Latest / Cultural Wars | America Out Loud News / Broken for triumph

Transcript

Broken for triumph · Cultural Wars | America Out Loud News

• 0:06
  Welcome to the Uto.
• 0:09
  Take a deep breath.
• 0:11
  Take the higher road.
• 0:13
  That's what they always say.
• 0:14
  As if they know the way they won't take it from me.
• 0:20
  But don't ever dive yourself with slab and just a dream.
• 0:24
  You made your own so kid can scream.
• 0:27
  The big mobile lap with a never-ending force.
• 0:31
  You never had the chance to watch a win for it's calm, my friend, because this is well.
• 0:44
  It's time.
• 0:53
  Welcome to another great episode of the Nurses Report here on America Outloud.news.
• 0:59
  So I'm totally springing this episode on Nurse Nicole and Nurse Dave.
• 1:03
  We have not talked about it whatsoever.
• 1:05
  And so they're gonna be joining me in just a minute and introducing themselves as they always do.
• 1:11
  But I'm gonna lay the foreground and get them, you know, a little bit worked up before I let them speak, right?
• 1:16
  So it's Christmas time, so merry Christmas, everybody.
• 1:20
  I hope that you have been preparing these last couple weeks of Advent and you are ready for this blessed day next week.
• 1:31
  Now, I'm gonna be really honest with you.
• 1:34
  Christmas has never been my favorite holiday.
• 1:38
  In fact, as a teenager, I pretty much hated Christmas.
• 1:44
  And of course, there's a backstory.
• 1:49
  You know, I've had a lot of death in my family, and from the time I was a like eighth grader, maybe even earlier than that.
• 1:56
  Actually, it was earlier than that.
• 1:58
  Somebody has had been dying in my house.
• 2:00
  And and that's just kind of the way that it was.
• 2:04
  I love Christmas because it means Jesus is coming and that brings hope.
• 2:09
  And that's actually, even though this is gonna be a pretty dark episode, that's actually what this is about.
• 2:14
  It's about hope, and I don't want you to get lost in the weeds as we weave through this because we're gonna incorporate Jesus.
• 2:21
  We're gonna incorporate pain, suffering, and nursing, because that's what we do here on the nurses' report.
• 2:30
  Because whether you are a nurse or not, these things impact you.
• 2:36
  I'm a little bit, I don't get nervous very often.
• 2:39
  I am a little bit nervous because this is all very personal.
• 2:42
  So, you know, I am a teenager and I am going through Christmas.
• 2:47
  We went down to Florida every year.
• 2:49
  My grandparents had an amazing home down there.
• 2:52
  They were snowbirds, they lived with us in the winter.
• 2:54
  We were very, very in the summer, we were very close because we did all our farming together.
• 2:59
  And um, you know, my grandparents were elderly and my grandma was passing away, and so Christmas wasn't what it used to be.
• 3:07
  We still had the fresh squeezed orange juice out of the back grove and things like that, but it had just changed.
• 3:13
  And as I was experiencing these holidays, watching my grandmother slowly pass away.
• 3:19
  My 18-year-old cousin um passed away tragically of um ours.
• 3:25
  It Christmas took a whole new meeting because I was looking around at the world and watching the rest of the world see this time of materialism and focus on what am I getting?
• 3:39
  And here I just wanted my family.
• 3:43
  I wanted that time with them.
• 3:45
  I wanted to see hope, and it wasn't very much longer after this, my freshman year in high school that my mom was then diagnosed with cancer.
• 3:54
  And so Christmas was not a time of joy, it was very much a time of sorrow because I was so frustrated that other people couldn't see the gifts that they had right in front of them.
• 4:05
  And then that's truly what I longed for every year.
• 4:09
  But we go to church and we see this amazing miracle, and and yeah, of course, I struggled with my faith.
• 4:14
  I was frustrated with God and why he allowed the pain and suffering in my life.
• 4:22
  And that is what led to my choice and my career as a nurse.
• 4:28
  And I think that we all have stories like this.
• 4:31
  In this podcast, we're going to we're gonna talk about a a little bit of all these things and nursing.
