8 Ways Healthcare Practitioners Can Stay Well Over Winter

Good winter health for medical professionals can be difficult when practitioners push themselves daily to provide the best possible patient care.

Good winter health for medical professionals can be difficult when practitioners push themselves daily to provide the best possible patient care.

Winter Health for Medical Professionals: The Challenges

At the AAOPM, we know that this level of dedication can take its toll, and that self-care for healthcare providers is essential for staying healthy in winter!

So here are some of the best ways to achieve better healthcare practitioner wellbeing for a healthier, happy cold season!

Winter Wellness Tips for Healthcare Practitioners

These winter wellbeing tips can all be incorporated easily into the busiest schedules and you’ll feel the benefits quickly too! Try one or two and you’ll see and feel the benefits. Try them all together, holistically, as a program of winter self-care, and you’ll multiply the wellbeing gains!

1. Healthcare Practitioner Wellbeing and Exercise

Staying healthy in winter can be challenging because it's cold and dark so much of the time, making the outdoors very appealing! In the spring and summer months, we tend to be walking outdoors, gardening perhaps, socializing, and generally being active naturally in the sunshine (boosting our vitamin D levels as well as getting natural, healthy functional exercise.)

Healthcare practitioner wellbeing easily dips in winter, as the call to hibernate really kicks in! Those outdoor runs, cycles, and walks can easily become replaced by Netflix binges snuggled on the sofa with a takeaway!

And to make matters worse, if we then decide to do some intense exercise to make up for our lack of movement, the cold temperatures mean we risk injury.

So, one of the most fundamental routes to staying healthy in winter is to find everyday ways to be active. Try microbursts of activity rather than telling yourself you'll do two hours at the gym after a long shift!

To optimize self-care for healthcare providers, here are some ideas:

• Run or walk on the spot for a few minutes whenever you get a chance to get your blood flowing and elevate your heart This is one of the easiest Winter wellness tips for healthcare practitioners.
• Start and end the day with beneficial stretching; particularly important after a long shift where you may have been holding stress. Yoga is a great route to self-care for healthcare providers too, and it’s a very gentle route to staying healthy in winter.
• For more enjoyable routes to staying healthy in winter, choose an exercise that's actually fun! A dance class with friends or a quiet swim at the pool might be more appealing than pounding the pavements.
• Take the stairs rather than the elevator. Park a little further away and walk those extra steps. Do some star jumps while you make lunch! Even small bursts of movement will make a difference to your healthcare practitioner wellbeing.

Even better, regular physical activity helps to boost dopamine and endorphins, helping you to better tackle stress and building your resilience!

2. Self-care for Healthcare Providers and Nutrition

A winter wellness tip for healthcare practitioners is to prioritize good nutrition. But this can be hard to achieve when you're working. On shift, self-care for healthcare providers easily dips and practitioners end up eating low-nutrition, high-salt, and high-sugar convenience foods.

Try some meal prep and batch-cook food so you have healthy, ready meals to last you through the week. On your day off, make a huge batch of chili, a curry, a large salad, or soup, portion it into individual containers, and freeze those you won't use immediately.

Label everything (all food becomes a mystery in the freezer) and then you'll have delicious, healthy, and nourishing food available when you need it most.

Focus on using natural ingredients such as vegetables, lean protein, fruit, and healthy fats such as nuts, seeds, and olive oil. As an added bonus, you'll save money too.

3. Stay Hydrated to Stay Healthy in Winter!

One of the best winter wellness tips for healthcare practitioners is to drink plenty of water, regularly and in small amounts, throughout the day.

If you don't like plain water, add slices of lemon and lime or berries and mint leaves, use a little no-sugar cordial, or opt for hot drinks such as black tea, herbal tea, and coffee.

Avoid too much caffeine, however, as it's a diuretic and will encourage your body to release water.

Take care with sugar too as you can easily add too many unwanted calories to drinks (the same applies to all of those delicious syrups and extras your local coffee shop offers when you order your morning latte! Try a little Stevia instead which has no calories and no impact on your blood sugar.

4. Better Winter Health for Medical Professionals? Just Rest Already!

Healthcare practitioner wellbeing requires plenty of rest. However many professionals struggle to have a healthy sleep and rest schedule.

