If you’ve ever tried to make sense of a big, messy topic, whether it’s anatomy, psychology, or even planning a family vacation, you know how easy it is to get lost in the details. That’s where concept maps come in.
A concept map is more than just a fancy diagram. It’s a visual tool that helps you capture, organize, and connect ideas so you can see the “big picture” at a glance.
Why Concept Maps Work
Concept maps tap into how our brains naturally work, by connecting information rather than memorizing isolated facts. When you create one, you’re not just copying notes; you’re actively making sense of information, spotting patterns, and building links between concepts.
This active engagement is backed by research: visual representations improve comprehension, support critical thinking, and boost retention. In short, concept maps make learning stick. Nesbit and Adesope’s (2006) meta-analysis of dozens of studies found that students who used concept maps showed significantly stronger learning outcomes compared to those who relied only on traditional notetaking.
Cognitive psychology suggests that learning is strongest when it is meaningful—when new knowledge connects to what we already know. Concept maps encourage this process by forcing us to ask, how does this idea relate to that one? That act of questioning builds deeper understanding and promotes long-term memory. Novak and Cañas (2008), pioneers in concept mapping, argue that these tools “make thinking visible” by transforming abstract knowledge into something concrete and structured.
How to Build a Concept Map
Start with a central idea. Write it in the center or top of your page.
Branch out. Add related subtopics, drawing lines or arrows to show relationships.
Label your connections. These labels (like “causes,” “leads to,” “is a type of”) turn your map into a meaningful web rather than a random cluster of words.
Add details. Keep branching until you’ve covered all major points and their relationships.
Review and refine. Your first map is rarely your last. Adjust as you deepen your understanding.
The beauty of concept maps is that they are highly adaptable. Some people prefer a simple structure with just a few layers, while others create elaborate webs with cross-links between multiple concepts. There’s no single “right” way to build one. The key is whether it helps you make sense of the material.
Real-World Uses for Concept Maps
Concept maps shine in both academic and professional settings:
Studentsuse them to study complex topics, such as linking symptoms, diagnoses, and treatments in a medical course. This not only aids exam prep but also mirrors how professionals think in the real world.
Educators design them to structure lessons, showing how each concept builds on the previous one. Concept maps also work as formative assessments. Teachers can quickly see what students understand and where misconceptions remain.
Professionals apply them in project planning, research design, and problem-solving. A well-structured map can turn a vague idea into a clear, actionable plan.
In healthcare education, for example, concept maps are widely used in nursing programs to help students link theory to practice. By mapping patient symptoms to interventions and outcomes, learners demonstrate both clinical reasoning and holistic thinking. In business, managers use concept maps to brainstorm strategies, identify risks, and visualize workflows before moving into detailed planning. Even in everyday life, families use concept maps to coordinate large events like weddings or vacations—organizing everything from budgets to timelines at a glance.
Going Beyond the Basics
Once you’ve mastered the fundamentals, concept maps can become even more powerful with advanced techniques:
Cross-links: Draw connections between branches that may not seem directly related. These links often spark “aha” moments by revealing hidden relationships.
Hierarchy: Organize ideas from the most general at the top to the most specific at the bottom, which helps clarify levels of abstraction.
Integration with technology: Digital concept mapping tools allow for collaboration, multimedia integration, and real-time updates, making them ideal for group projects or remote learning environments.
Teachers can also use concept maps to measure growth over time. For example, students might create a map at the start of a unit and then expand or revise it at the end. Comparing the two versions provides a visible record of learning progress, something that’s harder to capture with multiple-choice tests alone.
Pro Tips for Making Your Map Effective
Use color coding to group related ideas.
Keep your wording short—think keywords, not paragraphs.
Experiment with digital tools like Coggle, MindMeister, or Lucidchart for easy editing and sharing.
Don’t be afraid to collaborate. Building a map with classmates or colleagues can reveal insights you might have missed on your own.
The Takeaway
Concept maps aren’t just about making pretty diagrams; they’re about making thinking visible. Whether you’re a student, teacher, or lifelong learner, this tool can transform the way you process and remember information.
So next time you’re overwhelmed by a new topic, skip the endless bullet points and map it out. You might be surprised at how much clearer everything becomes.
Michele Poulos has dedicated more than twenty-five years to education, with experience spanning elementary, secondary, and post-secondary settings. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education, a Master’s degree in Psychology, and is currently pursuing her doctoral degree in Human and Learning Science. Throughout her career, she has taught and learned in both traditional classrooms and fully online environments, giving her a unique perspective on how students thrive across modalities. Michele currently serves as the Director of Online Education at Pima Medical Institute, where she oversees online programs, faculty development, and strategic initiatives designed to enhance student learning and success. Her professional accomplishments have been recognized nationally, as she was inducted into Marquis Who’s Who in America for four consecutive years (2022–2025). Her passion for education is matched by her commitment to family life. She resides in Naples, Florida, with her husband and their two children—ten-year-old Trenton and eight-year-old Eliana—who continually inspire her dedication to both teaching and lifelong learning.
References
Nesbit, J. C., & Adesope, O. O. (2006). Learning with concept and knowledge maps: A meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 76(3), 413–448. https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543076003413
Quality education must go beyond textbooks and lectures. It should connect students with current events and equip them with skills for real-world engagement. When teaching a theoretical framework, for example, educators should demonstrate to students how that framework applies in real-life scenarios (Jeffrey von Freymann 2025). Similarly, lessons on historical events should include the context and consequences of those moments, linking the past to the present in ways that resonate with students’ lived experiences. Results from the 2023 National Survey of Student Engagement indicate that students benefit from high-impact educational activities, reporting deeper learning and increased retention (NSSE 2023).
In today’s changing academic and political climate, many fields—including education and healthcare—are experiencing the effects of administrative shifts and funding uncertainties. Students are vulnerable to these changes and may feel the weight of decisions made beyond their control (Cynthia Vitters et al. 2024). I have discovered that some of my students are not sufficiently educated or engaged in political matters, resulting in their ignorance of the potential consequences these decisions could have on their future careers. Faculty must consider how these broader changes affect their students and the future of their education and careers. I believe the future of education may be impacted on a scale larger than the sum of our individual experiences.
Fortunately, students bring energy, big ideas, and a passion for change. Throughout history, many transformative movements in the U.S. were student-led—from the Civil Rights Movement to recent climate strikes. Faculty should empower students with knowledge and resources to continue this tradition. Civics education is common in specific higher education fields; however, students pursuing careers in healthcare may not have as much familiarity with the process. Faculty have an opportunity to empower students by equipping them with the tools and confidence to participate in public life. It begins with acknowledging the reality: that the political process can be confusing, overwhelming, and discouraging, especially when students are already stretched thin and inundated with grim news. Disengagement is understandable—but it’s not the only option. Future healthcare professionals have a duty to remain engaged in the political process in order to advocate for our patients and ensure the continued accessibility of healthcare services.