• 4:39
  And I I have been very much struggling the past several months with the frustration of did I pick the wrong career?
• 4:48
  Am I supposed to be working in politics and doing all these things that I do?
• 4:52
  And is it time for me to just like walk away from a significant amount of this stuff?
• 4:57
  And a lot of people probably are shocked by that because you don't see that on the outside.
• 5:02
  This is stuff that I keep, you know, bottled up.
• 5:05
  I talk about it with my husband, I look at my kids and and I think, am I making the best choices for them?
• 5:12
  And we hosted a movie screening for our youth group.
• 5:16
  Um we put it together.
• 5:17
  My husband runs our church's youth group, um, or co-leads, and we put together this fundraiser, and we chose to show Triumph of Heart.
• 5:26
  Triumph of the Heart.
• 5:28
  And it's about St.
• 5:28
  Maximilian Colby, and it is overcoming great tragedy.
• 5:33
  So today we're gonna talk about brokenness.
• 5:35
  We're gonna talk about hope, and how because of our brokenness, we can become so much greater, and how I hope that you all can see the hope in Christ's birth, even knowing that the reason we have so much hope in his birth is because of his suffering and brokenness.
• 5:58
  So, with that, as I said, I'm gonna get my peeps all riled up and upset.
• 6:04
  Nurse Dave, why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself?
• 6:08
  Hello, uh my name is David Wayne.
• 6:10
  I'm a registered nurse with a background in hospital psychiatry.
• 6:14
  I've also dabbled in informatics, health coaching, forensic nursing, and my critics say I am a dangerous conspiracy theorist.
• 6:22
  All accurate.
• 6:23
  Nurse Nicole.
• 6:25
  Uh, wow.
• 6:26
  Well, um, I've been a nurse 20 years in the cardiac field um in the Central Florida area, and I work alongside a lot of our grassroots organizations and raising awareness on informed consent, body sovereignty, and understanding uh rights that you have, and um, yeah, so I'm I'm looking forward to this because this kind of took a little bit of a turn from the episode we just did.
• 6:49
  So um, yeah, this is gonna get some raw real emotions to the listeners out there.
• 6:54
  We're a couple of bad asses on here, but you know, we're about to unfold some things here.
• 6:58
  Unpack.
• 6:59
  Excuse me.
• 7:00
  So I'm ready for it.
• 7:01
  Nice to be here.
• 7:03
  I'm glad you're excited.
• 7:04
  So I'm just gonna put you right on the spot.
• 7:07
  And I I want you to share a little bit, you know, with the listeners.
• 7:10
  We talk about these things all the time, but the brokenness in nursing, um, why you think it's there, and and even how that spreads out into the larger idea of brokenness in society.
• 7:23
  Well, it's a very loaded question.
• 7:25
  Um, I think, you know, to keep it into perspective.
• 7:29
  I think it's all designed, it's all engineered this way.
• 7:31
  I feel like there's a lot of things that we see in all across all professions, but especially in healthcare that are designed to create this amount of chaos and disconnect, and basically the idea that you can never meet an expectation or the standard that they are seeking for us to do.
• 7:49
  And and that's usually due to ignorance, uh, corporate greed, and and a multitude of other things, but when you're in it and you see the brokenness because you most of us go into this wanting to help.
• 8:04
  We have a story, we've had an encounter, we've had something happen to us that has kind of projected us to want to go into this profession.
• 8:11
  Certainly not for the money because the amount of liability and what we're put through, there's no amount of money that you can pay me that will ever equate to feeling safe enough to work in the environments that we do.
• 8:21
  And so, you know, it's really because we want to do the right thing and we want to be there for people.
• 8:25
  When you see human beings being subjected to subpar care and greed, and basically purposely withholding resources because you want to cut staff or you want to, you know, not buy certain things so you can't necessarily have enough equipment uh to do your job and everything like that.
• 8:42
  It really changes you as a person, and I blame a lot of that on the system, and people that knew me 20 years ago and now know me now will go, what the hell happened to you?
• 8:52
  Like, what is going on?
• 8:54
  And you know, it's a loaded question because when you see things and you are part of individuals' worst times of their life, and you witness that time and time again, it's a form of trauma.