An essential winter wellness tip for healthcare practitioners is to get enough sleep, so try these sleep hygiene tips for better, more restorative sleep:

• Avoid blue light for two hours before bed (yes, this includes social media scrolling.)
• Limit caffeine around 8 hours before you are due to go to sleep. Everyone has a different sensitivity level to caffeine so you can test yours and notice the effects.
• Try gentle stretching, yoga, meditation, reading, or journaling before bed.
• Keep your room cool and your bed warm
• Choose cotton or breathable sleepwear to help maintain a consistent temperature while you're sleeping
• Consider natural sleep aids such as herbal sleeping tablets
• Try to get outdoors in the morning to absorb natural light and reset your circadian rhythm.
• A sleep app can also be very useful self-care for healthcare providers: and provide insights for better sleep and calming stories or meditations before bed.
• Keep your room completely dark and use a white noise app if you tend to get woken up by external noise sources.
• If you find you can't sleep, don't stress! Just rest and relax as much as possible to stay calm and healthy in winter. Winter wellness tips for healthcare practitioners shouldn’t add stress!

5. Healthcare Practitioner Wellbeing and Mental Health

Winter health for medical professionals must include steps to maintain good mental health and emotional wellbeing. This can be very challenging for healthcare practitioners who are naturally caring, active, and pragmatic people, determined to do everything they can for their patients.

However, one of the best winter wellness tips for healthcare practitioners is to prioritize good emotional health. You can do this by:

• Setting boundaries and avoiding burnout. Do this by setting limits on your on-call hours and shifts, where you can. Staying healthy in winter means avoiding illness, which benefits your practice too!
• Stay healthy in winter by maintaining social interaction and support from friends, family, and colleagues.
• Incorporate stress management techniques - one of the best routes to self-care for healthcare providers. Try meditation, breathing exercises, and mindfulness.
• Take breaks! When you can step away from a long shift for a few moments, do so to recharge. Short bursts of rest can really boost healthcare practitioner wellbeing.

6. Winter Wellness Tips for Healthcare Practitioners: Treat Yourself Like a Patient!

Winter health for medical professionals can take a backburner over the busy winter period, but it's not just your patients who need to look after themselves! Staying healthy in winter means treating yourself with the same care as you would a patient and:

• Healthcare practitioner wellbeing requires that you are vaccinated too! Check that you’re up to date.
• Practice good hygiene and infection control in your own life, not simply at work.
• Wear PPE wherever appropriate.

Share advice and updates on winter health issues with colleagues to collectively boost your group healthcare practitioner wellbeing. (Self-care for healthcare providers is one of the hot topics in our own AAOPM professional network!)

7. Winter Wellness Tips for Healthcare Practitioners: Get Your Clothing Right!

Staying healthy in winter is made all the easier if you're warm! So one of the best winter wellness tips for healthcare practitioners is to layer up with several thin and light layers, ideally in breathable fabrics. You can adapt these layers as your temperature adjusts throughout the day.

Warmth and winter health for medical professionals

One extra winter wellness tip for healthcare practitioners is to keep a spare base layer, t-shirt, and socks in your locker or bag. If your clothes get sweaty, you don't want to then risk getting cold and damp when you cool down. So quickly change into new, dry clothes.

8. Winter Wellness Tips for Healthcare Practitioners: Use the AAOPM Network

Staying healthy in winter also means reconnecting with your purpose and joining our network for ready-made healthcare practitioner wellbeing.

We understand Winter health for medical professionals and we take healthcare practitioner wellbeing seriously. So why not sign up for that training course you’ve been considering, and join our professional network for support, knowledge-sharing, and opportunities? Request a catalogue to browse offline with a hot drink and feel inspired!

Winter Wellness Tips for Healthcare Practitioners - how Practices Can Optimize Self-care for Healthcare Providers

Medical practices can also help to optimize winter health for medical professionals. For example, self-care for healthcare providers is always easier in a supportive, healthy, and respectful environment, that’s designed to show care and appreciation for teams.

Winter health for medical professionals: Practice Actions

Winter health for medical professionals involves making sure that practice managers are on board to ensure their teams have:

• Fair rotas that don't place undue stress or pressure on certain individuals
• Access to hot drinks, snacks, and water - healthcare practitioner wellbeing requires plenty of hydration
• Accessible rest areas and schedules that include plenty of genuine rest breaks and optimize Winter health for medical professionals
• Access to resources that support mental health and self-care for healthcare providers, including targeted self-care for healthcare providers such as online yoga, access to counseling, mental health wellness apps, and similar tools. Winter health for medical professionals is best with plenty of resources that suit individual learning styles and preferences.

Winter Health for Medical Professionals: Supported by The AAOPM

Self-care for healthcare providers is so much easier when you’re part of a supportive group of like-minded professionals! Brighten your future with our courses, events, and networking; check out our latest listings today!

Winter Health for Medical Professionals: What Are Your Tips for Healthcare Practitioner Wellbeing?

What tips would you offer for better Healthcare practitioner wellbeing? Let us know and share your knowledge and experience!