By integrating advocacy into the classroom, educators can normalize civic participation and demonstrate how they can contribute to meaningful change. Faculty should first assess their current attitudes and knowledge and then guide them to apply their energy constructively, participating in our civic processes. One effective method is through structured classroom projects that engage students through real advocacy processes. Educators can use established frameworks to guide this process and offer credible models. Three great models identified for the activity discussed below were from the Centers for Disease Control, the deBeaumont Foundation, the American Public Health Association, and the Association of Public Health Nurses (https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/clearwriting/docs/health-comm-playbook-508.pdf, https://www.phnurse.org/advocacy-toolkit, https://phern.communitycommons.org/advocacy/taking-action-advocacy-for-public-health/getting-started-advocacy/).
In a public health nursing course, I recently applied this method with nursing students over a duration of three weeks. Collaborating in small groups, the students selected a topic of interest, conducted research on the issue, and developed potential interventions. The topics chosen by the students were diverse, including vaccine policies, environmental safety, access to healthy food, Medicare funding, and the conflict in Gaza. The groups researched their topics to identify relevant data, current and proposed policies impacting the issue, and organizations currently involved. At this point, they presented their peers with an outline of their findings to begin testing their messaging on the issue at hand and receive constructive feedback. Next, they developed communication materials to promote their intervention and identified potential community partners with whom to form a coalition to achieve shared goals. Their communication options included letters to the editor, media pitches, and social media campaigns. These were designed to inform the public and build support.
Additionally, each group identified an elected official with the power to affect change and wrote a letter outlining the problem and recommended solutions. For extra credit, the student groups were encouraged to schedule a meeting with them or their staff to present their recommendations. Throughout the process, faculty mentored their progress and encouraged deeper engagement and growth. Students periodically paused to present their work to peer groups, and they used this real-time feedback to refine their advocacy and communication strategies. A structured framework gave them direction and confidence. This process teaches students the importance of communication and teamwork, and provides them with real-world experience in advocacy and civic action. In the future, I plan to include a meeting with legislative staff as a required part of this activity based on feedback from students who elected to do the extra credit. They benefited tremendously and reported increased confidence with the process.
Ultimately, teaching the civic process is not about politics—it’s about empowerment. By showing students how to engage thoughtfully, speak confidently, and act collaboratively, we are not only educating them—we are preparing them to shape the future.
Lyndsay Anderson, MSN, FNP-BC, PHN is a clinical faculty member at University of the Pacific. She is a nurse educator, clinician, and researcher with experience in oncology, public health, and nursing education. Lyndsay’s research has focused on reducing cancer disparities among Latina and African American populations and has co-authored numerous peer-reviewed publications in oncology and public health. She holds a Master of Science in Nursing from Georgetown University and a BSN from the University of Virginia. She is currently pursuing her Doctorate of Health Sciences from University of the Pacific.
Dr. Julia VanderMolen is a Professor for the Public Health program at Grand Valley State University and a Visiting Assistant Clinical Professor with the University of the Pacific, School of Health Sciences. Her research examines the benefits of assistive technology for individuals with disabilities in public health. She serves as a board member of the Disability Advocates of Kent County and is an active member of the Disability Section of the American Public Health Association (APHA). Her current research focuses on exploring the health and medical services available to individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
References
APHN Public Health Policy Committee Association of Public Health Nurses. Public Health Policy Advocacy Guidebook and Toolkit. APHN Public Health Policy Committee Association of Public Health Nurses 2021. https://www.phnurse.org/advocacy-toolkit
As educators, we must stay current. What could be more current than Artificial Intelligence? Our students are using this tool at an unprecedented rate, and every technological tool we have is guided by it. We are taking classes to learn how to use it in the classroom and how to teach our students to use it. Grammarly is editing this very article! You are not alone if you feel a bit reticent to jump on the bandwagon. Will it ultimately replace us as educators? As people?
“Artificial Intelligence”. The issue is embedded right in the name: Artificial means not real. Is it here to stay, and can we even fight it? One of our generation’s premier philosophers, Dr. Yuval Harari, said that if we hope to survive, we better fight it (2015). Technology has been hypothesized to be an evolutionary mismatch (Li & Colarelli, 2017). This term implies that behaviors that once supported a species have become injurious. An example of a mismatch is sugary foods. Our nomadic ancestors struggled to procure enough daily calories to sustain life. When they found sugary food, they filled up on it and stored it. In our modern day, too much sugar leads to issues related to early mortality.
Technology can be used as a tool to keep us connected. Unfortunately, it has also slowly evolved into a system that answers every question, educates, and can now act as a companion, moving us slowly away from one another, like the frog in the hot water who realizes too late it is boiling.
The Hidden Costs of Disconnection
What is the cost of this instant ‘answerer of all questions’ and constant companion? It is hard to quantify, but the loss of human interaction is vast and far-reaching. Humans, with their higher cognitive functioning, can live on their own and survive thanks to technology. But should they? The longest social science studies suggest that healthy aging is directly related to meaningful and supportive relationships (Bosworth, & Schaie, 1997; Waldinger, & Schulz, 2023).
Additionally, humans are creatures who are, to simplify, guided by neural stimulation. When we are stressed, or trying to manage life alone, the stress hormone cortisol increases (Doane, L. & Adam E. 2009). High cortisol levels are directly related to inflammation, aging, and many other ailments, and we know that loneliness leads to early mortality (Holt-Lunstead & Layton, 2010). The most efficient home-grown remedy to combat an increase in cortisol is face-to-face meaningful engagement, which will release oxytocin, called the ‘love drug’. Our bodies, meant to be social, will release oxytocin when we engage, which will help to mitigate the system that manages cortisol. Unfortunately, artificial intelligence does not release meaningful amounts of oxytocin, and no pills exist to take because they do not cross the blood-brain barrier (Young-Kuchenbecker, Pressman, Celniker, Grewen, Sumida, Jonathan, Everett, & Slavich, 2021). We are left with the innate and evolutionary need for connection.
If we are to believe Darwin, then the fittest will make it, and most of us know what fitness entails. Fitness is about the mind, the body, and the demands (either placed on you or by you) of your environment. Recent MIT findings suggest that AI has a deleterious impact on our memory and has a high cognitive cost. Participants in the study could not even quote their own work (Kosmyna, Hauptmann, Yuan, Situ, Liao, Beresnitzky, Braunstein, & Maes, 2025).). As we are living longer than any previous generation, our sophisticated society necessitates that we maintain our cognitive fitness for as long as possible. AI certainly appears to be a mismatch in healthy long-term aging.
Educators as Builders of Connection
As educators, our job is to teach the topic at hand along with the soft skills of connection, engagement, community, teamwork, and the power that can be harnessed by more than one mind. Our college-age students suffer the most from loneliness and all the physical and psychological challenges inherent in that experience (Caccioppo & Caccioppo, 2018). In a classroom study, my students investigated loneliness on our campus and found that out of 100 students, 99 of them reported feeling lonely, and it influenced their use of technology (2024).
