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From bedside burnout to breakthrough · Cultural Wars | America Out Loud News

• 0:06
  Welcome to the auto.
• 0:09
  Take a deep breath.
• 0:11
  Take the higher road.
• 0:13
  It's what they always say.
• 0:16
  They won't take it from me.
• 0:20
  Don't ever die self-asswipping just a dream.
• 0:24
  You made your own so kid can scream.
• 0:27
  The people who were laughing with a never ending force.
• 0:31
  You never have the chance to watch a win for my friend because this is time.
• 0:54
  Nurses report on America Out Loud Talk Radio.
• 0:59
  This is your show host.
• 1:01
  Melissa Breidfetter, founder of both the Functional Nurse Academy and Christian Functional Medicine Academy.
• 1:10
  Welcome everyone.
• 1:11
  I have another one of my students from the Functional Nurse Academy that is joining me today.
• 1:20
  Today it I have with me, Jamie, who is a former ER nurse who left her career as a travel nurse to open up her own functional health consulting business back in March of 2025.
• 1:36
  After suffering from years of burnout and dealing with a mysterious chronic illness while working at the bedside, she discovered the concept of functional medicine and went all in on healing herself and now is helping other nurses create ethical businesses away from the bedside without sacrificing their mental and physical health.
• 2:00
  She is also a part-time nursing school educator, military wife, and world traveler.
• 2:06
  Creating her own business in functional medicine has changed her life, and now she shares with others how to do the same.
• 2:14
  Welcome, Jamie.
• 2:16
  Hi, Melissa.
• 2:17
  Thank you for having me.
• 2:18
  Yes, it is so great to connect with you all.
• 2:22
  And at HR Listeners, we uh I actually connected with Jamie a few months back because I think that you I all of a sudden I started getting, you know, referrals from you for the functional nurse academy.
• 2:35
  And I was like, okay, like this is amazing.
• 2:37
  I need to reach out to this person, and now you're one of our students.
• 2:41
  And I when I started to learn about you, and you have such an unique story.
• 2:48
  I mean, I feel like so many of us that leave conventional soul sucking medicine, and and then start practicing a different way.
• 2:57
  It's like opening up a whole different world to nursing.
• 3:02
  And um, I would love for you to tell our listeners about your background and like you know what changed in your life that led you to functional medicine.
• 3:11
  Yeah.
• 3:12
  So I started my nursing career back in well, I started nursing school in 2000 and 17.
• 3:20
  Um I had no idea what I wanted to do as far as you know, you know, you know, the first semester missing school, everybody's like, I want to be L D or MBICU, or you know, I was one of those ones all like I have no idea.
• 3:31
  I guess we'll we'll figure it out along the way.
• 3:34
  And then after my second semester, I was on a bacterette party for one of my best friends, and we were coming home from Savannah, Georgia, and I got into an automobile accident.
• 3:47
  Um, it was a head-on collision.
• 3:49
  There were eight people total in the accident, and half of them had passed.
• 3:55
  Um, out of the ones that survived, I was the one who was hurt um the most.
• 4:00
  So I had a lot of injuries.
• 4:02
  Um, I ended up being in a wheelchair for quite some time, almost three and a half months.
• 4:08
  I couldn't walk correctly for about six months.
• 4:10
  And that took me out of nursing school.
• 4:13
  But from that, I I was like, yeah, I want to be drama, I see you, our ER.
• 4:18
  Um, and so that was kind of where my path led into figuring out what I wanted to do once I was able to go back into nursing school and to finish it.
• 4:27
  And then started brand new um new grab in the ER in my community hospital.
• 4:34
  And I was there for about a year and four months, and right at nine months in COVID hit, and it was like the you know, everything just went wonky, and it was it was like apocalyptic.
• 4:51
  It was just, you know, there was nobody in the hospitals for weeks at a time, and then if there were, everybody was sick and dying and intubated and were proning patients and family members can't come in, and it was just it was crazy.
• 5:03
  Um, and I ended up going into the ICU at that point.
• 5:07
  Um they took the 10 newest hires out of the ER, and they're like, here's the holes that we have to fill because they they got rid of all of the you know extra staff.
• 5:16
  So no PRN, no for DM, no travelers, no part-time.
• 5:20
  It was like core staff, we have to keep the census low, keep people coming from in and out of the hospital.
• 5:25
  Here's the holes we have to fill.
• 5:26
  The ER had the most nurses, so we kind of got the first from there.
• 5:29
  So I was in the ACU during COVID and it was quite uh quite the experience.
• 5:35
  And I ended up going back to the ER once they were able, you know, since this was picking back up and we're patients were coming in, and it was like the first few months we weren't having, you know, you saw on the news, and it was like all you know, we're out of ventilators and there's no beds, and you know, it wasn't quite like that where I was.
• 5:51
  It was very, it was very eerie for the first three, three months.
• 5:55
  There's like nobody in the hospital except for like this handful of really really sick people in the IC.
• 6:00
  I see it was always cool, but every other department there was no patients.
• 6:04
  Um so I ended up going back to the ER after five months in the ICU, and it just got it was already hard before, you know, like nursing doesn't, they don't quite prepare you for the realities of what you're going into with school, and you learn how to pass the in clouds, right?
• 6:21
  You don't really learn how to actually be a nurse.
• 6:25
  So whenever I got back in there, it was like, oh, this is kind of kind of weird now.
• 6:30
  Um and long story short, I ended up wanting to move to another state with my best friend.
• 6:36
  I didn't have the fun saves.
• 6:38
  I was like, okay, let me go travel nursing.
• 6:40
  So started traveling.
• 6:41
  Um, I met my husband while traveling.
• 6:44
  I ended up traveling for five years.
• 6:46
  Um, in the middle of the traveling, so in 2023, I started, and this is after years of night shift, and you're not eating and drinking on the shifts, and you're in now with level one traumas, night shifting crazy stuff, you know, uh gunshot wounds and um motor vehicle accidents and domestic violence and you know pediatric cases, all kinds of things, and I don't think people realize that in an environment like that.