• 9:05
  So I say I have a form of PTSD.
• 9:07
  I'm very open about it.
• 9:08
  I talk about it a lot.
• 9:10
  I try to like make it so that it's not very stigmatized, you know, because people will say that they have different situations, but kind of relate and open that door to have the conversation because I have worked with people who have uh taken their lives because of the profession and what it's done to them, not feeling enough or feeling as if they could have hurt someone.
• 9:31
  So I think it's a really good topic to bring up, and something that a lot of our listeners may be a little shocked about because you just don't know the depth and how this infiltrates us as human beings, that when we walk outside of the doors and in my situation, walk outside of the hospital doors, how you interact in society is like taking a war veteran out of war and trying to make them be a normal member of society.
• 9:56
  You almost don't know how to act sometimes because everything else around you.
• 10:00
  There's no, you can't relate.
• 10:01
  And so, like you said in the beginning, and why I don't have a lot of friends, if you will, in the sense of having a deeper sense of understanding.
• 10:11
  I validate people and how they feel because I can't tell you how to feel.
• 10:15
  But when you focus on petty things and you talk about what you don't have when it comes to materialistic things, and we see death every day, and people taking their last breath saying, I wish I just had one more day, or I wish I could have, or whatever, that changes you forever to never take certain things for granted and to never focus on the stuff that doesn't matter because you just can't relate anymore.
• 10:37
  So I know that's a long wooden answer, but that's essentially where it's at.
• 10:41
  Like as a human being, I don't relate because I'm so far now to the other side where death and sadness and despair and everything, it's part of my life, and that's why it's a constant heaviness that I carry, but also trying to bring light to those dark points um because there's so many other people that have it far worse and us try to navigate and help them through it.
• 11:03
  So yeah.
• 11:04
  Nicole, you just answered a question that a friend of mine posed to me recently.
• 11:09
  I have a single friend, and he asked, Dave, why are there so many nurses on these dating apps?
• 11:15
  Like, why are so many of these nurses single?
• 11:17
  And I I think you just gave uh a great explanation of of why that is is because you come home after a shift and you listen to your significant other griping about their day at work, and you were just elbow deep in blood and feces and vomit and dealing with the family and dealing with just these you know incredibly horrible situations, and it it does make you um it puts things in perspective for you and it changes how you relate to the rest of the world.
• 11:55
  Well, they also talk about not ever trying to portray us as infantry, right?
• 12:02
  But it's very true.
• 12:03
  We fight battles all the time, it's just a different battlefield, and a lot of times it's more of a mental emotional and spiritual warfare that people just don't understand unless you're in it, and it's why our profession is one of the highest when it comes to uh infidelity, divorce, etc., because you cannot relate anymore or have that stress and trauma that you start to trauma bond with other professions that go and see this every day.
• 12:31
  It's like friends that I have that are firefighters, police officers, the amount of things that they see.
• 12:35
  I you you wonder how they get through the day and not drink themselves or you know, hurt themselves because it's it's so traumatic.
• 12:43
  Yeah.
• 12:44
  Well, and it's rapid cycle because okay, and I want to get to Dave, and I want to get his take a little bit more on this brokenness because I think you have a lot to add, but I think one of the things that really, especially during the holidays, okay, you've got these night shift nurses who are working the night before or the night after.
• 13:03
  So they don't really get a real holiday, they don't really get a real break.
• 13:08
  And so swishing from that mindset of like you are always on, you are very acutely aware of what's going on.
• 13:16
  You are multitasking multiple different people at the same time, trying to keep them alive, some of them more acutely than than not, or in Dave's case, this the psychological trauma of these patients that you're caring for, you're going from room to room and you're rapid cycling there, and then you walk out those hospital doors, and you're expected to be jolly and jovial and connected, and it's very hard.
• 13:47
  As I've gotten older, I've struggled with this even more with switching my mind out of thinking mode.
• 13:54
  Like, do you guys have that where it's just like you shut the emotion down, you tuck it away.
• 13:59
  Like, of course you feel, of course, it's painful, but you're able to compartmentalize so well, and then going out into the real world is like, oh, that's a shock.
• 14:09
  Like, how how do I get here?