Artificial Intelligence brings information to our fingertips that might otherwise be unobtainable. It can teach, educate, partner, and save us a lot of time, but we need to learn to use it as a tool and not have it use us. We used to ask questions of experts, older or wiser, which invited connection. Now we ask our device questions, which invites disconnection in that how we phrase our questions to AI will determine the breadth and depth of the answer. In our digital age, the user curates their information (Kjerstin & Wells, 2016). Without another person to offer insight and possible opposing views, the user will often be left with tremendous confirmation bias.
Evolution has taught us that an organism has the best chance of survival if it is connected to others. The Pando in Utah is an ideal example. In Fish Lake National Forest’s 106-acre area, almost 50,000 aspen trees are interconnected with one root system. What infects one tree infects them all. So, how can we help our students connect and use AI effectively while keeping the detrimental effects of AI at bay?
This educator has gone back to a bit of paper and pencil. In the classroom, the students work in small groups that vary weekly on a homework assignment. They can partner for a test and have several out-of-class projects that require a little time to have a conversation. One of the assignments is to record a video of their group talking over a sensitive topic, one that they might not have been comfortable discussing in class. Yes, it takes a bit more time to plan and to grade. However, most of us are teaching a topic that does not lead to a qualifying test or credential so we can afford to cut a bit of material in lieu of helping our lonely students. If the results of the MIT study are to be believed (Kosmyna, 2025), if we don’t do something different, those same students will leave without the knowledge we hoped they would gain or the comfort of connection a classroom can provide. We can do better and need to if we, as educators, are to stay relevant.
Jennifer Smith, PhD, CFLE, is an Assistant Teaching Professor at Kansas State University in the Department of Psychological Sciences. Jennifer received her bachelor’s degree in both psychology and human development from the University of Wisconsin and her master’s degree in counseling from Lakeland University. Additionally, she obtained her PhD in Lifespan Human Development from Kansas State University, with her dissertation focusing on the intersection of technology and relationships. Jennifer is also a CFLE (Certified Family Life Educator) from the National Council on Family Relations. She describes her perspective on all things as “contextual” and approaches her teaching through this lens. Jennifer loves teaching above all else. Her teaching philosophy is “empathic teaching engenders curious learners.”! When not with students, she enjoys traveling with her husband of 30 years, time with her two daughters, serving in her community and naps with her cats!
References
Bosworth, H. & Schaie, K. (1997). The Relationship of Social Environment, Social Networks, and Health Outcomes in The Seattle Longitudinal Study: Two Analytical Approaches. The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences. 52. P197-205. 10.1093/geronb/52B.5.P197.
Cacioppo, J. T., & Cacioppo, S. (2018). The growing problem of loneliness. The Lancet; the Lancet, 391(10119), 426. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(18)30142-9
Doane, L. & Adam E.( 2009) Loneliness and cortisol: momentary, day-to-day, and trait associations. Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2010 Apr;35(3):430-41. doi: 10.1016/j. PMID: 19744794; PMCID: PMC2841363.
Harari, Y. N. (2015). Sapiens: A brief history of humankind. HarperCollins Publishers.
Holt-Lunstad, J., Smith, T., & Layton, J. (2010). Social relationships and mortality risk: A meta-analytic review (social relationships and mortality). PLoS Medicine, 7(7), e1000316. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000316
Kosmyna, N., Hauptmann, E., Yuan, Y. T., Situ, J., Liao, X., Beresnitzky, A. V., Braunstein, I., & Maes, P. (2025). Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task. ArXiv. https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872
Li, N., van Vugt, M. & Colarelli, S. (2017) The evolutionary mismatch hypothesis: Implications for psychological science. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 27, 38-44. doi:10.1177/0963721417731378.
Kjerstin, T., Wells, C. (2016) Curated Flows: A Framework for Mapping Media Exposure in the Digital Age, Communication Theory, Vol. 26, (3), p. 309–328. https://doi.org/10.1111/comt.12087
Waldinger, R., & Schulz, M. (2023). The Good Life: Lessons from the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness. Simon & Schuster.
Young Kuchenbecker, S., Pressman, S. D., Celniker, J., Grewen, K. M., Sumida, K. D., Jonathan, N., Everett, B., & Slavich, G. M. (2021). Oxytocin, cortisol, and cognitive control during acute and naturalistic stress. Stress (Amsterdam, Netherlands), 24(4), 370–383. https://doi.org/10.1080/10253890.2021.1876658
As educators, we must stay current. What could be more current than Artificial Intelligence? Our students are using this tool at an unprecedented rate, and every technological tool we have is guided by it. We are taking classes to learn how to use it in the classroom and how to teach our students to use it. Grammarly is editing this very article! You are not alone if you feel a bit reticent to jump on the bandwagon. Will it ultimately replace us as educators? As people?
“Artificial Intelligence”. The issue is embedded right in the name: Artificial means not real. Is it here to stay, and can we even fight it? One of our generation’s premier philosophers, Dr. Yuval Harari, said that if we hope to survive, we better fight it (2015). Technology has been hypothesized to be an evolutionary mismatch (Li & Colarelli, 2017). This term implies that behaviors that once supported a species have become injurious. An example of a mismatch is sugary foods. Our nomadic ancestors struggled to procure enough daily calories to sustain life. When they found sugary food, they filled up on it and stored it. In our modern day, too much sugar leads to issues related to early mortality.
Technology can be used as a tool to keep us connected. Unfortunately, it has also slowly evolved into a system that answers every question, educates, and can now act as a companion, moving us slowly away from one another, like the frog in the hot water who realizes too late it is boiling.
The Hidden Costs of Disconnection
What is the cost of this instant ‘answerer of all questions’ and constant companion? It is hard to quantify, but the loss of human interaction is vast and far-reaching. Humans, with their higher cognitive functioning, can live on their own and survive thanks to technology. But should they? The longest social science studies suggest that healthy aging is directly related to meaningful and supportive relationships (Bosworth, & Schaie, 1997; Waldinger, & Schulz, 2023).
Additionally, humans are creatures who are, to simplify, guided by neural stimulation. When we are stressed, or trying to manage life alone, the stress hormone cortisol increases (Doane, L. & Adam E. 2009). High cortisol levels are directly related to inflammation, aging, and many other ailments, and we know that loneliness leads to early mortality (Holt-Lunstead & Layton, 2010). The most efficient home-grown remedy to combat an increase in cortisol is face-to-face meaningful engagement, which will release oxytocin, called the ‘love drug’. Our bodies, meant to be social, will release oxytocin when we engage, which will help to mitigate the system that manages cortisol. Unfortunately, artificial intelligence does not release meaningful amounts of oxytocin, and no pills exist to take because they do not cross the blood-brain barrier (Young-Kuchenbecker, Pressman, Celniker, Grewen, Sumida, Jonathan, Everett, & Slavich, 2021). We are left with the innate and evolutionary need for connection.
