I guess I’m a little bit of a techie and just got a Fitbit which monitors my steps and activities. I enjoy watching my number of steps throughout the day. When I was a nurse, I would spend my time walking down large halls to see my patients and back to the nurse’s station to chart.

Once I became an attorney and sat at a desk, things changed. Not only did I lose my figure but my nursing bladder as well!

My Fitbit is helping me be conscious of my activity. Earlier this week, I was with a friend in an emergency room. The nurse who started the IV was wearing a Fitbit. I asked him how he likes it? He said he loved it and that he gets in his 10,000 steps usually by three o’clock. This means that although the nurses are active and on their feet all day, it takes an entire shift to get in 10,000 steps. Can you believe that 10,000 steps is equivalent to approximately 5 miles?

As I was researching this for my blog today, I noted there was an orthopedic nurse who also got in about 10,000 steps during the average shift. She mentioned her problem was trying to continue getting 10,000 steps on her off days.

While Fitbits are great and I am enjoying mine, I wanted to share with you a study. Harvard conducted a study of the placebo effects on overweight hotel maids. The surveyors told the maids that because of the amount of activity (exercise) they had in cleaning the rooms, they must be really fit.

They apparently had never considered doing their job as being an exercise regimen but once the seed was planted in their heads, their blood pressure decreased as did their cholesterol and the result was a loss of weight.

What if, as nurses, we believed how physical our job is, will it lower our cholesterol, blood pressure and weight?

In addition to wearing a Fitbit, you are being proactive and adding to your healthful wellbeing because the mind serves a large component and is just as important as the exercise.

If you want to learn more about the Harvard study I mentioned, just go to this link:

http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/3196007/Langer_ExcersisePlaceboEffect.pdf?sequence=1

You just might be surprised by what you learn.

I would love to hear your thoughts about Fitbits in Nursing. Do you have one and how has it helped you?