• 7:18
  You if you don't have proper like coping mechanisms or outlets to kind of you know get all of that tension out and not bringing at home, you can develop um illnesses, which is what happened to me.
• 7:32
  So I ended up developing um an autoimmune condition.
• 7:35
  There is nobody could ever really figure out what was wrong with me.
• 7:38
  I um swore up and down I had endometriosis.
• 7:42
  I went to OBGYN after OBGYN, they did the scans, they did the labs, they did everything, everything's fine.
• 7:49
  Um and then I ended up developing eczema, so like full body rashes, anxiety, depression, my hair is falling out, um, all kinds of stuff.
• 7:58
  So then I ended up doing lab labs on myself two years after the fact, and my labs were normal to a conventional doctor, but whenever you start looking at functional medicines, we're not normal, right?
• 8:14
  So like once I learned the difference between optimal and normal, I kind of saw like this is definitely not okay, right?
• 8:22
  Um, and I ended up long story short.
• 8:25
  Um, it was attack I had breast implants or you know, when you have autoimmune disorders, it starts attacking like the foreign objects in your body if you have them.
• 8:34
  So I had IUD, I had breast implants.
• 8:36
  Both of those things were being attacked, and I had to get both of them removed.
• 8:41
  Um so since then I'm feeling much, much, much better.
• 8:46
  But it had it took me two years, two and a half years of going to GI doctor to OBGYN to ER doctor to all these different people saying your labs are fine, your scans are fine, here's 800 milligram hopper, here's some steroid cream for your rapids here.
• 9:00
  You know, nobody could ever really figure out what was wrong with me.
• 9:03
  And I remember being on a night shift contract and just had all the out of nowhere this excruciating pelvic pain, like doubled over it.
• 9:12
  I got put into one of the ER rooms.
• 9:14
  I had an IV started, I had med that had all the things that did scans it.
• 9:17
  Yeah, you're fine, we all know.
• 9:18
  Maybe just go home and take off tomorrow and we'll see you back in two days.
• 9:23
  So once I got to that point, I was like, okay.
• 9:26
  Um I felt for the patients.
• 9:28
  You know, we see in the ER and we call it, you know, you treat and street, and it's like you just kind of you know, do the things and you see the patients, you get the meds, and you check the boxes, and you know, you have more patients in the lobby up to see, and I would have patients who would sit there and like you know, crying saying that nobody's helping me.
• 9:43
  It's the same thing over and over again, and we're kind of taught, like, you know, to kind of shrug your shoulders, and I'm so sorry it's how it is.
• 9:50
  Here you're in the emergency room, I become fall up with your primary care doctor.
• 9:54
  And that was just kind of the line that we learned to tell everybody, and then it happens to you, and you're like, oh, okay.
• 9:59
  And I
• 10:00
  Nurse, I work for these people and they're not even helping me, you know.
• 10:02
  So it turned into a situation where I was like, okay, yeah, this is not quite what I had um imagined my career to look like, and I went into it for different reasons, but along the way, I think you just kind of get calloused to the situation the situation until something happens to you with your family member or two, or you know, you have enough, you know, disassociation to be able to look at a situation and say, yeah, that's that's incorrect.
• 10:30
  We shouldn't be doing it that way, but that doesn't happen a lot.
• 10:33
  So got into functional medicine after I started doing a lot of research on how I could fix myself since nobody else wanted to help me.
• 10:41
  Um and I started with a couple of different courses.
• 10:44
  This was before I found FNA and used myself as my own patient, and I prepped myself, prepped my body for breast implant removal, IUD removal, I you know, quit my job, I completely changed my lifestyle, my diet, everything, and I am probably 98% better than I was.
• 11:06
  So that's so wonderful.
• 11:08
  I I love hearing that, and I feel you've probably heard a little bit about my story with with chronic Lyme.
• 11:13
  And I remember when you mentioned that you were like in severe pelvic pain at work.
• 11:20
  That happened to me too.
• 11:21
  And I remember being at work, and I am the type of person like I have a crazy high pain tolerance.
• 11:27
  Like I had had like two natural medication-free childbirths, and I was like, Oh, fine.
• 11:33
  I was like crying, I remember crying at work because I have such severe pelvic pain, and I was like, I don't know what I'm gonna do, like having these pain issues and you can't function.
• 11:46
  And I also remember, you know, when I started working in the field, like I for me for years, I had some random symptoms, but nothing was debilitating.
• 11:55
  It was just a little annoying, but I was fine.
• 11:57
  And then when I started working in the system, and I'm working these crazy shifts, and I don't I really don't know of other um employers that are like, yeah, you know, you can't have anything to drink, and um, yeah, you're gonna work 14 hours, but you know, you just have 30 minutes that you you can eat, and it's not even 30 minutes once you've like but uh you we work under these crazy conditions, and then we know that the hospital setting with all of that like fluorescent lighting, you're not outside all day, and then I also started out working night shift, which I and I remember I would after I would finish my three horrible god-awful um, you know, 13, 14 hour shifts, I would come home and I would have these like weird rashes, and I was having like I had like this weird rash around my neck, and I was having breathing problems and pelvic pain and all of this stuff.
• 12:56
  But I also found out that the hospital I worked at, it was a very old hospital, and you would think that hospitals would do a good job with their air quality.
• 13:07
  Many of them do not.
• 13:08
  So this was a very like moldy place, and I found out that there were other employees that were actually hospitalized after working there for having like severe respiratory issues, yeah.
• 13:19
  But I I went through that too in the medical field where we're nurses, we know how to talk to doctors.
• 13:27
  Like we were trained in this field, and then we're the patient, and then they're like, Oh, there's nothing that we can do for you.
• 13:33
  And you know, I also experienced with um all of my stuff and then the Lyme.