If we are to believe Darwin, then the fittest will make it, and most of us know what fitness entails. Fitness is about the mind, the body, and the demands (either placed on you or by you) of your environment. Recent MIT findings suggest that AI has a deleterious impact on our memory and has a high cognitive cost. Participants in the study could not even quote their own work (Kosmyna, Hauptmann, Yuan, Situ, Liao, Beresnitzky, Braunstein, & Maes, 2025).). As we are living longer than any previous generation, our sophisticated society necessitates that we maintain our cognitive fitness for as long as possible. AI certainly appears to be a mismatch in healthy long-term aging.
Educators as Builders of Connection
As educators, our job is to teach the topic at hand along with the soft skills of connection, engagement, community, teamwork, and the power that can be harnessed by more than one mind. Our college-age students suffer the most from loneliness and all the physical and psychological challenges inherent in that experience (Caccioppo & Caccioppo, 2018). In a classroom study, my students investigated loneliness on our campus and found that out of 100 students, 99 of them reported feeling lonely, and it influenced their use of technology (2024).
Artificial Intelligence brings information to our fingertips that might otherwise be unobtainable. It can teach, educate, partner, and save us a lot of time, but we need to learn to use it as a tool and not have it use us. We used to ask questions of experts, older or wiser, which invited connection. Now we ask our device questions, which invites disconnection in that how we phrase our questions to AI will determine the breadth and depth of the answer. In our digital age, the user curates their information (Kjerstin & Wells, 2016). Without another person to offer insight and possible opposing views, the user will often be left with tremendous confirmation bias.
Evolution has taught us that an organism has the best chance of survival if it is connected to others. The Pando in Utah is an ideal example. In Fish Lake National Forest’s 106-acre area, almost 50,000 aspen trees are interconnected with one root system. What infects one tree infects them all. So, how can we help our students connect and use AI effectively while keeping the detrimental effects of AI at bay?
This educator has gone back to a bit of paper and pencil. In the classroom, the students work in small groups that vary weekly on a homework assignment. They can partner for a test and have several out-of-class projects that require a little time to have a conversation. One of the assignments is to record a video of their group talking over a sensitive topic, one that they might not have been comfortable discussing in class. Yes, it takes a bit more time to plan and to grade. However, most of us are teaching a topic that does not lead to a qualifying test or credential so we can afford to cut a bit of material in lieu of helping our lonely students. If the results of the MIT study are to be believed (Kosmyna, 2025), if we don’t do something different, those same students will leave without the knowledge we hoped they would gain or the comfort of connection a classroom can provide. We can do better and need to if we, as educators, are to stay relevant.
Jennifer Smith, PhD, CFLE, is an Assistant Teaching Professor at Kansas State University in the Department of Psychological Sciences. Jennifer received her bachelor’s degree in both psychology and human development from the University of Wisconsin and her master’s degree in counseling from Lakeland University. Additionally, she obtained her PhD in Lifespan Human Development from Kansas State University, with her dissertation focusing on the intersection of technology and relationships. Jennifer is also a CFLE (Certified Family Life Educator) from the National Council on Family Relations. She describes her perspective on all things as “contextual” and approaches her teaching through this lens. Jennifer loves teaching above all else. Her teaching philosophy is “empathic teaching engenders curious learners.”! When not with students, she enjoys traveling with her husband of 30 years, time with her two daughters, serving in her community and naps with her cats!
References
Bosworth, H. & Schaie, K. (1997). The Relationship of Social Environment, Social Networks, and Health Outcomes in The Seattle Longitudinal Study: Two Analytical Approaches. The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences. 52. P197-205. 10.1093/geronb/52B.5.P197.
Cacioppo, J. T., & Cacioppo, S. (2018). The growing problem of loneliness. The Lancet; the Lancet, 391(10119), 426. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(18)30142-9
Doane, L. & Adam E.( 2009) Loneliness and cortisol: momentary, day-to-day, and trait associations. Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2010 Apr;35(3):430-41. doi: 10.1016/j. PMID: 19744794; PMCID: PMC2841363.
Harari, Y. N. (2015). Sapiens: A brief history of humankind. HarperCollins Publishers.
Holt-Lunstad, J., Smith, T., & Layton, J. (2010). Social relationships and mortality risk: A meta-analytic review (social relationships and mortality). PLoS Medicine, 7(7), e1000316. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000316
Kosmyna, N., Hauptmann, E., Yuan, Y. T., Situ, J., Liao, X., Beresnitzky, A. V., Braunstein, I., & Maes, P. (2025). Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task. ArXiv. https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872
Li, N., van Vugt, M. & Colarelli, S. (2017) The evolutionary mismatch hypothesis: Implications for psychological science. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 27, 38-44. doi:10.1177/0963721417731378.
Kjerstin, T., Wells, C. (2016) Curated Flows: A Framework for Mapping Media Exposure in the Digital Age, Communication Theory, Vol. 26, (3), p. 309–328. https://doi.org/10.1111/comt.12087
Waldinger, R., & Schulz, M. (2023). The Good Life: Lessons from the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness. Simon & Schuster.
Young Kuchenbecker, S., Pressman, S. D., Celniker, J., Grewen, K. M., Sumida, K. D., Jonathan, N., Everett, B., & Slavich, G. M. (2021). Oxytocin, cortisol, and cognitive control during acute and naturalistic stress. Stress (Amsterdam, Netherlands), 24(4), 370–383. https://doi.org/10.1080/10253890.2021.1876658
“Colleges are now closing at a pace of one per week. What happens to the students?” Jon Marcus asked in a recent Hechinger Report piece. It’s not a rhetorical question — and it doesn’t have an easy answer. As educators, we’ve read the headlines, seen the numbers, and felt the pressure. Undergraduate enrollment is down. Student confidence is eroding. The enrollment cliff looms.
But instead of asking when higher education will fail, we might ask: What if this is a market correction — not a collapse? What if the problem isn’t higher education itself, but how we’ve framed its value and how we’ve taught? What if this moment is less an ending and more a beginning?
In the face of uncertainty, it’s tempting to focus on control: measurable learning outcomes, career-ready skills, standardized assessments. But today’s students are entering a competitive job market — and a world defined by accelerating change, emerging technologies, and challenges we haven’t yet named. That means our teaching needs to prepare them what’s likely and for what’s possible — and even what’s unknowable.
Ronald Beghetto’s framework for “educating for unknowable futures” offers a helpful lens. He proposes three levels of preparation:
Educating for likely futures: equipping students with foundational skills and durable knowledge.
Educating for possible futures: helping students build agency, creativity, and adaptability.
Educating for unknowable futures: inviting students to grapple with uncertainty through reflection and imagination.
Each level requires a shift in how we think about learning and a new set of pedagogical commitments.
1. Educating for Likely Futures: Redesigning Assignments Around Students’ Real Lives
Career readiness remains a core concern. But often, our tools for building it are misaligned with students’ actual experiences. Take the classic business case method, for example: many cases center Fortune 500 CEOs or global crises, which can feel abstract or inaccessible to undergraduates, especially first-generation students.
That’s why I now write my own cases: short, specific, and grounded in contexts my students know. In one recent one, I explored a conflict between student-athletes and faculty at a nearby Division III college. For my mostly student-athlete class, this was familiar and therefore grounding. Their analysis shifted. So did their engagement.
