"Nurse Coaching: Integrative Approaches for Health and Wellbeing"

The latest book focused on nurse coaching, "Nurse Coaching: Integrative Approaches for Health and Wellbeing", was released in late October, and many of us are excited to have yet another text from which to draw inspiration and informative guidance for the practice of nurse coaching.

Santa Fe Coaching Retreats With Nurse Keith!

I don't often write explicitly about my coaching practice for nurses, health professionals and nurse entrepreneurs here on this blog, but my latest launch is so exciting, I couldn't contain myself and had to tell my Digital Doorway community all about it!

Group Coaching For Nurses is Here!

Under the auspices of Nurse Keith Coaching, I love to offer individualized coaching to nurses who want to improve their self-care, prevent burnout, or otherwise manage their career and create more satisfying personal and professional lives. Now, group coaching is the newest vehicle available for nurses who would like to work and play with me in the context of coaching!

Happy Holidays To All!

To my beloved readers,

I want to take this opportunity to thank you all for your encouragement, readership, comments and obvious passion for the best in nursing and healthcare. It's my joy to continue to bring Digital Doorway to you as its eighth anniversary approaches in January of 2013!

Meanwhile, my coaching practice at Nurse Keith Coaching will be marching into its second exciting year, and I'm thrilled to be developing new programs and initiatives that will deliver even more benefits to nurses seeking self-renewal and enhanced wellness.

As I take a blogging break until the New Year dawns, please feel free to read my most recent newsletter for my year-end wrap-up.

Thank you for being here, thanks for returning time and again, and please come back and visit me in 2013!

With gratitude,

Nurse Keith

Coaching For the Future of Nursing

Sometimes, when I tell people that I'm a coach who coaches nurses, they ask me why nurses need coaching in the first place. I tell them that nurses are the backbone of the healthcare industry, and that healthy, happy nurses are the key to successful outcomes and happy patients! Nurses are key to the delivery of care, so it serves to maintain a healthy nursing workforce that can withstand the stress of nursing and the demands of the profession.

August Greetings From Nurse Keith

The August newsletter from Nurse Keith Coaching is now available online for those who would like the latest Nurse Keith news. Please click here to read the online version, and feel free to sign up for my mailing list at NurseKeith.com. Thank you!

What Do Nurses Glean From Coaching?

When I work with nurses via my coaching practice at NurseKeith.com, there are a variety of life aspects upon which we can focus. Whether it's addressing work-life balance or managing a change in the trajectory of their careers, nurses come to coaching for many reasons, but the goal is always centered on what the client truly wants.

Nursing Students and Self Care

Nursing school is a lot like boot camp. The student nurse is pushed to his or her limits, personal resolve is continually tested, students bond in their misery, and the majority come through the other side with new skills and a new career, perhaps a little worse for wear. But are they fully prepared---to care for themselves?

Nurses, Caring, and Oxygen Masks

Nurses are generally very good at caring for others, and many of us fall flat on our faces when it comes to caring for ourselves. So, aren't we going against the popular wisdom of the "oxygen mask theory" when we give and give without meeting our own needs?

Nurse Keith Coaching is Born!

In the last few days, my new website and coaching venture was officially birthed! Nurse Keith Coaching is now live, and the process of making it a reality has paid off! There has been a great deal of support from my community of friends, family and colleagues. Now the task is spreading the word that I am now available to provide professional coaching for nurses and nursing students who want more out of their lives and their careers.

As I say on my website:

As nurses, we spend a great deal of time caring for others and precious little time caring for ourselves. Our work can be all consuming, and in that process we can easily lose touch with our own health, happiness, and sense of balance. Toxic workplaces, heavy workloads, stressful work conditions, mandatory overtime and unhappy, cynical colleagues can all leave us feeling undermined in our attempts to be healthy and happy in our work and at home. 

Nurses are caregivers, but we can only provide the best care when we are also taking care of ourselves properly. Exercise, nutrition, weight loss, stress management, leisure and fun, work-life balance, spirituality, financial prudence, relationships—all of these aspects of our lives impact our ability to be at our best when we engage in our work. 


My skills allow me to hold space for where you currently are in your life, but also to challenge you to dig deeper and find the places where you still want to grow. 

So, please stop by NurseKeith.com, visit and "Like" my Facebook page, and let me know how I might be of service to you. 

Why Coaching For Nurses?

When I speak with people about my newly launching coaching practice for nurses (which will shortly be live at NurseKeithCoaching.com and NurseKeith.com), they often ask why nurses might need coaching. There are many reasons that nurses can benefit from coaching, and when you take into consideration the fact that nurses are responsible for the care of millions of people worldwide, it makes sense that nurses should be healthy, balanced and happy at home and at work so that they can perform at their best.

