In the spirit of Nurse’s Week, I thought I would kick off this column with 5 ways to treat yourself. I know you deserve it, you know you deserve it, so cut loose and pretend it’s your birthday! Or, at least, a gift giving holiday for those who don’t want another birthday.

The best nursing gift I have ever given myself was the gift of happy feet. Our feet need to be happy when we stand on them for 8 or 12 hours a day so check out Dansko. You probably have seen the ever classic Professional Clog but there is plenty of variety out there for those who want something a bit spicy. Don’t want to spend the big bucks for a pair, though? No problem! Go to Dansko Outlet and get an almost perfect pair of these life savers for about a 1/3rd less the cost. Every pair of Dansko’s I’ve bought (all 12 of them) were from the Outlet and I can attest to the great quality of their factory “defects”.

Another great gift is the gift of intelligence. Although we are gifted with this by nature (as evidenced by choosing this field) it’s nice to brush up a bit on our skills and knowledge. The Incredibly Easy! series is a great way to do just this. These books put everything you need to know in a fun, simple format in just about every nursing topic possible. Don’t want to buy a whole book? Then get a subscription to their magazine, Nursing Made Incredibly Easy! Following the same format as the reference books, the articles in each issue are a nice potporri of diseases, skills, and assessment skills. They even have a discount rate for students.

The best things in life are for free… or so they say. But you can’t beat free CEU’s. Check out this directory for a list of free CEU’s. NurseCEU.com also has a list of free offerings. Now you have no excuse for not getting the required amount of continuing education credits for licensure.

And we can’t forget the gift of giving. The Caps for the Capital program is by Save the Children who partnered with Warm Up America that provides knitted and crocheted caps for newborns across the world. This program was initiated in 2006 after a report cited that 2 million babies worldwide die each year and something as simple as a warm hat could prevent many of these deaths. Many of us nurses are great knitters and crocheters so put those needles and hooks to work! Not only does this benefit babies but it is a great stress relieving hobby. My husband can attest to this as he listens to my needles clicking away after a hard day on the unit!

I’ll see you next week with your snazzy shoes, reference library, CEU certificates, and yarn… same time, same place!