• 13:38
  I I also I mean, I really don't have any, like I feel great, like I don't have any lingering symptoms, and it makes me wonder, especially with your case because things like breast implant illness are not on the radar for conventional medicine.
• 13:53
  I did you ever think about like what would have happened to you if you were just like, oh, functional medicine is quackery, you know, conventional medicine.
• 14:03
  That's the light the truth in the way, and I'm just gonna listen to what they have to tell me.
• 14:07
  Like, what do you think would have happened to you if you just went with what they were recommending for you?
• 14:14
  You know, that's honestly kind of scary to think about.
• 14:17
  I I don't really know.
• 14:19
  I going back to like the working conditions, I think that, and I just wanted to say that I just made a uh a video about this yesterday, two days ago about the working conditions that were put under.
• 14:30
  I think that we are taught and told like it's what you signed up for, this is it is what it is, and you look at the working conditions that nurses are put under, and it being a woman-dominated field too.
• 14:44
  That's a whole other can of worms whole other thing, but like our bodies do not work the same as males, right?
• 14:51
  So, whenever we're put in these high stress environments and fluorescent lines and we're not eating and we're not drinking, and we're not at your circadian rhythm is not, you know, not where it's supposed to be.
• 15:01
  It I think we kind of just all these weird little symptoms we start having, we we talk it up to oh, it's just stress, or it's just my job, or it's just you know, it's what we signed up for because that's what they tell us we signed up for, right?
• 15:12
  And had I not kind of fought back with some of these doctors, I probably would have been I mean, I don't, I was already pretty ill.
• 15:23
  I can't imagine like where I would have been had I've not listened to myself or done listened to myself enough to where I didn't do my own research and kind of just listened to everybody else, you know.
• 15:36
  It got to a point where people have told me, you know, maybe you need to start, you know, getting on medications, maybe you need to go have a mental evaluation, maybe you need to, you know, all these kinds of crazy things.
• 15:45
  I've never had I've I've never been one to have like mental health issues or anything in the last two years, it was like my husband was probably ready to put me in a lunar.
• 15:53
  I was unwell, you know.
• 15:56
  And you just I mean, skin rashes all over.
• 15:59
  I still have that's like my one thing.
• 16:01
  I still have like this coloration on my arms and legs from eczema scarring, but I don't the player ups are like not there anymore.
• 16:08
  But this kept progressively getting worse and worse and worse, and hairs falling out, and I just couldn't, you know.
• 16:14
  I'm I'd wake up and just be it'd be just doomsday all day.
• 16:18
  I'm like, I don't know why I'm sad, I don't know why I'm sick, I don't know why I'm anxious, I don't know why I'm having like you stabbing pains in my chest, and then my you know, my stomach and you know, all of these things that it was just like you're living to get through, you know, the next day, the next day, the next day to get a paycheck to pay the bills to just kind of keep going over and over and over again, and it was it just got to a point where like this this was this is not a if your career is putting your mental and physical health on the line, I don't think it's ever worth it.
• 16:47
  So that's just kind of the point where I got with me.
• 16:49
  You know, I remember when I was going through nursing school, and I remember my okay, so after my first semester, I was like, I don't know if I want to go back because but but I was like, I did all these prerequisites, and I was thinking I was like, there's a lot you can do with nursing, yeah.
• 17:06
  But I remember wanting to leave after my first semester and my first clinical rotation just because of how miserable the nurses were, and so it's such a toxic environment, and there is so much it, there's so much bullying.
• 17:24
  And I remember a nurse telling me, like, hey, uh yeah, being a nurse is probably gonna take 10 years off of your life.
• 17:32
  And then another thing, the nurses that I was around, so many of them are not healthy themselves and have a ton of chronic health conditions and and are also, you know, many of them are pharmaceutical dependent.
• 17:44
  And then I later learned that nurses on average are more likely to be obese, they're more likely to have chronic health conditions than the general public in the United States of America, which we are like the the sickest, you know, developed countries.
• 18:02
  So that's that's pretty bad.
• 18:04
  And you know, one thing that I will say I I do love uh about nursing is we have a very high level of skill set and we are very well versed in working with the patient and or you know, client population.
• 18:22
  So I think there's so much that we can do when we uh really open up the door to holistic medicine, which to me I think is common sense medicine, and I know with chronic Lyme.
• 18:36
  When I and I talk to my husband about this frequently, I am like, I feel so good now.
• 18:42
  And if I had not sought after functional medicine, like if I was just digging my heels, because a lot of people are digging their heels in right now about conventional medicine and about how like we just need to keep pushing forward with something that doesn't work, but with chronic Lyme disease, they don't they are finally recognizing it as uh they call it like post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome, something like that, but they don't even recognize the need to treat the infection, they're like just give them antidepressants and pain mass, and I'm like, that is the most stupid, that's the stupidest thing that I've ever heard of.
• 19:24
  Like, I cannot imagine just being like, oh yeah, I'll just drug myself up the rest of my life, and I'm just gonna, you know, leave this stealth infection to just you know do what it's gonna do to my body and like destroy my body.
• 19:36
  But when um when you got the training with, you know, when you became a functional medicine nurse, can you tell us about I know that you are primarily helping other nurses right now, but can you tell me the difference that you're seeing as far as like your profession now versus what it was like when you were in?
• 20:02
  Yeah.
• 20:02
  So I started out whenever I first started, I knew this is kind of what I wanted to do.
• 20:08
  And I don't know if it was just because I wasn't, I don't know, looking in the right places or not, you know, I don't really know.
• 20:14
  I feel like I searched high and low for some sort of functional medicine training for nurses.
• 20:21
  And you know, I I leading up to this, I was under the speculation that I mean I had a big nurse practitioner to do it, and that's because that's what everybody's all to do too.
• 20:30
  Um, so I did my first functional medicine training in I started in December of 24, and I finished the beginning of March in 25.
• 20:44
  Um the clinical education was great, but I felt like I didn't really know, you know, what to do once I had the education.