• 14:11
  And I I think we see a lot of that.
• 14:13
  So, Dave, uh, let's hear about your perspective on brokenness in the profession, and um, if you have any feedback for for what we just talked about.
• 14:23
  Where do you would begin?
• 14:24
  Yeah, there's an enormous amount of brokenness, and I think about you know, over the last five years, we have seen so many nurses get out of nursing, so many people have retired early or just gone on to completely different careers.
• 14:40
  I worked a weekend recently where we had something like 10 new grad nurses working one shift on one unit.
• 14:47
  Like this is just this is not safe, uh, and this is not unique to my work environment either.
• 14:54
  This is true across the country where we have the system has squeezed out so many just incredible nurses, they just couldn't do it anymore, and then we have all these fledgling nurses who this is the new normal for them, you know.
• 15:12
  This is all they've ever experienced, and it's not great.
• 15:16
  It's it's so corporate, it's so authoritarian, it's so top heavy.
• 15:21
  It's all these emails constantly from uh the executives who appreciate you so much.
• 15:28
  But here's how we're changing things and micromanaging things on your unit, and you know, oh, you're not gonna have uh secretary or health unit coordinator on your unit anymore.
• 15:38
  Oh, this charge nurse is gonna cover two wings now, not just one wing.
• 15:42
  It's just it we speculate sometimes that they will have meetings where they sit around and they have brainstorming sessions, like, okay, how can we get more nurses to quit this week?
• 15:54
  Who has some ideas, and then they just start spitballing and they come up with things, and then you know, the the job of the unit manager isn't to provide feedback to higher levels of leadership, it's to make the peasants okay with the changes that are being handed down by sometimes from executives who have never even stepped foot in your city, much less your hospital building, much less your unit because everything is so corporatized, and we have these bean counters making these decisions, and it it is getting uh it is getting worse, it's getting worse every year.
• 16:29
  I don't understand it.
• 16:30
  I don't understand how they can leave units so short staffed and um with such an incredible lack of resources, it they do it because of money.
• 16:43
  All these decisions are driven because of money, but you have one person fall, you have one sentinel event, you have one bad outcome because of you uh withholding staff from unit, and that erases all the money you saved from some of these uh staff members.
• 16:58
  I mean, techs and CNAs, these they they are grossly grossly underpaid, and they have so much to do with whether or not a patient's hospital experience is a positive one, and that is so obvious to so many people, but not to the bean counters, and so here we are.
• 17:15
  Yeah, it's everything has gotten just so predatory and so corporatized.
• 17:19
  It is just I I truly think we were taking better care of patients back in the paper charting days, back before we had computers and and where we were spending we now spend half our shifts trying to convince a flipping computer that we took care of our patients rather than actually taking care of our patients.
• 17:42
  It's all about liability shielding, none of it is actually about a good patient experience.
• 17:48
  Yeah, you're exactly right.
• 17:50
  And you brought up a couple really important points that we're gonna talk about.
• 17:53
  So it's perfect segue.
• 17:55
  Um, the first thing is you know, 12 new grad nurses.
• 17:59
  I want to talk a little bit about that.
• 18:01
  Um, and then it'll probably be after the break that we'll talk about nurses regretting their job choice.
• 18:09
  And I I had an article emailed me to the other day, and it was just I was astounded.
• 18:16
  So we're gonna talk about that too.
• 18:18
  But so let's let's dig in a little bit because I think it's really important to understand and think about one of the ways that we can have hope, and we can see it's just like with the birth of Christ, we know that he is coming, he is being born to be our savior, and we know now that eventually he will be brutally murdered, crucified the most barbaric death.
• 18:46
  And we take hope in that, and that's pretty wild.
• 18:50
  I've been getting a lot of things lately talking about how we have to be broken first before we can rise up to our greatness.
• 18:58
  And so, you know, I hope right now that nurses are are listening, people who love nurses who see the struggle um and are watching them have a hard time, not just during the holidays, but year-round, can can take and digest this, and then we can work together because once we can identify the problem, once we can see that there's a little bit of hope, we can start to make real change, and we're gonna continue to talk about that during this episode.