As nurses, we spend a great deal of time caring for others and precious little time caring for ourselves. Our work can be all consuming, and in that process we can easily lose touch with our own health, happiness, and sense of balance.

Coaching with me is meant to be all about you. It’s about rediscovering the things that you love about your work. It’s about reconnecting with what’s underneath your desire to be a nurse. It’s also about finding balance in your life, and making your own health, happiness, relationships and life satisfaction the focus.

Nurses are caregivers, but we can only provide the best care when we're also taking care of ourselves properly. Exercise, nutrition, weight loss, stress management, leisure and fun, work-life balance, spirituality, relationships---all of these aspects of our lives impact our ability to be at our best when we engage in our work. And when our lives are out of balance, we suffer on multiple levels. 

My intention is to provide coaching that lifts nurses' spirits, assists them in identifying their goals, their strengths and their areas of challenge, and creating a life that more clearly resonates with their spirit and their vision of the best possible life. 

If nurses are the backbone of the health care industry, then that backbone needs the support to be the strongest and healthiest it can be. Nursing should be something you do, not just something that does you in!

Nurse Keith Coaching Is On The Way!

Happy holidays, readers of Digital Doorway! I hope this finds you well and happy!

The purpose of this post is to inform you that the nature of my private coaching practice is changing, and I have decided to focus completely on the coaching of nurses. As an experienced nurse and coach, I feel that my coaching skills can serve in their greatest capacity by helping nurses to live the most satisfying and healthy lives possible. I plan to offer services ranging from health and wellness, weight loss and stress management to burnout prevention, burnout recovery and work-life balance, and I am already in discussion with others in the industry to create exciting partnerships and joint ventures to add even more value and power to my offerings.

As nurses, we spend a great deal of time caring for others and precious little time caring for ourselves. Our work can be all consuming, and in that process we can easily lose touch with our own health, happiness, and sense of balance.

Coaching with me is all about you. It’s about rediscovering the things that you love about your work. It’s about reconnecting with what’s underneath your desire to be a nurse. It’s also about finding balance in your life, and making your own health, happiness, relationships and life satisfaction the focus.

Nurses are caregivers, but we can only provide the best care when we are also taking care of ourselves properly. Exercise, nutrition, weight loss, stress management, leisure and fun, spirituality, relationships---all of these aspects of our health impact our ability to be at our best when we engage in our work. And when our lives are out of balance, we suffer on multiple levels.

You can work with me to improve your work-life balance, get your health on track, set personal and professional goals, and make nursing something that you do and love, not something that does you in!

My new website---currently under construction---will be located at NurseKeithCoaching.com and also linked at NurseKeith.com. There will be a frequently updated Facebook page, as well as my continued presence on Twitter (as NurseKeith). My plan is also to eventually offer free downloads, audio podcasts, and perhaps branch into webinars, internet radio and live workshops here in Santa Fe. 

At this point, I am requesting that you hold this endeavor in your heart, knowing that I am creating this coaching practice so that more nurses can be healthier, happier, and more successful and satisfied clinicians. I am so excited about the coming birth of Nurse Keith Coaching, and I will post a formal announcement as soon as the website is live! 

Gratefully, 

NurseKeith

Of Nursing and Soulful Employment

At this point in mid-life, as my wife and I take a break from working and travel the country, I am giving a great deal of thought to my career, or what I think my career should be. Nursing is certainly the career track upon which I have been treading since 1996, and it is indeed a viable, flexible and (sometimes) attractive way to earn a living. While I have never worked in a hospital (which some nurses deem an irresponsible act of professional suicide), I have enjoyed many positions in the outpatient world, namely hospice, community health centers, home care, case management, and public health.

After almost fourteen years as a nurse, I am questioning what the next chapter will look like. Will I work with Latinos in New Mexico, Native Americans in Arizona, the rural poor, the affluent and sickly? Or will I find a way to make a living as a health and wellness coach, eschewing the world of nursing altogether? I have great desire to be an entrepreneur, but the world of self-employment is not always what it's cracked up to be. However, with my wife as my business manager, I may stand a chance at significant success!

This time of travel and self-reflection is helping me to disengage mentally from the world of work and employment, allowing me a golden opportunity to dig deeply and decide how I want to spend my time and earn a living. There are so many roads from which to choose, and nursing is, as a matter of course, one of the easiest paths to trod.

Of course, when push comes to shove and money needs to be made, a job as a nurse will certainly pay the bills, but only time will tell if there is indeed a nursing job out there that can truly feed my soul, for that is what I have decided work should really do.