• 20:53
  And then the credentialing for it, which is a certificate of completion.
• 20:57
  I really wanted some some, you know, an accreditation behind it.
• 21:01
  Um again, I don't think that's necessary for the field, but I think for nurses, like we like having the, you know, the validation and then you know, the letters and like something that says, like, hey, I did the work and I have the education for this.
• 21:13
  So I ended up doing a second one.
• 21:16
  Um, and I never even finished that one because it was just an ungodly amount of money.
• 21:21
  Like it was, you know, there was no way that an average person could make, you know, could have made that one work.
• 21:27
  And I just didn't feel like it was um great for the nursing scope.
• 21:33
  Um so once I started, and now I'm with you, and I love FNA, but it it's really turned into I get my my patients and my you know, nurse clients ask me this a lot.
• 21:48
  You know, and I tell people like this.
• 21:49
  I I did this in under a year in my life as a night and day, one eighty complete difference.
• 21:55
  Now, you know, I went from working night shift and chronically ill, and you're not eating, you're not drinking.
• 22:02
  I, you know, hadn't wasn't working out anymore because I was either too tired and I'm at home sleeping, or if I do have the day off, I just feel bad.
• 22:11
  I feel you know, I wasn't well.
• 22:13
  So I didn't, you know, I just feel like I was just like this withering away of a human trying to stay in the job that I thought worked so hard for this, and I had all these you know trials and tribulations right from nursing school, and I you know, I did all the things to get here, and I you know, I did the work and now I'm I did this, and then I was charged, and now I'm trying, you know, like I climbed my up on my way up to this this mountain that I thought was like gonna be the top of my mouth, and I got there, and I was like, this is not what I what I thought it was going to be or wrong mountain, you know.
• 22:43
  And once I started this, and it's I think there's I'm glad that there's more information and more coaching and more training and more courses coming out, and people are starting to see that this is an option for nurses because whenever I even just a year ago, I feel like I couldn't find anything.
• 22:57
  And it's now that there's a little bit more guidance and help on the subject, and nurses are starting to understand that they do have options and there are things they can do outside of the bedside if it isn't necessarily conventional care.
• 23:10
  Like there isn't, there are other ways to help people with positive health outcomes than just um keeping them in a hospital and you know, medications and procedures and surgeries and all of the things.
• 23:23
  But now it's been less than a year since I started and I work a few days a week.
• 23:31
  Um, I work from home.
• 23:33
  I make more money than I ever did as a travel nurse.
• 23:37
  Um I have time, it's just it's completely night and day.
• 23:41
  Like when a year ago when I I told myself I wanted to start something on my own, and I gave myself a list of not even just professional life, but like what do you want in your personal life and what can you do with your professional life that's going to help you get, you know, match in alignment with everything in your life, you know.
• 23:58
  Because if you're dying to make a living, then it's like what what are you even doing?
• 24:01
  Um so doing this, it's like I definitely feel like I hit the jackpot with with career and live life.
• 24:10
  And it's like you still get to help people, and I still, you know, I feel like I'm helping people and helping nurses in an ethical way.
• 24:17
  You know, I'm not, you know, it's not like, oh, you know, this is the protocol, and this is what we're gonna do.
• 24:22
  And like you're trying to like, you know, the doctor walks out and the patients are looking at you like SOS help me.
• 24:26
  Like, what does that mean?
• 24:27
  Or do I have to do that?
• 24:29
  And you're legally as a nurse, we're not allowed to, you know, really give an opinion or really get you know, help them, you know, get through that other than just education.
• 24:38
  And sometimes we get recommended for the education we do give them, even if it is the truth.
• 24:42
  Um so now I feel like I definitely I have more like freedom of speech.
• 24:47
  Number one, I I feel like I'm able to educate properly and what's ethical and what's right and correct, and give them options on A, B, C, and D to look at everything and make their own informed decisions versus this is what you have to do, and this is the only way to do it.
• 25:01
  Um, so that was a big problem that that I had was um feeling like I had to kind of fall in line and educate on the things that they wanted me to be educating on and not what I really thought or really felt or knew were to be true, more or less truer than what was actually happening.
• 25:21
  So all around my life is just completely 100% better, like in every aspect, like you know, spiritually, mentally, physically, emotionally, it's it's been nine-day difference.
• 25:31
  So and for our listeners, if you are working, and even if you're not in healthcare, because I know I have a variety of our audience varies from nurses, other healthcare professionals to people who are not in the medical field but maybe interested in wellness.
• 25:49
  If anyone listening is working at a soul sucking job, let me tell you, it is not worth it.
• 25:55
  Just when you think about the impact that that's gonna have on like your physical health, and then whatever is happening to you emotionally, spiritually, physically, that is going to trickle down and that is gonna affect the other people around you.
• 26:10
  And I know for me, now I'm as a mom with three kids.
• 26:14
  I also am like, well, I hit the jackpot here because when you start your own business, if you put your heart into it and you are a hard worker, you're going to see that return.
• 26:26
  And um, I remember when I used to come on shift, everyone knew that when I would get there that things are getting done.
• 26:33
  And I remember the supervisors because they know that I am you know get stuff done, kind of high achiever, they would always pair me with other nurses that just did just enough to get by because they knew that I would pick up the rest of the workload.
• 26:51
  And I prefer for me, I felt like I was taken advantage of year after year after year.
• 26:57
  And then when raises um, you know, come down the pipeline, they give you like a little bit of extra money each year, but it's not based on merit.
• 27:05
  Everyone would get the same.
• 27:06
  And so now it's so great because it's like, you know, when you have your own business.
• 27:11
  You don't really have to take orders from anyone else.
• 27:15
  Of course, you know, being a nurse, like we're both, you know, licensed and regulated.
• 27:20
  So we're not just doing whatever we want.
• 27:22
  We have a licensing board, but there's still like so much of what we're doing with wellness is through education, and that is like a universally accepted uh nursing script of practice.
