The WISE Room: meeting critical needs with essential resources

In the often tumultuous and intricate terrain of health care, nurses navigate an environment fraught with complexity, unpredictability, and intense pressure. This tension is fuelled by myriad of factors, including: professional regulatory requirements, rapidly changing healthcare environments, the organisational structure of institutions, government influence, inadequate business models and the reality that the NHS is predominately a publicly funded service.

As they navigate and take all this on board, experiencing multi-pronged strain in such high-pressured professional lives, nurses must still respond promptly and empathetically to patient needs – even while their own vital requirements often remain unmet.

The term ‘needs’, in this context, is intriguing in the depth of its implications. Renowned psychologist Maslow posited that the satisfaction of basic human needs is a necessary precursor for self-actualisation – the achievement of stability or, in the best-case scenario, the state of flourishing in one's life (Maslow, 1943). In today's world, however, it is abundantly clear that we are a far cry from universally attaining this idyllic state.