Mental Health of Nurses and Midwives through Self-Care

Nurses and midwives’ primary focus is addressing the healthcare needs of patients/clients, their families, communities and populations at large. They often end up with burnout, and with no time nor the energy to take care of the mselves. Hence, their mental health is a growing problem that requires urgent action. This problem can be addressed through self-care. Self-care is an ongoing process of caring through making conscious, deliberate efforts to do things that maintain, improve and repair one’s mental, emotional, physical, socio-cultural, professional, spiritual, and financial wellness. Lack of self-care predisposes them to chronic health conditions which adversely affect patient care. In order to promote their mental health, nurses/midwives have an obligation to adopt self-care as a duty to themselves in addition to their duty to provide care to others. The objectives of this study were to determine barriers to self-care among nurses/midwives and propose self-care strategies/interventions that can be adopted to promote their mental health. A scoping review of literature was conducted through Google scholar according to the criteria and methodology by Arksey and O’Malley (2005). Only studies published in English language and in peer-reviewed journals between 2020 and 2023 were included. Out of 6,351 articles, only 26 fully met the inclusion criteria. The study concluded that the practice of self-care was low among nurses/midwives. Barriers to their undertaking self-care interventions/strategies included: guilt, lack of self-love, excess workload, under-estimating the value of self-care, lack of time, fatigue, having unrealistic expectations, not adjusting well to change, misconception that implementing self-care is a sign of weakness, poor remuneration and lack of motivation. Holistic and multi-faceted self-care strategies/interventions are recommended targeting the nurses/midwives’ physical, mental, emotional, socio-cultural, professional, spiritual, ......