• 27:32
  So there's just a lot we can do, but um, I do want to pause just for a moment because it's about time to take a break.
• 27:40
  So I wanted to remind our listeners.
• 27:43
  If you are interested in training with me at the functional nurse academy, I do have open enrollment.
• 27:50
  So you can check out functional nurseacademy.com.
• 27:54
  And again, this is the most comprehensive training on the market currently for nurses, and it includes comprehensive functional medicine training as well as business mentorship.
• 28:08
  All of our graduates get 90 nursing CEs and are eligible for multiple functional medicine board certification titles.
• 28:17
  So be sure to check out functional nurseacademy.com.
• 28:21
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• 31:39
  Hello and welcome back to the Nurses Report on America Out Loud Talk Radio.
• 31:47
  This is your host, Melissa Schreibfatter.
• 31:50
  Today I am joined by one of my students at the Functional Nurse Academy, Janie, who left conventional medicine through her own personal experience with chronic health issues that she recovered holistically and she opened up her own functional nurse business.
• 32:13
  And now she is also helping other functional nurses on the business aspect of functional nursing.
• 32:20
  Welcome back, Jamie.
• 32:21
  And um, I also when you told me that so I know that you have your functional nurse practice.
• 32:28
  So you said that you're still you you are still seeing clients, but you're not accepting new clients.
• 32:35
  Is that right?
• 32:36
  Right.
• 32:36
  Okay.
• 32:37
  Okay, great.
• 32:38
  And you mentioned that you've kind of, you know, so you're seeing clients, which I think is great to help with like your clinical skill set and everything, but then you're really focusing on professional development for nurses, which is amazing, especially the social media.
• 32:52
  Because I mean, so many of us, I think maybe like the young 20s nurses are are probably just fine with that for me, being a millennial nurse, you know, so many of us, the uh social media part is like kind of a nightmare.
• 33:08
  So can you tell me about that business venture?
• 33:12
  Yeah, so I started out seeing my one-to-one clients.
• 33:16
  I I actually I opened up an ID lounge um back in March.
• 33:19
  I was doing IV therapy for patients, and I was doing in-person one-to-ones, which I loved, right?
• 33:24
  Um, I still wanted like the hands-on.
• 33:27
  Um I live in a small community, so I felt like I kind of knew all of my patients, which was nice.
• 33:32
  Um, but it kind of got to a point where with the type of setting I live in, there is definitely a glass ceiling to it.
• 33:39
  And I was like, I know I could be doing more.
• 33:42
  I know I, you know, I kind of wanted to like expand a little bit.
• 33:44
  So then I went online and I started doing more telehelp more, you know, one to one and why the other price is better or Zoom or whatever.
• 33:52
  And was posting a lot about that on my my Instagram page and made a brand new one whenever I started my page.
• 33:59
  Um and I started having a slew of nurses message me saying, like, I have never heard of functional nursing.
• 34:07
  How do I do this?
• 34:08
  How do I, you know, and then once you get into it, like, okay, I say this was the problem I had after my first certification.
• 34:14
  Like, I know that I know how to be a nurse, I know the clinical data, I know the knowledge behind this.
• 34:18
  How am I supposed to, you know, we're not we we go in, we clock in, we clock out, we follow the orders, we check the boxes, and then once you're done, you're done, and you go home.
• 34:26
  You know, we're we've never been taught anything about business or being an entrepreneur or how to how to market yourself or how how to get clients, you know, we've been not been taught any of that.
• 34:36
  So it was definitely a huge learning curve for me for trying to figure out okay, what am I what am I supposed to do or how am I supposed to do this?
• 34:44
  So um, I just went online and I started a brand new Instagram.
• 34:47
  I had taken some social media marketing classes back in 2023.
• 34:50
  This is when I my the first time I thought I wanted to quit nursing just because of I you know, so sick and tired of it.
• 34:56
  I was like trying all these like reaching for all of these different things, like how can I get out of this, essentially.
• 35:04
  Um so I did have a little bit of knowledge on just how to use like Instagram like the very, very basics.
• 35:11
  And the more I started using medicine learning new things, I started taking more courses and more, you know, just to learn the ins and outs of it and how to properly talk to the type of client that you're wanting to bring in.
• 35:27
  And so my my page I end up being on a wait list for patients, and then nurses were just I mean, my I would have over a hundred DMs a day from nurses asking questions and wanting to get into it.
• 35:38
  So I started feeling kind of a pool of like, okay, I'm only one nurse that I can only help so many patients versus if I help the nurses, and that's gonna multiply tenfold to all the other patients that we can help.
• 35:49
  So I was like, okay, there's there's definitely a gap here with learning the educational information and then actually applying it and creating the business out of it because that's that's the end goal, right?
• 36:00
  It's to be able to get out of whatever situation you're in to be able to work for yourself, but you have to know how to do that properly and efficiently and something that's gonna work for you and still not burn you out on the back end.
• 36:10
  So that's kind of what I've been doing for the last six months or so is really trying to like tweak my services and tweak the stuff that I do to be able to show people how easy it really can be.
• 36:19
  And a lot of it is overthinking or your, you know, we get on social media and we see all these influencers and you're like a day in the life and what am I wearing?
• 36:29
  But you know, it's and we you have to kind of like completely wipe what what you think, you know, about being online and definitely just like learning functional medicine.
• 36:38
  It's it's definitely an unlearning and relearning how to use that, how to use it properly.
• 36:43
  But once you go online, it is like I mean the floodgates open.
• 36:46
  You are there's billions of people online every single day.
• 36:48
  Every other person you talk to has an Instagram, has Facebook has TikTok, has whatever.
• 36:52
  And that's where you're going to find your clients.
• 36:56
  So that's what I do now.
• 36:57
  Yeah, so I have this conversation with my students a lot because I have so many of them that like for me, I cannot tell you how much I dislike social media.
• 37:08
  And the only reason I am on there is because I have a business.