Designing assignments that reflect students’ likely futures — their majors, their industries, their regions — signals that their lives are valid sites of learning. It builds relevance. And it reminds them that professional decision-making doesn’t start “out there.” It starts here.
2. Educating for Possible Futures: Using EdTech with Purpose
Students also need to develop adaptive skills: how to think critically, navigate ambiguity, and evaluate tools in evolving environments. EdTech is a perfect place to practice this.
Today’s education market is flooded with tools — over 370 vendors across over 40 market segments, according to Encoura. But quantity isn’t quality. Too often, we adopt tools based on novelty or institutional trends rather than instructional value.
To support students in building discernment, we must model it ourselves. That means asking: Does this tool solve a real problem in my class? Does it deliver on its promises? Does it support learning equitably and sustainably?
In other words, we must shift from passive adopters to intentional evaluators and invite students into that evaluative process. Helping them think about how technology shapes learning (and their own agency within it) equips them for any environment, not just the one we’ve built.
3. Educating for Unknowable Futures: Making Space for Reflection
Preparing students for the truly unknown requires something more radical: making space for performance, yes, but also for reflection.
In a recent MBA course on negotiation and conflict, I made a bold move: I assigned weekly reflection journals — raw, stream-of-consciousness entries that linked course themes to students’ lived experiences. Some students resisted at first. But by the end, many said it changed the way they approached class and life.
Reflection is often treated as an add-on, something optional or “soft.” But it’s essential. It helps students surface assumptions, interrogate choices, and practice metacognition. And in a world where knowledge and skills are constantly evolving, the ability to learn how to learn may be the most durable skill of all.
Possibility Thinking, in Practice
If our current moment is a reckoning, then our response must be one of responsibility. We cannot guarantee our students a particular future. But we can offer them the tools to shape one.
Beghetto calls this “agentic awareness” — a belief in one’s ability to influence outcomes. It’s a curriculum and a posture. And it’s something we can model by how we teach: with creativity, clarity, and curiosity.
So the next time you see another headline about higher ed’s collapse, ask yourself: What if we treated this as a moment to reimagine rather than as a crisis to survive?
That’s resilience, and it’s possibility thinking in action.
Three Small Shifts You Can Make This Semester
Now is the perfect time to start leaning into the possibility of our problems. To do so, try:
Redesigning one assignmentto reflect your students’ actual career goals or lived experiences. Meeting students where they are will help them better envision where they’re headed.
Asking your classroom technology better questions. Push beyond features to real learning outcomes when you choose to invite EdTech into your classroom.
Making reflection part of the grade. Don’t treat it as busywork but as weighted, important meaning-making.
Higher education may be facing unprecedented disruption, but disruption doesn’t have to mean decline. In fact, the classroom may be one of the last places where we still have real influence over what comes next. Each lesson we design, each conversation we facilitate, each moment we create for reflection — these are acts of future-building.
Educating for unknowable futures doesn’t mean we need to predict what’s next. It means we help students learn to ask better questions, adapt with confidence, and recognize their own capacity to shape change. And it means we embrace that same mindset ourselves.
The future of higher education won’t be saved by sweeping reforms or silver-bullet technologies. It will be co-created — one thoughtful assignment, one intentional choice, one student at a time. And that work starts not in distant policy meetings, but right here, in our classrooms.
Laura Nicole Miller, DET, is an assistant professor in the Grenon School of Business at Assumption University, where she teaches organizational communication, marketing, and management. A first-generation college graduate and former EdTech executive, she studies how communication practices shape equity, trust, and student success in high-stakes environments.
Craft, A. (2015). Possibility thinking: From what is to what might be. In R. Wegerif, L. Li, & J. C. Kaufman (Eds.), The Routledge international handbook of research on teaching thinking (pp. 15–26). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315797021
Miller, L. N. (2025). “D-III students deserve better”: strategic communication with college stakeholders. The CASE Journal, 21(3), 493-516. https://doi.org/10.1108/TCJ-06-2024-0184
“Colleges are now closing at a pace of one per week. What happens to the students?” Jon Marcus asked in a recent Hechinger Report piece. It’s not a rhetorical question — and it doesn’t have an easy answer. As educators, we’ve read the headlines, seen the numbers, and felt the pressure. Undergraduate enrollment is down. Student confidence is eroding. The enrollment cliff looms.
But instead of asking when higher education will fail, we might ask: What if this is a market correction — not a collapse? What if the problem isn’t higher education itself, but how we’ve framed its value and how we’ve taught? What if this moment is less an ending and more a beginning?
In the face of uncertainty, it’s tempting to focus on control: measurable learning outcomes, career-ready skills, standardized assessments. But today’s students are entering a competitive job market — and a world defined by accelerating change, emerging technologies, and challenges we haven’t yet named. That means our teaching needs to prepare them what’s likely and for what’s possible — and even what’s unknowable.
Ronald Beghetto’s framework for “educating for unknowable futures” offers a helpful lens. He proposes three levels of preparation:
Educating for likely futures: equipping students with foundational skills and durable knowledge.
Educating for possible futures: helping students build agency, creativity, and adaptability.
Educating for unknowable futures: inviting students to grapple with uncertainty through reflection and imagination.
Each level requires a shift in how we think about learning and a new set of pedagogical commitments.
1. Educating for Likely Futures: Redesigning Assignments Around Students’ Real Lives
Career readiness remains a core concern. But often, our tools for building it are misaligned with students’ actual experiences. Take the classic business case method, for example: many cases center Fortune 500 CEOs or global crises, which can feel abstract or inaccessible to undergraduates, especially first-generation students.
That’s why I now write my own cases: short, specific, and grounded in contexts my students know. In one recent one, I explored a conflict between student-athletes and faculty at a nearby Division III college. For my mostly student-athlete class, this was familiar and therefore grounding. Their analysis shifted. So did their engagement.
Designing assignments that reflect students’ likely futures — their majors, their industries, their regions — signals that their lives are valid sites of learning. It builds relevance. And it reminds them that professional decision-making doesn’t start “out there.” It starts here.
2. Educating for Possible Futures: Using EdTech with Purpose
Students also need to develop adaptive skills: how to think critically, navigate ambiguity, and evaluate tools in evolving environments. EdTech is a perfect place to practice this.
Today’s education market is flooded with tools — over 370 vendors across over 40 market segments, according to Encoura. But quantity isn’t quality. Too often, we adopt tools based on novelty or institutional trends rather than instructional value.
To support students in building discernment, we must model it ourselves. That means asking: Does this tool solve a real problem in my class? Does it deliver on its promises? Does it support learning equitably and sustainably?
In other words, we must shift from passive adopters to intentional evaluators and invite students into that evaluative process. Helping them think about how technology shapes learning (and their own agency within it) equips them for any environment, not just the one we’ve built.
3. Educating for Unknowable Futures: Making Space for Reflection
Preparing students for the truly unknown requires something more radical: making space for performance, yes, but also for reflection.