• 19:23
  Um, I recently was listening to a podcast, it actually was a short that popped up on my reels on Instagram.
• 19:32
  And the nurse was like, nursing school is a joke, and they should just go to technical training.
• 19:41
  And that threw some big like some huge red flags for me.
• 19:46
  Uh, we've just recently gone through this whole scandal with you know, President Trump is there's air quotes for those of you who are not watching.
• 19:54
  President Trump is taking away your professionalism.
• 19:56
  No, no, he's not.
• 19:57
  There's a we we did an episode on that.
• 19:59
  Um
• 20:00
  I think I did it with Nurse Kimberly Overton.
• 20:03
  Um, but you know, we we saw that whole thing, and people were in such uh an uproar.
• 20:09
  And here I'm listening to somebody, which I listened to the whole podcast because I wanted the context, and I totally agree with like 90 plus 95, 96% of the things that they were talking about on that podcast.
• 20:23
  I kind of want to, I kind of want to have them on, but they swore a lot, so I'm not sure that they're great for this venue.
• 20:28
  We'll have to see um uh I swear a little bit in my personal life, so there's that too.
• 20:33
  But they're talking about reducing nursing school to technical school because it stinks so bad.
• 20:39
  So we are taking these nurses, sending them into a broken system after running them through such horrible nursing schools.
• 20:46
  There are two pieces to this puzzle that I really want to talk about.
• 20:49
  Number one, I want to talk about this idea of like nursing professionalism and technical school.
• 20:57
  I want to get you guys' feedback, but then I also want to talk about the reality because we all went through nursing school a very different times.
• 21:05
  I graduated in 2005, 2006, and Nicole, you were an LPN first.
• 21:15
  Um so let's go ahead and I'll just give my real quick opinion.
• 21:20
  Um I don't think that we should go to a technical school.
• 21:25
  I think we need to go back to the diploma programs.
• 21:27
  I graduated as a diploma nurse.
• 21:29
  My program was one of the last ones around, and we started clinicals our second week, maybe third week of school, and we had hands on patients every week thereafter.
• 21:41
  It was an amazing thing.
• 21:43
  That is the answer, not switching to a technical school.
• 21:46
  That would take away your professionalism and your title of a being a professional or having a profession.
• 21:53
  But I think that the answer there is that technical or is that diploma program where you are not only getting didactic lessons, the the written, the lecture, but you're also incorporating that at the same time with the hands on skills because you're taking and applying those those lessons from pharmacology, physiology, anatomy, all those things directly into patient care.
• 22:20
  And I think that that gave me a huge leg up when I walked out of nursing school.
• 22:25
  I was ready to be at the bedside.
• 22:27
  I felt comfortable assessing and providing care for patients, and I I did excel quite rapidly out the gate because of the preparation that I had.
• 22:37
  And these nurses are being thrown, these these new nurses are being thrown into this horrible system with such poor education.
• 22:50
  So, Dave, let's go ahead and start with you.
• 22:52
  Tell me about when you graduated and that sort of thing.
• 22:55
  Uh a story from very recently we had nursing students on the unit, and some of them were uh, let's say nowhere to be found for a lot of their shift.
• 23:07
  And it turns out that one of the changes that's happened since COVID is their preceptors, their nursing school preceptors aren't required to be in the hospital because you know they're quotes COVID, it's dangerous.
• 23:18
  So we had these student nurses basically wandering around with no real oversight, and they were they were not being prepared to be taking a patient assignment in a couple months after they graduate.
• 23:32
  So like it's it's it is scary.
• 23:34
  They they are entering the workforce so under prepared.
• 23:38
  Uh I think there are enormous, enormous uh overhauls that should be made to the education being provided to nurses.
• 23:47
  But I will also ask you this.
• 23:49
  What credentialing did Florence Nightingale have?
• 23:52
  What score did she get on the N CLEX?
• 23:55
  Was she in good standing with her state's nursing board?
• 24:00
  I think we really need to look at these entire systems from the top down.
• 24:06
  Nursing boards, just like medical boards, uh they've been hijacked.
• 24:11
  They've been hijacked, and they are wielded like weapons by people with conflicts of interests and with agendas.