• 37:11
  But yeah, you know, it really when I was a brand new functional nurse and no one knew what I was doing, that is how I got my initial pain clients with social media.
• 37:22
  I mean, it is like one of the most amazing business tools because you're able to access just a pool of so many people that may be interested in your services.
• 37:32
  And then also, like, you know, if you're scaling larger programs, you know, marketing on social gives a really amazing opportunity for a good really good return on investment.
• 37:45
  So there's so many business tools, but then things are like always changing on social media.
• 37:52
  And I usually, like I have students that will say, Well, I'm not good at tech.
• 37:56
  Do I need to have a website?
• 37:58
  Do I need to have a social media presence?
• 38:00
  And I don't think that you need to be like influencer level where you need to have hundreds of thousands of followers or anything like that because you may have a much, much, much smaller following, but you may have a very engaged audience, and then also, you know, the um that the social media groups in itself, like the Facebook groups are also a great way to connect.
• 38:24
  But I did want to ask you.
• 38:26
  So when I, when I first connected with you, and I saw that your social was just like blowing up.
• 38:32
  I mean, I think that you had what was it?
• 38:35
  Like, what was it?
• 38:36
  Was it like two million views or higher?
• 38:38
  Like how how high of a reach are you getting on your social?
• 38:42
  Um, well, so whenever you have um a creator or a business account, you're able to see every 30 days that you're reached that you are getting with you know Instagram, and I'm up to 19 million right now.
• 38:54
  90 million.
• 38:56
  One ninth, yeah.
• 38:58
  Oh, okay.
• 38:58
  Nate still, like amazing.
• 39:01
  Wow.
• 39:01
  Okay, yeah.
• 39:02
  That is that's a massive reach.
• 39:04
  And then also, you did um what was the most viral post that you did?
• 39:11
  The most viral, the most viral one, I have one video, and it honestly has nothing to do with functional nursing, or it's just nursing in general, and it's about toxicity and health care and in the workplace, and how um, you know, we talked about this a little bit at the beginning of the interview with like being a nursing student and just going in in the nurses who's so mean, or just you know, want nothing to do with what's going on, or you know, very belittling, or you know, whatever.
• 39:37
  There's always gonna be that person, but I feel like and how for whatever reason the healthcare, and I think there's a lot of external factors that go into that.
• 39:45
  You know, your birthday, you're tired, you got family issues, there's all kinds of things that are happening, and you're going into a job to take care of somebody else, and you can't take care of yourself.
• 39:51
  And those are the things that play into it.
• 39:53
  But it it was it was a video about you know, we're here to help people get.
• 40:00
  That or you know, if you have if there's something for you that's you know making you act this way towards other people, maybe we need to work on work on yourself a little bit.
• 40:09
  Um that video went pretty pretty crazy viral thing is at 12 million views.
• 40:16
  So how are you coming up with the ideas?
• 40:19
  Or are you just like just sitting down and like writing down like a script, or do you just open up your phone and and just yeah, so I try to be I try to be a little bit more um strategic about it now, just because at the beginning, you know, you don't know what you're doing, and you have all these ideas coming to you, and I was writing things down of ideas that are pop into my head, and so now I have a little bit more of like a strategic plan where I'm not online so much.
• 40:44
  I used to be was I was on my phone 24-7 just because I didn't know again, it's like you're leaving one type of burnout for another type of burnout if you don't know how to do it properly and how to do it effectively.
• 40:54
  Um so much better now.
• 40:55
  But back then, yeah, I would you know, I had all of these things that I would just think about of like you know, things that happen to me or things that you know, I I have a part-time education job um with nursing students.
• 41:07
  So being back in the the bedside work setting with them, I still get to see you know the things and I see some of the bullying and I see some of the things that are happening with with patients, and so it it'll either remind me of something that has happened to me in the past or it it highlights uh an issue that I'm seeing, and I'll make some sort of video about it.
• 41:28
  So a lot of the ones that I have done that that go more viral tend to be a little bit more controversial, but and it's I think part of it is I a lot of the things that I do on my social media, it's like I will say the things that people are thinking, but it'll be able to say kind of thing, because I'm not in a position anymore where I have to fear for you know my job, which is you know, not again, freedom of speech to be able to talk about like what's going on and not you know being fearful of you know losing the job and losing the paycheck and losing, you know, or getting fired or whatever.
• 42:00
  Um, so yeah, I just every every week, like now I try to have a little bit more consistency with what I'm talking about since I I do have a bit of a bigger following now, and there, you know, people expect certain certain topics to be talked about, but back then it was very like what what is something, what is a problem that is happening at the bedside or in healthcare that nobody else wants to talk about or bring light to.
• 42:23
  So that was kind of where a lot of my content ideas came from in the beginning.
• 42:27
  Yeah, yeah.
• 42:28
  And you know, also another thing you mentioned was that you know, there's so many nurses that they know that there are some things going on that are not ethical in the healthcare system, but there's so much fear of your employer retaliating against you, and you know, for me, um, you know, when I started speaking out about things, you know, especially I'm I'm an advocate for those who have been injured from vaccines.
• 42:52
  And I talk a lot about vaccine safety, and that is a big no-no.
• 42:57
  I mean, I think it's more acceptable now because of the COVID vaccine debacle debacle.
• 43:04
  But when I first started speaking about this, you know, I mean, you're talking about people that would ostracize you, get you fired, even report you to the board, even if you are saying truthful things, but there is a lot of fear-mongering just about talking about, you know, these are it's not like a political issue, it is an ethical issue.
• 43:27
  If there are certain, you know, procedures or you know, certain pharmaceuticals that are being pushed on people that haven't been thoroughly safety tested, or if that informed consent portion is lacking, which it is when people are being, you know, coerced to take certain medical treatments or other products, but you know, um, that is another thing about being not being dependent on that system.
