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Make Getting Fit Your Job : Sports and Fitness Nursing

As the days get longer and the weather more beautiful, many people will be drawn to the outdoors to engage in all sorts of physical activities. This is great, but why do we have to wait until summer to get out there and get our hearts pumping? Many nurses are hoping to change this habit by making sports and fitness their job.

Getting in Shape is Shaping the Future for Some Nurses

Due to the well-known relationship between physical fitness, wellness and disease prevention, hospitals across the country are beginning to offer wellness programs. Many corporations are also offering on-site fitness programs and wellness centers for their employees. These types of programs can range from providing a full workout room with a variety of exercise equipment to simply providing nutrition, stress management and exercise information.

This recent focus on the importance of physical fitness is providing a new setting for nurses to put their clinical skills and knowledge to work. It is a sensible extension of their capabilities. Nurses play a big role in getting unhealthy, sick patients back on their feet, so who better to keep a patient moving in a positive direction?

Although the relationship between nurses and physical fitness is a perfect fit, it is still very much, an emerging profession. Jobs for sports nurses or fitness nurses do not exist under these titles. Nurses looking to move into this up-and-coming professional area might want to consider taking on a part-time position in addition to their current nursing role.

Work that Comes from the Heart of a Situation

Making the smoothest transition from traditional nursing to sports and fitness nursing most often occurs when nurses take a position in a cardiac rehab unit in a hospital. Cardiac patients can improve their situation through proper conditioning. That’s where nurses come in. Cardiac rehab nurses know the proper way to exercise and can guide patients to a healthier lifestyle through good nutrition.

A patient at a rehab center will typically work out in a class with other cardiac patients. One or two nurses, depending on the class size, usually monitor the class. As patients exercise, nurses will move from one person to the next watching for signs of exertion, such as an elevated heart rate or blood pressure. An EKG is also used to make sure patients are tolerating the exercise program.

Along with the monitoring comes the responsibility of taking action if a patient shows signs that are outside the normal guideline. A nurse must take the matter into his or her own hands and contact a physician when a patient comes in with an elevated heart rate. The nurse will then have to implement the treatment the doctor recommends.

Of course, these aren’t the only tasks that come with the job of being a cardiac rehab nurse. In this setting, nurses are expected to lead by example. Patients are more likely to listen and follow exercise regimes if they know the people directing them practice what they preach. One of the first things patients want to know is what type of exercise their nurse does to stay in shape. If you don’t have a respectable answer to offer your patients you will lose credibility. On this note, nurses are encouraged to use the exercise equipment themselves and many do during lunch hours and when they’re not with patients.

What More Can You Do?

If working in cardiac rehab isn’t the exciting, action filled setting you thought sports and fitness nursing would offer you, don’t look away. There are plenty of other options out there; they just might not be as obvious. Many nurses find opportunities working for professional sports teams, college and university athletic departments, and clinics or orthopedic practices that have sports medicine and sports injury programs.

Nurses who work with the professional sports team often enjoy the up-close advantage it gives them to the game… be it football, basketball, baseball, etc. Nurses can find a home at ballpark or arena aid-stations that treat fans who stumble over bleachers, get hit with foul balls, or even get burned on concession stands. There are also more rare occasions when there are more serious episodes occur, like heart attacks and strokes. Nurses may also work hands on with the athletes themselves. This includes working training camps and game days too, handling everything from sore joints and muscle aches to broken bones and torn ligaments.

Orthopedic clinics handle a range of athletes from grade-schoolers to the pros, along with a range of injuries. Working at these types of facilities, nurses often have to get used to dealing with not only the patient but also the coaches and parents of the athlete. This results in the need to breakdown information into simpler terms so the patient and the coaches and parents can understand the injury and the expectations of recovery.

One of the hardship of the job in working with athletes — amateurs or professionals — is having to tell a patient that he or she will not be able to return to a sport. This is especially difficult when an athlete has dedicated his or her life to the game and suddenly is unable to participate. Of course this type of drastic outcome is usually arrived at only after all options are explored and it is determined that no amount of therapy or surgery is going to heal the injury. These are extreme cases and fortunately many athletes do return to the activity they love and they have the doctors and nurses to thank for it.

Opening Up to the Wide World of Sports

Many nurses find themselves looking for a different atmosphere after years of dealing with critically ill patients. In sports and fitness nursing they have the opportunity to work with healthy patients who are actually looking to stay healthy. It could be a welcomed change of pace.

Seeing patients accomplish one physical goal after another could leave nurses feeling elated and no amount on any paycheck could rival that!