The relationship between professional self-care and nursing leaders professionalism

Nurse Leaders are among the health-care practitioners facing burnout, compassion fatigue, trauma, and stress. Maintaining a sense of professional well-being is challenging when nurses ignore their physical, spiritual, emotional, and cognitive needs. To examine the relationship between professional self-care and nurse leaders' professionalism. A descriptive correlation design was used to gather data. A demographic tool, self-care practice scale, and Nursing Professionalism Inventory were used, and a convenience sample (n = 103) from King Abdul-Aziz General Hospital, King Fahad General Hospital, East Jeddah General Hospital, and King Abdullah Medical Complex was obtained. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 26.0. A Pearson correlation was used to test the relationship between variables/dimensions. The results revealed that nurse leaders adopted different self-care practices to promote personal, physical, and overall well-being in their clinical practice. The leaders practiced emotional, physical, psychological, spiritual, and professional activities. These activities influenced their accountability, ability to participate in professional membership, positive professional membership, self-improvement, and advancement in the nursing profession. Nurse leaders' self-care activities improved their overall commitment to professionalism, as dictated by the nursing profession and clinical practice in general. Nurse Leaders should adopt different self-care initiatives, including emotional, physical, psychological, spiritual, and professional activities, to promote their professionalism. These self-care practices should enhance accountability, professional membership, professional attitude, advancement of the nursing profession through education, and self-improvement measures. Future studies should use longitudinal data to demonstrate how self-care initiatives could affect the professionalism levels of subordinate nurses compared to nurse leaders.