• 43:52
  Because I also I don't think it's good for the soul when you know something is not right, that you feel like you are being muzzled and you're being told that you're not allowed to speak about that, or um, I've even heard from you know other nurses and and from um from patients that when we talk about certain things like vaccines, uh I have heard from nurses that they're being discouraged from talking, telling the patients about what the known adverse reactions are, because if the patient knows the known adverse reactions, they may choose not to receive that vaccine.
• 44:35
  And I mean, these things are so ludicrous, and it really goes against ethical behavior.
• 44:41
  And uh yeah, I guess so I um so when you do speak your mind about things that are going on in healthcare.
• 44:47
  Are you receiving well?
• 44:48
  This is a totally loaded question, but um, well, actually asking you the question, does it make sense?
• 44:54
  It just makes sense for me to be like, what kind of pushback do you get?
• 44:59
  Um it definitely has lightened up a little bit.
• 45:03
  I will say that at the beginning, I feel like, and this was something that I I try to teach now in some of my social media courses and stuff, and it's not so much on how to post and how to do the things, it's like you you get into it and you don't realize that you're you are gonna get backlash being somebody in healthcare and talking about something that's more controversial.
• 45:20
  And the first four or five months that I was doing this, I had a ton of doctors and nurse practitioners and PAs and P whoever, people who just had an opposing opinion to me and would comment just nasty things or message me nasty things or you know, make videos about me saying crazy things, and um it I think though, whenever you take yourself out of that situation and you're able to recognize that there is an ethical issue, regardless of what you've been taught or how much you paid for your degree, or you know, if you can't take a step back out of situation and see that there could be a potential issue, and you're not maybe asking more questions, and I think that's where the problem comes in.
• 46:03
  And it's not it's not over who's who's a nurse who's not a nurse, who's a doctor who's not a doctor.
• 46:08
  It's you know, I think that ethics and humanity have become an option in healthcare, and that should never have become an option, you know, in the first place.
• 46:17
  That should be like a non-negotiable.
• 46:20
  And I think, you know, back to what you were saying, we and I think that's part of why a lot of nurses, I think nurses go into this for the right reasons, typically, you know, and we're getting told that you know we're burnt out, but really I think it's more it's moral injury, you know, it's where we're going to work and we're knowing there's things that are happening and going on that we either can't speak up about or we have to do because of protocols or we're gonna get fired if we don't do them versus like it's not, you know, it's a system issue, it's not a nurse issue.
• 46:50
  So I think we're being told that it is a nurse issue, and you just need more sleeping.
• 46:53
  You just need to take your PTO, you need to, you know, you need to do all these things.
• 46:56
  It's you know, part of being a nurse, and it's it's not, you know, I think there's a lot of gaslighting in the healthcare system and trying to make it sound like it's uh you signed up for this, this is it is what it is versus the system doesn't want to take accountability for what's actually going on, and we're just giving it a different name.
• 47:14
  So I was actually I did a show on this, it was probably like almost a year ago.
• 47:21
  But with the 2025 nursing code of ethics, there was actually a revision saying that if there was a protocol that was unethical, that the nurses can actually go against the um that unethical policy at the organization.
• 47:42
  So I was so like I really I I wondered, I was like, did somebody find Jesus?
• 47:47
  Because this happened after all of the things that went on with COVID, where you know, there were things, and I and and I I talked about this um probably a couple of weeks ago.
• 47:56
  My first job was in pediatrics that did not work out because I cannot do, I cannot stick kids, I cannot do invasive procedures on kids.
• 48:04
  So I did not last long there.
• 48:06
  But anyway, um in the morning, I had to go over all of the medication orders, and I had to compare to confirm that there was not a medication error because when we are dosing little bodies, we must make sure that they are dosed appropriately.
• 48:24
  So if the doctor made an error, which it happens, I mean, we have checks and balances.
• 48:29
  We're supposed to have checks and balances in the healthcare system because you know, if a doctor wrote uh an order for a medication dose that was too high, I would not just be like, well, I follow orders and go administer that to my patient and risk harming them and risk a sentinel event because that's the doctor's order.
• 48:52
  But what we are seeing is we have these very um large organizations, pharmaceutical companies that did not do their homework and a classic example of this that I rant about like every other show is the hepatitis B vaccine and the aluminum content.
• 49:09
  It does exceed the FDA's recognized safety limits for the um aluminum hydroxide, since it's you know intramuscular, we have a much higher absorption rate.
• 49:22
  And I actually have a student currently enrolled in FNA who is a whistleblower, and she got written up for refusing to give that vaccine to an infant because she said the level of adjuvant it exceeds what the FDA says is safe, and they were basically like, you need to do it anyway.
• 49:43
  You need to abide by what the um what the policy is and what the hospital says to do.
• 49:52
  And um, yeah, so I was actually surprised that they did not fire her and she got written up, but that's how ridiculous it.
• 50:00
  Is and again, like the moral injury.
• 50:03
  So many nurses are under pressure to do things that they know are not correct.
• 50:08
  And then I honestly see a lot of darkness, honestly, in the healthcare system.
• 50:13
  Like I think that there's something else going on.
• 50:15
  And I think that the whole follow the science has become God for a lot of people, where they're really kind of like pushing back, like you know, morals and the right thing to do just to follow this system.
• 50:30
  Do you see that too where you see that people are becoming like overly indoctrinated into this system?
• 50:37
  Yes, I feel like the term follow the science has become just a big broad label term to be able to again like gaslighting and manipulating it into scaring people or scaring nurses or scaring whoever into like that's just that's the answer.
• 50:52
  That's the right answer and if you believe anything else, then you need to be.
• 50:55
  I've had some messages from people who were like, you need to be turned into the board nursing, you need your license for what you need, you know.
• 51:01
  And I'm not even like all gung ho once, you know, I don't I've even like pulled in the reins on a lot of things that I do talk about and do say because I try to make myself a little bit more educational toward you know, more you know, business stuff now versus you know talking about all the crazy different things that I was seeing uh, you know, at the bedside and what during COVID, the first I remember the first thing I ever saw, and aside from the the vaccine mandates was one of the medications we were giving for which was protocol for for COVID patients.