• 24:20
  Some of those agendas in nursing include being vaccine tyrants.
• 24:26
  That's happening here in the state of Wisconsin with this Wisconsin board of nursing.
• 24:31
  Uh, it also includes being trans tyrants.
• 24:35
  Just look over at Minnesota, across the river from me here in Wisconsin and what they're doing with uh um transgender youth over there.
• 24:46
  So yeah, I I think uh nursing school needs a lot of reform, but you know, uh all these systems, all these credentialing systems, whether it's nursing, whether it's physicians, whether it's lawyers, these systems have been hijacked, and it is to the detriment of all of us.
• 25:06
  Uh was such a powerful segment.
• 25:09
  I mean, you really did a good job of kind of wrapping it all up.
• 25:13
  And I I want to hear more about your personal experience and what your nursing school was like, and if you felt like you were personally adequate, adequately prepared.
• 25:24
  We are up against a break.
• 25:25
  So we're gonna go ahead and take a quick break here from our sponsors.
• 25:30
  This has been an amazing conversation on the nurses report.
• 25:34
  This is why we do what we do.
• 25:36
  We shine a light onto the darkness, we illuminate these difficult things because we may be broken, but there is still hope for the human spirit.
• 25:48
  Okay, I want you guys to remember that.
• 25:50
  We'll be right back after the short break.
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• 27:35
  Well, did you see Google quietly updated its AI principles removing its pledge not to use AI for weapons or surveillance?
• 27:44
  A promise they agreed to in 2018.
• 27:47
  Well, the American people they've seen Google's track record prompt in the question is Google an untrustworthy player in the AI race.
• 28:00
  Now is our time, my fellow markets.
• 28:03
  America outmaw.
• 28:13
  Welcome back to the Nurses Report.
• 28:15
  My name is Ashley Grog.
• 28:16
  I am your host today, and this episode was totally sprung on Nurse Nicole and Nurse Dave, but my goodness, I think that our dynamic is so much fun.
• 28:27
  We say this all the time, but we nail it together because we have such different perspectives.
• 28:33
  We build upon each other, and this is what true nursing collaboration is all about.
• 28:40
  This is why nurses are so great, because we can come together, bring our differences and use them to illuminate the truths out there.
• 28:48
  Now, my hope is not that we just illuminate truth.
• 28:52
  I hope and pray that we illuminate truth and inspire action, because that is truly what the human spirit is about.
• 29:03
  That is why it continues to grow and to be strong despite all of the worst things that we're up against.
• 29:13
  They're in the movie The Triumph of Heart, and I'm I'm promoting this.
• 29:17
  This is about St.
• 29:17
  Maximilian Colby.
• 29:19
  And he is a prisoner of Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II.
• 29:24
  And you can, if you're watching on video, you can see my hives breaking out because I'm like so upset.
• 29:29
  The body keeps the score right.
• 29:31
  Uh it's very personal story, Maximilian Colby for me because my grandpa was in Auschwitz.
• 29:37
  Uh, and I'm sure that they probably heard about St.
• 29:41
  Colby and his story.
• 29:44
  He was the Polish priest.
• 29:46
  Um, and part of the reason that he was thrown in the cell and and was received the punishment was because he was a very powerful writer.
• 29:57
  He spoke truth.
• 29:58
  He tried to help.
• 30:00
  Maintain the Polish spirit and fighting back against the Nazis.
• 30:04
  And and Auschwitz was used to break the Polish spirit.
• 30:11
  I encourage you to go watch Triumph of the Heart, grab a box of tissues.
• 30:17
  This is what we do here.
• 30:19
  Because from that cell, though he knew that he was going to die.
• 30:24
  His words rang out.
• 30:27
  The songs that he and the others condemned to death traveled through that concentration camp and brought hope.
• 30:37
  That is the power of the human spirit.
• 30:39
  So right now today, we are before the break, we were talking to Nurse Dave about some very important things.
• 30:46
  He talked about the qualifications of Florence Nightingale and the standing she had with her nursing board.
• 30:52
  Because as nurses and those who love nurses, we know that our system is exceptionally broken.
• 31:00
  We want to illuminate these truths.