Nursing can be a soulful occupation, and if I can work as a nurse and be fulfilled in that endeavor, then I'll be ready to sign on the dotted line. Til then, I will continue to examine my occupational navel and unravel the riddle of figuring out just what will make my vocation more than simply a means to a financial end.

The Nurse as Coach

Life coaching has become big business, and now health and wellness coaching is hot on its heels as the next big wave of wellness for the masses. So, why would a nurse make a good coach? What would give a nurse an edge when it comes to coaching willing clients through the process of getting well, maintaining wellness, or increasing one's aptitude for health, wellness and well-being?

Nurses are trained to examine patients/clients in a holistic manner, taking into consideration myriad aspects of an individual's "biopsychosocial" self. From the beginning, nurses are trained to look for areas of both strength and weakness, and nurses are then taught to assist patients in learning new skills which will allow them the maximum amount of independence and quality of life possible.

Coaching and nursing seem to be a match made in Heaven. Coaching is all about helping people to maximize their health and well-being, create a wellness plan, be held accountable for their actions, and produce concrete results in their lives.

As a case manager and a visiting nurse, I have worked with the sickest of the sick, those with multiple life-altering illnesses, and underserved inner-city populations struggling with cycles of poverty, poor health, chronic illness, substance abuse, and institutionalized racism. On a personal level, having removed myself from that front-line world for more than year, I am now ready to work with the well, with those who are motivated and anxious to improve their health, those strongly desiring to take their level of wellness and personal well-being to the next level. Coaching seems to be one of the ways to do such work, and it feels like the right fit at the right time.

Nurses are coaches, for all intents and purposes, and grafting professional coach training onto a nurse's education seems to be a fail-proof avenue to create a new way to make a meaningful living in the world while serving others. If there are any readers out there who have had a positive (or negative) experience with a health and wellness coach, I would love to hear about it. And if there is anyone who would like to experience coaching with me for a very low introductory rate, I am very willing to work with any person committed to their health and open to engaging my services as I power up a new and exciting vocation.

Coaching Myself

I am moving closer to making a decision about becoming a Certified Health and Wellness Coach. This training would help me to synthesize my training as a nurse, massage therapist, yoga instructor and Laughter Yoga Leader into a vocation that can assist others in achieving optimal wellness and self actualization. 

Nurses are natural coaches in that our training revolves around creating care plans that target aspects of health and wellness in need of strengthening, support and change. At its core, nursing is about health promotion, and the heart of health and wellness coaching is the promotion of optimal health and wellness. Taking that alignment into consideration, becoming a coach seems to be a very intelligent career move for any nurse intent on hanging a virtual shingle, so speak. 

As I explore the world of coaching, I can see that there is a vast amount of room in this burgeoning field for innovation, entrepreneurial development, and personal fulfillment. Even more, coaching is work that is 100% portable since most coaches provide their services by phone, email and web-based applications. 

If I move forward with the training over the summer, I may be searching for subjects willing to receive free coaching sessions during my 13-week course, so stay tuned for the day when I send out the call. 

A Health Coach?

As I contemplate ways to make money and do good in the world without reporting to an office every day, I've been scanning my list of skills and credentials and coming up with some ideas.

Reviewing my vocational history, I am a Bachelor's educated Registered Nurse with 14 years of experience of case management, hospice, ambulatory nursing, home care, community health, and public health. I have skills as a writer, blogger and editor, and have been published in several books.

Beyond nursing, I am a Certified Kripalu Yoga Instructor, a Certified Practitioner of Swedish Massage, a Level I Reiki Practitioner, and a Certified Laughter Yoga Leader.

With some expertise in the areas of Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, case management, and chronic illness management, I find that people often ask me for advice, be it medical, nursing, or simply about life in general.

So, I frequently wonder about the possibility of "hanging a shingle" as a coach, perhaps as a professional health and wellness coach. While the idea is still germinating, I'm working with a health coach myself, experiencing the benefits of such a relationship, and realizing that I have the skills to do it.

Interestingly, a friend called tonight and asked me for urgent medical advice. While I don't picture myself soliciting business for a personal "ask-a-nurse" hotline, I can see that my nursing can indeed be parlayed into a relationship wherein an individual in need of guidance and advice might benefit from the holistic intervention of a coach with a nurse's education.

Speaking of nurses, I have also considered running workshops for nurses on burnout prevention, and perhaps there's a new niche market in being a health coach specifically for nurses and health care providers. After all, we caregivers can be horrendous at taking care of ourselves, so there may indeed be very specific ways that someone like me can help nurses and others figure out how to make the most of their lives, care for themselves well, and optimize their health and wellness.

The wheels are turning, and we shall see how they continue to turn.