In a recent MBA course on negotiation and conflict, I made a bold move: I assigned weekly reflection journals — raw, stream-of-consciousness entries that linked course themes to students’ lived experiences. Some students resisted at first. But by the end, many said it changed the way they approached class and life.
Reflection is often treated as an add-on, something optional or “soft.” But it’s essential. It helps students surface assumptions, interrogate choices, and practice metacognition. And in a world where knowledge and skills are constantly evolving, the ability to learn how to learn may be the most durable skill of all.
Possibility Thinking, in Practice
If our current moment is a reckoning, then our response must be one of responsibility. We cannot guarantee our students a particular future. But we can offer them the tools to shape one.
Beghetto calls this “agentic awareness” — a belief in one’s ability to influence outcomes. It’s a curriculum and a posture. And it’s something we can model by how we teach: with creativity, clarity, and curiosity.
So the next time you see another headline about higher ed’s collapse, ask yourself: What if we treated this as a moment to reimagine rather than as a crisis to survive?
That’s resilience, and it’s possibility thinking in action.
Three Small Shifts You Can Make This Semester
Now is the perfect time to start leaning into the possibility of our problems. To do so, try:
Redesigning one assignmentto reflect your students’ actual career goals or lived experiences. Meeting students where they are will help them better envision where they’re headed.
Asking your classroom technology better questions. Push beyond features to real learning outcomes when you choose to invite EdTech into your classroom.
Making reflection part of the grade. Don’t treat it as busywork but as weighted, important meaning-making.
Higher education may be facing unprecedented disruption, but disruption doesn’t have to mean decline. In fact, the classroom may be one of the last places where we still have real influence over what comes next. Each lesson we design, each conversation we facilitate, each moment we create for reflection — these are acts of future-building.
Educating for unknowable futures doesn’t mean we need to predict what’s next. It means we help students learn to ask better questions, adapt with confidence, and recognize their own capacity to shape change. And it means we embrace that same mindset ourselves.
The future of higher education won’t be saved by sweeping reforms or silver-bullet technologies. It will be co-created — one thoughtful assignment, one intentional choice, one student at a time. And that work starts not in distant policy meetings, but right here, in our classrooms.
Laura Nicole Miller, DET, is an assistant professor in the Grenon School of Business at Assumption University, where she teaches organizational communication, marketing, and management. A first-generation college graduate and former EdTech executive, she studies how communication practices shape equity, trust, and student success in high-stakes environments.
Craft, A. (2015). Possibility thinking: From what is to what might be. In R. Wegerif, L. Li, & J. C. Kaufman (Eds.), The Routledge international handbook of research on teaching thinking (pp. 15–26). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315797021
Miller, L. N. (2025). “D-III students deserve better”: strategic communication with college stakeholders. The CASE Journal, 21(3), 493-516. https://doi.org/10.1108/TCJ-06-2024-0184
The rapid adoption and development of AI has rocked higher education and thrown into doubt many students’ career plans and as many professors’ lesson plans. The best and only response is for students to develop capabilities that can never be authentically replicated by AI because they are uniquely human. Only humans have flesh and blood bodies. And these bodies are implicated in a wide range of Uniquely Human Capacities (UHCs), such as intuition, ethics, compassion, and storytelling. Students and educators should reallocate time and resources from AI-replaceable technical skills like coding and calculating to developing UHCs and AI skills.
Adoption of AI by employers is increasing while expectations for AI-savvy job candidates are rising. College students are getting nervous. 51% are second guessing their career choice and 39% worry that their job could be replaced by AI, according to Cengage Group’s 2024 Graduate Employability Report. Recently, I heard a student at an on-campus Literacy AI event ask an OpenAI representative if she should drop her efforts to be a web designer. (The representative’s response: spend less time learning the nuts and bolts of coding, and more time learning how to interpret and translate client goals into design plans.)
At the same time, AI capabilities are improving quickly. Recent frontier models have added “deep research” (web search and retrieval) and “reasoning” (multi-step thinking) capabilities. Both produce better, more comprehensive, accurate and thoughtful results, performing broader searches and developing responses step-by-step. Leading models are beginning to offer agentic features, which can do work for us, such as coding, independently. American AI companies are investing hundreds of billions in a race to develop Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). This is a poorly defined state of the technology where AI can perform at least as well as humans in virtually any economically valuable cognitive task. It can act autonomously, learn, plan, and adapt, and interact with the world in a general flexible way, much as humans do. Some experts suggest we may reach this point by 2030, although others have a longer timeline.
Hard skills that may be among the first to be replaced are those that AI can do better, cheaper, and faster. As a general-purpose tool, AI can already perform basic coding, data analysis, administrative, routine bookkeeping and accounting, and illustration tasks that previously required specialized tools and experience. I have my own mind-blowing “vibe-coding” experience, creating custom apps with limited syntactical coding understanding. AIs are capable of quantitative, statistical, and textual analysis that might have required Excel or R in the past. According to Deloitte, AI initiatives are touching virtually every aspect of a companies’ business, affecting IT, operations, marketing the most. AI can create presentations driven by natural language that make manual PowerPoint drafting skills less essential.
Humans’ Future-Proof Strategy
How should students, faculty and staff respond to the breathtaking pace of change and profound uncertainties about the future of labor markets? The OpenAI representative was right: reallocation of time and resources from easily automatable skills to those that only humans with bodies can do. Let us spend less time teaching and learning skills that are likely to be automated soon.
Technical Skills OUT
Uniquely Human Capacities IN
Basic coding
Mindfulness, empathy, and compassion
Data entry and bookkeeping
Ethical judgment, meaning making, and critical thinking
Mastery of single-purpose software (e.g., PowerPoint, Excel, accounting apps)
Authentic and ethical use of generative and other kinds of AI to augment UHCs
Instead, students (and everyone) should focus on developing Uniquely Human Capacities (UHCs). These are abilities that only humans can authentically perform because they need a human body. For example, intuition is our inarticulable and immediate knowledge that we know somatically, in our gut. It is how we empathize, show compassion, evaluate morality, listen and speak, love, appreciate and create beauty, play, collaborate, tell stories, find inspiration and insight, engage our curiosity, and emote. It is how we engage with the deep questions of life and ask the really important questions.
According to Gholdy Muhammad in Unearthing Joy, a reduced emphasis on skills can improve equity by creating space to focus on students’ individual needs. She argues that standards and pedagogies need to also reflect “identity, intellectualism, criticality, and joy.” These four dimensions help “contextualize skills and give students ways to connect them to the real world and their lives.”
The National Association of Colleges and Employers has created a list of eight career readiness competencies that employers say are necessary for career success. Take a look at the list below and you will see that seven of the eight are UHCs. The eighth, technology, underlines the need for students and their educators to understand and use AI effectively and authentically.
For example, an entry-level finance employee who has developed their UHCs will be able to nimbly respond to changing market conditions, interpret the intentions of managers and clients, and translate these into effective analysis and creative solutions. They will use AI tools to augment their work, adding greater value with less training and oversight.