• 31:02
  We want our voices to ring out, and we want to inspire not only our fellow nurses, but you as patients to hear this battle cry and know that we are pushing forward.
• 31:13
  We are going to help give you the tools that you need to reclaim this broken system and liberate the people within the hospitals.
• 31:21
  Okay.
• 31:22
  That is what we are doing here today.
• 31:24
  So, Dave, I'm gonna pull you back in and ask you about when you graduated and how you felt you were prepared.
• 31:33
  Was it school or was it previous experience?
• 31:37
  Hmm.
• 31:38
  Uh so I graduated in 2012, and I had done a variety of different careers prior to nursing, but none of them really stuck.
• 31:46
  It was only when I was uh first responder and then an EMT that I started to do something that you know gave me some job satisfaction at the end of the day.
• 31:57
  And when I was uh doing my EMT clinicals, I told a nurse that I was thinking about becoming a paramedic, and she said, No, you should get into nursing.
• 32:07
  And so went to nursing school.
• 32:09
  Uh I do feel like I was well prepared from nursing school with one big obvious gap that I call out all the time is when we learned about research and interpreting you know, clinical data and research studies and things like that.
• 32:28
  They we were not taught about how pervasive fraud is and the just incredible problems with evidence-based practice, evidence-based practice was the mantra that was beaten into us, but we weren't told that there were these astronomical problems with the evidence base because of conflicts of interest and fraud.
• 32:49
  So uh I am pretty resentful about that because I just had blinders on for many years in my in my nursing career.
• 32:56
  So um, yeah.
• 32:58
  What was the what was the next part of your question, Ashley?
• 33:02
  I think you covered it.
• 33:03
  I think you covered both pieces.
• 33:04
  Do you feel like you were prepared in nursing school and coming out or if if it was previous experiences that kind of helped meld that in there?
• 33:14
  I should follow up uh a little bit too before you let Nicole go, because I do want to mention after I was fired to a COVID vaccine mandates.
• 33:25
  I thought about teaching.
• 33:26
  I thought about teaching at nursing school, and so that was something I looked into.
• 33:30
  And when I read the job description here at our local nursing school, I was appalled because it was all about are you going to promote the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion?
• 33:45
  Are you prepared to it was all this woke nonsense?
• 33:50
  The entire job description was this woke ideology.
• 33:54
  It had nothing to do with evidence-based practice, patient care, time management, any of our core values as nurses.
• 34:02
  It was all about are you ready to teach nursing students about equity and that sort of thing.
• 34:08
  And so uh I I knew that I wasn't uh a good fit to be an instructor in an environment like that, and we do need to recapture these educational institutions.
• 34:20
  And for my part, I I gotta tell you, I had an interesting shift recently where I got to use some of that ideology because I know it so well to kind of subtly troll some of my very, very liberal co-workers.
• 34:36
  We had a patient, uh, she was an adult patient, and she was Pakistani and autistic, and she had had some blow-ups at home that were related to her dad yelling at her.
• 34:50
  And so I had some co-workers saying, Well, we need to, you know, talk to adult protective services, and this dad is a real bad guy.
• 35:00
  And I chimed in and said, Well, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, we've all been trained about, you know, um uh diversity.
• 35:07
  We've all been trained about oh gosh, what's the term?
• 35:11
  Um, cultural competence.
• 35:13
  So we need to recognize that um Pakistan is an incredibly patriarchal, patriarchal society, that the man of the household rules the roost, it is culturally normal for the husband to yell at the wife to yell at his children, and um people uh people's reactions were pretty interesting because they're right, because they were like he's saying things that we have heard, like these are all true things that we have been taught, but now when it's time to apply it, this doesn't quite feel right.
• 35:52
  And what of the nurses brought up, because again, we are right across the river from Minnesota here.
• 35:58
  Teachers in Minnesota allegedly were just told that they are not to make CPS reports regarding Somali parents beating their children.
• 36:09
  You are supposed to report if it's another race or culture beating their children, but in these school districts in Minnesota now, if it's uh a Somali parent beating their children, no, this is uh the it's either uh culturally acceptable or it's they're trying to protect them from ice.