• 51:30
  So we I remember being in the ER and they're tubing down umdesivir, which was the new antiviral ID medication we were giving to people who had COVID.
• 51:40
  So even if you came, it didn't matter if you were symptomatic, asymptomatic.
• 51:43
  I remember having people who had no symptoms, um, but got swabs or positive for COVID, and it was part of permacols.
• 51:50
  So the the uh pharmacy would tube down their umdesivir, and they're like, okay, you gotta give this to the patient now.
• 51:56
  And they would want us to tell them, regardless if you take it or not, it's already been bagged labeled with your name, all of it has been ordered for you.
• 52:05
  This is a really expensive medication, and regardless if you take it or not, you're going to have to pay for it.
• 52:08
  So the patients would feel like they had to do it because they're slapping this 10,000 label on this bag for people.
• 52:17
  And we were using that for, you know, and I think we started to take notice much later on, like closer to like the year mark, and people who got these doses of remdesivir by day eight or nine, they were they were on like dialysis or something and kidney failure, complete kidney shutdown in the ICU between day eight and ten, you know.
• 52:40
  So we're like, oh, we're saying, oh, COVID called this kidney failure.
• 52:43
  Like, that's respiratory virus.
• 52:45
  It's not, you know, why are we getting kidney failure?
• 52:46
  You know, so there was this whole this whole thing going on where it's like people knew it was happening, people knew, and it was just very circle, you know.
• 52:56
  So a lot of times I would get those medications down, and again, being fearful of losing my job.
• 53:02
  I was still a newer nurse.
• 53:03
  I was still under two years, and I was like my first or second travel contract, and I just didn't want to step on any toes, but I'd get the medications and I would see the patients and the families like you know, looking at me with like big eyes and like, dude, is that really necessary?
• 53:16
  And I would like completely off the record if that were my grandma, if that were my mom, I would tell them to not take it.
• 53:23
  And I would just let them make the decision for themselves, you know.
• 53:25
  And I felt like that, you know, that was some I only said that the patients that I was comfortable with, right?
• 53:29
  Where I felt like we I had a good report, you know, if it was somebody where I felt like maybe they would, you know, say, oh, well, you're gonna nurse at this, or you know, something like that.
• 53:36
  But it's it every time I remember spiking that medication and hanging it up on there, I just felt like this immense sense of guilt where like I know that this is a problem and I have to do it anyway, or else I'm gonna get in trouble.
• 53:49
  So you know, and it is surprising to me that individuals in the hospital with seniority, like the the medical doctors were not saying anything about this, you know, and and I do think that some people still are in denial and they're like, no, no, it's COVID.
• 54:06
  And and again, I am not a fan of the World Health Organization, okay.
• 54:11
  Um, but I know that not everybody at the WHO is evil, you know, but the WHO who has significant conflicts of interest with the pharmaceutical company and a lot of other things.
• 54:24
  But anyway, even they were like, don't use remdesivir in these cases, and then the US is still using it, and it was just um like normal part of the protocol everywhere.
• 54:35
  So um, but one of the um big pharmatrics with remdesivir.
• 54:41
  So um they knew that it caused renal failure and um worsened outcomes, but in the trials when they were testing it for COVID, they discontinued the trial before the renal failure started.
• 54:57
  So that's sometimes how they'll conduct trials, like they know that it may cause this uh sentinel event or this horrible adverse reaction, but then they will just discontinue the trial before that uh starts to occur, and then they'll use that as evidence for safety.
• 55:12
  And and again, you know, um, of course, if I was hit by a bus, I would go to the hospital, you know, and there are good people in the system, but we all need to be aware that sometimes these things happen.
• 55:26
  And you know, honestly, I think that it's great to have more and more nurses working on this outpatient basis in wellness because if we help to get people well enough, then they may not end up needing to be hospitalized for things like respiratory viruses and whatnot.
• 55:42
  Yeah.
• 55:42
  Um, well, we are about uh time.
• 55:46
  Um, we're about at the end of the show, but I um did want to ask.
• 55:51
  I know after today's show, I'm gonna have like a ton of nurses that are going to want to reach out to you and work with you.
• 55:57
  Can you tell me um how a nurse would go about working with you and what's the best way for them to find you?
• 56:04
  So the best way to find me is gonna be through my Instagram handle.
• 56:07
  So it is at Florida Functional RN.
• 56:09
  Um my email is also listed on there.
• 56:11
  So it's Jamie at FL functional.com.
• 56:15
  So I do that's my private work email.
• 56:17
  I do answer all my emails.
• 56:18
  Um, the easiest way to get in with me would be to go through my my link, my stand story, what is which is on my my Instagram bio.
• 56:26
  Um and I have the two different options on there for you know, starting in holistic medicine, starting in functional medicine or the social media side.
• 56:34
  There's a combo, and then I also offer consulting calls.
• 56:37
  So everything is listed in my Instagram though.
• 56:40
  And well, thank you for coming on the show.
• 56:42
  This was so great.
• 56:43
  Thank you for having me.
• 56:44
  And I just I just love your story.
• 56:45
  I think it's so inspiring.
• 56:46
  Thank you.
• 56:47
  And to our listeners.
• 56:49
  So here at the Nurses Report, we are here Monday through Friday at 10 a.m.
• 56:54
  Eastern Standard Time.
• 56:56
  And be sure that you follow us and like the podcast.
• 57:01
  Our podcast is available on any podcast app.
• 57:05
  And also wanted to remind you all, because I had such a high interest in the functional nurse academy.
• 57:13
  I did open up a sister school where I can train all other healthcare professionals and certified health and wellness coaches.
• 57:20
  And that is available at Christian Functional Medicine Academy, which is Christian FMA dot com.
• 57:28
  Until next time, be safe, be well, and God bless.