Widen Humans’ Comparative Advantage
As demonstrated in the example above, our UHCs are humans’ unfair advantage over AI. How do we develop them, ensuring the employability and self-actualization of students and all humans?
The foundation is mindfulness. Mindfulness is about being fully present with ourselves and others, and accepting, primarily via bodily sensations, without judgment and preference. It allows us to accurately perceive reality, including our natural intuitive connection with other humans, a connection AI cannot share. Mindfulness can be developed during and beyond meditation, moments of stillness devoted to mindfulness. Mindfulness practice has been shown to improve self-knowledge, set career goals, and improve creativity.
Mindfulness supports intuitive thinking and metacognition, our ability to think clearly about thinking. Non-conceptual thinking, using our whole bodies, entails developing our intuition and a growth mindset. The latter is about recognizing that we are all works in progress, where learning is the product of careful risk-taking, learning from errors, supported by other humans.
These practices support deep, honest, authentic engagement with other humans of all types. (These are not available over social media.) For students, this is about engaging with each other in class, study groups, clubs, and elsewhere on campus, as well as engaging with faculty in class and office hours. Such engagement with humans can feel unfamiliar and awkward as we emerge from a pandemic. However, these interactions are a critical way to practice and improve our UHCs.
Literature and cinema are ways to engage with and develop empathy and understanding of humans you do not know, may not even be alive or even exist at all. Fiction is maybe the only way to experience in the first person what a stranger is thinking and feeling.
Indeed, every interaction with the world is an opportunity to practice those Uniquely Human Capacities (UHCs):
Use your imagination and creativity to solve a math problem.
Format your spreadsheet or presentation or essay so that it is beautiful.
Get in touch with the feelings that arise when faced with a challenging task.
Many students tell me they are in college to better support and care for family. As you do the work, let yourself experience as an act of love for them.
AI Can Help Us Be Better Humans
AI usage can dull our UHCs or sharpen them. Use AI to challenge us to improve our work, not to provide short cuts that make our work average, boring, or worse. Ethan Mollick (2024) describes the familiar roles AIs can profitably play in our lives. Chief among these is as a patient, always available, if sometimes unreliable tutor. A tutor will give us helpful and critical feedback and hints but never the answers. A tutor will not do our work for us. A tutor will suggest alternative strategies and we can instruct them to nudge us to check on our emotions, physical sensations and moral dimensions of our work. When we prompt AI for help, we should explicitly give it the role of a tutor or editor (as I did with Claude for this article).
How do we assess whether we and our students are developing their UHCs? We can develop personal and work portfolios that tell the stories of connections, insights, and benefits to society we have made. We can get honest testimonials of trusted human partners and engage in critical yet self-compassionate introspection, and journalling. Deliberate practice with feedback in real life and role-playing scenarios can all be valuable. One thing that will not work as well: traditional grades and quantitative measures. After all, humanity cannot be measured.
In a future where AI or AGI assumes the more rote and mechanical aspects of work, we humans are freed to build their UHCs, to become more fully human. An optimistic scenario!
What Could Go Wrong?
The huge, profit-seeking transnational corporations that control AI may soon feel greater pressure to show a return on enormous investment to investors. This could cause costs for users to go up, widening the capabilities gap between those with means and the rest. It could also result in Balkanized AI, where each model is embedded with political, social, and other biases that appeal to different demographics. We see this beginning with Claude, prioritizing safety, and Grok, built to emphasize free expression.
In addition, AI could get good enough at faking empathy, morality, intuition, sense making, and other UHCs. In a competitive, winner-take-all economy with even less government regulation and leakier safety net, companies may aggressively reduce hiring at entry level and of (expensive) high performers. Many of the job functions of the former can be most easily replaced by AI. Mid-level professionals can use AI to perform at a higher level.
Finally, and this is not an exhaustive list: Students and all of us may succumb to the temptation of using AI short cut their work, slowing or reversing development of critical thinking, analytical skills, and subject matter expertise. The tech industry has perfected, over twenty years, the science of making our devices virtually impossible to put down, so that we are “hooked.”
Keeping Humans First
The best way to reduce the risks posed by AI-driven change is to develop our students’ Uniquely Human Capacities while actively engaging policymakers and administrators to ensure a just transition. This enhances the unique value of flesh-and-blood humans in the workforce and society. Educators across disciplines should identify lower value-added activities vulnerable to automation and reorient curricula toward nurturing UHCs. This will foster not only employability but also personal growth, meaningful connection, and equity.
Even in the most challenging scenarios, we are unlikely to regret investing in our humanity. Beyond being well-employed, what could be more rewarding than becoming more fully actualized, compassionate, and connected beings? By developing our intuitions, morality, and bonds with others and the natural world, we open lifelong pathways to growth, fulfillment, and purpose. In doing so, we build lives and communities resilient to change, rich in meaning, and true to what it means to be human.
The article represents my opinions only, not necessarily those of the Borough of Manhattan Community College or CUNY.
Brett Whysel is a lecturer in finance and decision-making at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, CUNY, where he integrates mindfulness, behavioral science, generative AI, and career readiness into his teaching. He has written for Faculty Focus, Forbes, and The Decision Lab. He is also the co-founder of Decision Fish LLC, where he develops tools to support financial wellness and housing counselors. He regularly presents on mindfulness and metacognition in the classroom and is the author of the Effortless Mindfulness Toolkit, an open resource for educators published on CUNY Academic Works. Prior to teaching, he spent nearly 30 years in investment banking. He holds an M.A. in Philosophy from Columbia University and a B.S. in Managerial Economics and French from Carnegie Mellon University.
Almost a third of student complaints received by the National Student Ombudsman (NSO) in its first seven months were related to course changes and design, NSO First Assistant Ombudsman Sarah Bendall said.
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Editor’s Note: While this article comes from a nurse’s perspective, the heart of it—caring deeply for others while trying to care for yourself—will resonate with educators in every setting. The self-care reminders shared here are meaningful and relevant, no matter what or whom you teach.
As nurses, we train to provide care for others—whether it is in the hospital, clinic, or community. However, many of us also play the role of caregiver within our own families, particularly during times of tremendous grief and stress. Whether it is caring for a sick loved one, supporting a family member through a crisis, or managing the aftermath of a loss, the emotional and physical demands of being the nurse in the family can feel overwhelming. In these challenging times, it is crucial to maintain balance—not only for the sake of those we care for, but also for our own well-being.
This article will explore how nurses can manage the delicate balance of caring for family members while prioritizing their own health and emotional resilience in the face of grief and stress.
The Emotional Toll of Being the Family Nurse
Grief and stress affect individuals differently, but for the nurse who is also a family member, the role can carry extra weight. The skills that we so readily apply in a professional setting—compassion, empathy, attentiveness—become deeply personal when applied to family members.
