my sister made her grand transition gave me the inspiration to make a transition of my own. My sweetest days come when I help a family assist a loved one cross on to that next stage.”

Selecting the field of specialty in nursing depends on individual’s choice. Just as the reasons mentioned here above of different nurses, you too might have one. You can share with us in the comments below, we will be happy to read what your story is. 

INSCOL - Opening the Doors for Nurses to Study & Work in Canada

For internationally educated nurses who are looking for options to pursue higher education along with opportunities to work in Canada either on permanent or temporary basis, INSCOL is the place to resort.

Since decades, Canada is considered as one of the most preferred destinations for healthcare professionals, nurses and aspiring medical students, as it provides numerous benefits in the form of best education system, generous laws for the immigrants and number of prospects to grow in the career. Moreover, Canada is regularly employing internationally educated nurses from around the globe These reasons has made Canada the first choice among nursing professionals, which has become one of the strongest benefit for Canada’s healthcare industry’s success.

Thus, if you are a Registered Nurse and looking for an opportunity to study and work in Canada, INSCOL in collaboration with renowned colleges of Canada offers wide range of nursing courses that aim to transform internationally educated nurses into Global nurses.These courses has been developed according to the worldwide best practices in the healthcare industry, to enhance skills equivalent to the levels of their best-trained international counterparts.

Here are the nursing courses offered by INSCOL in Canada -

Name of College	Name of the Course	Course Duration	IELTS Requirement	Intake
Niagara College, Welland Campus, Niagara	Post Graduate Certificate in RN - Critical Care Nursing	1 Year	6 Bands overall with no component less than 5.5 bands	Jan'16 May'16 Sep'15
Niagara College, Welland Campus, Niagara	Post Graduate Certificate in Palliative Care	1 Year	6 Bands overall with no component less than 5.5 band	Jan'16 May'16 Sep'15
Niagara College, Welland Campus, Niagara	Post Graduate Certificate in Gerontology	1 Year	6 Bands overall with no component less than 5.5 band	Jan'16 May'16 Sep'15
Seneca College, Markham Campus, Toronto	Post Graduate Certificate in Coronary Care Nursing	1 Year	6.5 overall with no component less than 6 band	Feb'16 May'16 Sep'15
Seneca College, Markham Campus, Toronto	Post Graduate Certificate in Nursing Leadership & Management	1 Year	6.5 overall with no component less than 6 band	Jan'16 May'16 Sep'15
Georgian College, Barrie	Acute Complex Care Post Graduate Program for Internationally Educated Nurses	1 Year	6.5 Bands overall with no component less than 6	May'16 Jan'16

To know more about these nursing courses in Canada, please visit the website http://www.inscol.com/canada/academic-courses/