Watching a loved one suffer or navigating the complexities of a loved one’s health challenges can trigger feelings of helplessness, sadness, and frustration (Bijnsdorp, Onwuteaka-Philipsen, Boot, van der Beek, & Pasman, 2022). At the same time, the desire to “fix” or “care for” can amplify these emotions, making it harder to separate our professional instincts from the personal bond we share with the individual.
The emotional toll of being the nurse in the family can exacerbate the sense of responsibility, particularly when there are multiple tasks to juggle, such as managing medication, coordinating care, and offering emotional support. In addition to the physical and logistical demands, the emotional labor of caregiving can lead to burnout, depression, or even anxiety (Mir, Bakht, and Shah, 2024).
Acknowledging the Need for Self-Care
As a nurse, you are educated in taking care of others, but it is easy to forget that caring for yourself is equally important. The notion of self-care often takes a backseat when caregiving becomes all-consuming (Trees Bolt, 2025). However, neglecting your own needs amid grief and stress can be detrimental to both your own health and your ability to care for your loved one effectively.
To maintain your physical, emotional, and mental well-being, it is essential to establish self-care practices, even during the most demanding times. Here are some strategies for managing stress and grief while continuing to be there for your family:
Set Boundaries
It can be difficult to set boundaries when you are deeply engaged in the care of a loved one. However, it is essential to recognize that you cannot be available to others 100% of the time. Setting boundaries means giving yourself permission to take breaks, asking for help, and recognizing when you need rest. For example, you may need to limit the number of visitors or care tasks during certain hours to allow for self-care time. Clear communication with family members about your needs can help prevent feelings of guilt or resentment from building up.
Delegate Tasks When Possible
As a nurse, your training and education equips you to care for others, but it is crucial to remember that tending to your own well-being is vital; caregiving does not have to be a solo endeavor. Delegate tasks, when possible, whether it is managing household chores, running errands, or organizing transportation for appointments (Alanazi, Shaban, Ramadan, Zaky, Mohammed, Amer, & Shaban, 2023). Family members, friends, or professional services can offer support—whether it is a neighbor preparing meals, a sibling helping with daily routines, or a caregiver service stepping in for several hours. Remember, delegating is not a sign of weakness; it is a way to preserve your own energy and ensure that you can give quality care without burning out.
Seek Emotional Support
Grief and stress can feel isolating, and it is easy to fall into the trap of thinking you must carry the burden alone. Seek support from others who understand your emotional and physical needs (Fallek, Tattelman, Browne, Kaplan, & Selwyn, 2019; Rahmani, Hosseinzadeh, & Gholizadeh, 2023). This could include talking to a trusted friend, joining a support group, or speaking with a therapist who specializes in grief or caregiver stress. Sharing your feelings with others allows you to process emotions that may be difficult to express otherwise.
As a nurse, you understand the importance of emotional health, but it is easy to neglect your own emotional needs when you prioritize taking care of others. Regularly checking in with yourself can help you identify any signs of distress or burnout before they become overwhelming.
Practice Mindfulness and Stress-Relief Techniques
In times of grief and stress, practicing mindfulness or stress-relief techniques can be incredibly beneficial. Simple practices like deep breathing, meditation, or even a quick walk outside can help reduce anxiety and bring you back to the present moment (Kong, Tong, & Lui, 2024).
Yoga, journaling, or other forms of creative expression can also be valuable ways to process emotions in a safe and constructive manner.
Mindfulness helps counteract the tendency to become overwhelmed by the magnitude of the situation. By staying grounded, you can better manage your responses to stress and provide more compassionate care to your loved one.
Maintain Healthy Routines
During times of grief and caregiving, it can be tempting to put personal routines on hold. However, maintaining healthy habits—such as regular sleep, eating nutritious meals, and staying physically active—can significantly improve your ability to cope with stress (Bodziony, 2022). Sleep and nutrition are critical to emotional resilience, and regular physical activity releases endorphins, which can improve mood and reduce feelings of anxiety or sadness.
While it may feel impossible to prioritize exercise or sleep when you are juggling caregiving responsibilities, even small steps—like taking short walks or prioritizing a 10-minute rest period—can help replenish your energy and improve your ability to care for others.
Acknowledge and Accept Your Emotions
Being the nurse in the family does not mean you have to suppress your emotions. It is important to recognize and accept your feelings of grief, sadness, frustration, and even anger. These emotions are a normal part of caregiving and loss. By acknowledging and processing your feelings, you can better manage them and avoid emotional exhaustion (Fallek, Tattelman, Browne, Kaplan, & Selwyn, 2019). Give yourself permission to feel what you are feeling without judgment.
If you experience moments of doubt or guilt about needing time for yourself, remind yourself that you are better equipped to care for others when your own needs are met. Taking care of yourself is not selfish; it is necessary for sustaining your ability to support your family in the long term.
Conclusion
Being the nurse in the family during times of grief and stress is a profound responsibility that requires resilience, compassion, and self-awareness. However, it is vital to remember that you can only offer the best care to others when you take the time to care for yourself. By setting boundaries, delegating tasks, seeking support, practicing mindfulness, and maintaining healthy routines, you can better navigate the challenges of caregiving while preserving your own well-being. Grief and stress are inevitable, but by taking initiative-taking steps to care for yourself, you can continue to be a source of strength for your family while ensuring that you remain emotionally and physically capable of facing the difficult road ahead.
Angie Timm earned her BSN (1991), from OSF St. Francis Medical Center College of Nursing in Peoria, IL. and MSN (2011) from University of Phoenix with an emphasis in Health Care Education. Angie Timm is an Assistant Professor at Saint Francis Medical Center College of Nursing, Peoria, Illinois.
Dr. Maureen Hermann earned her BSN (1995), MSN (2011), and DNP (2016), with an emphasis in leadership, from Saint Francis Medical Center College of Nursing in Peoria, IL. Dr. Maureen Hermann is an Associate Professor at Creighton University, Omaha, Nebraska.
References
Alanazi, M.A., Shaban, M.M., Ramadan, O.M.E., Zaky, M.E., Mohammed, H.H., Amer, F.G.M., & Shaban, M. (2024). Navigating end of life decision making in nursing: A systematic review of ethical challenges and palliative care practices. BMC Nurs 23, 467. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12912-024-02087-5
Bijnsdorp, D. M., Onwuteaka-Philipsen, B. D., Boot, C. R. L., van der Beek, Al, J., & Pasman, H. R. W. (2022). Caregivers burden at the end of life of their loved one: Insights from a longitudinal qualitative study among working family caregivers. BMC Palliative Care, 21(142). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12904-022-01031-1
Fallek, R., Tatelman, E., Browne, T., Kaplan, R., & Selwyn, P. (2019). Helping healthcare providers and staff process grief through a hospital-based program. American Journal of Nursing, 119(7), 24-33.
Kong, Y., Tong, Z., & Liu, L. (2024). Nurses’ self-care levels and its related factors: A cross-sectional study. BMC Nurs 23, 835. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12912-024-02510-x
Virtual reality (VR) isn’t a silver bullet replacement for lectures or labs, but it is the most practical method to support higher education to deliver immersive learning more effectively at-scale.
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