• 36:32
  I have so many comments, and I feel like that's a whole other episode, full stop.
• 36:39
  I know Nicole is like losing her mind over there.
• 36:42
  Um I don't even know where to go from here.
• 36:47
  I feel like I'm I yeah, I kind of I kind of derailed your entire, but yeah, that the wolf's gonna be a good thing.
• 36:54
  It just goes to s it it it it talks to the brokenness in the system, and when people are preaching this cultural competence, and they recognize right from wrong, and and I love it because you are the perfect person to do this because I would not have said it probably nicely in a way that they could have accepted.
• 37:16
  I would have been heavily laced with sarcasm, ridicule, and a lot of bitterness and spite.
• 37:22
  Whereas Dave could pull it off and be like, now guys, let's remark it.
• 37:27
  I can rock the vote with plausible deniability.
• 37:29
  Yeah, like, well, it's what we were it's what the email said.
• 37:32
  You know, this is what we were taught.
• 37:34
  This is the learning zone assignment that we had.
• 37:36
  It was about cultural competence.
• 37:37
  Like, come on.
• 37:39
  I love you so much.
• 37:40
  And I hope and pray that those seeds were planted, they grow and flourish, and this is why having such diverse personalities is so important because you legitimately are planting seeds and potentially waking people up with those simple comments.
• 37:59
  Another side note squirrel, we're gonna go off into Leftfield for just a second.
• 38:04
  I recently realized years ago, like years ago, a decade ago, I was called an anti-vaxxer by somebody in my community, and I now found out that they are no longer vaccinating their children, and that change happened very close to when she called me an anti-vaxxer.
• 38:23
  And so, you know, these seeds do get planted and they do grow, and so it just goes to show when we talk about this hope.
• 38:31
  Like, how do you have hope when everything looks so dark and so drab and so speaking of dark and drab, no, just kidding, Nicole?
• 38:42
  My favorite emo chick.
• 38:44
  Um, why don't you come on board, girl?
• 38:48
  She said, let me just segue into the darkness.
• 38:50
  I'm not that dark.
• 38:51
  I mean, a little bit, but um, you know, it's what what was even the question?
• 38:59
  We went five different directions.
• 39:01
  We did.
• 39:02
  The question was so I want you to tell me a little bit about I I want to know when you graduated, but I know that you were an LPN beforehand, so I feel like one of the things that I'm struggling with is even years ago, they did these BSN programs, and that's the big push in the hospitals, right?
• 39:20
  Is to get your BSN to continue to climb that, you know, ladder or whatever, ladder of professionalism, they want you to continue to obtain these higher and higher degrees.
• 39:29
  And so we see people move from uh a different like associates or bachelors, and then they become a bachelor's nurse, and they're not prepared, they're not ready, they've really struggled because they've come from these outside, you know, outside fields and rapidly transitioned.
• 39:48
  So I want to know when you graduated, if you felt that you were prepared adequately by nursing school, and and tell us a little bit how being an LPN beforehand kind of played into that.
• 40:00
  Yeah, so I think um I think I graduated in 2005 or 2006 as an LPN, and at that time I worked in a hospital setting that worked underneath a registered nurse, but we were basically we were basically utilized as glorified text.
• 40:15
  Um I did all the nursing things, but there was a lot of things that I did that um people would compare probably to being a tech.
• 40:22
  And so I think during that particular program, because it was a year, there's a lot crammed in there, there was a lot of good information, it was all about memorizing.
• 40:30
  I mean, there's a lot of things you just had to memorize and go about your business.
• 40:33
  Um, I think what you know made things better for me was my experience prior, just in life, how I interact with people, how I can have conversations, you know.
• 40:45
  We always joke about you know being a waitress, and I was a you know, uh a bartender at one point and the interactions that we have I have with people and being able to start conversations.
• 40:55
  You don't really think that that like matters, but when you're with a patient and you see these nurses interact, it's so awkward because they don't know how to just have conversations and be themselves, or really difficult conversations can come up.
• 41:08
  And so I think past experience and just kind of being more like street smart for me, it had an advantage because where people will say professionally I could probably do better, more patients and families than not relate to me on a much better level because we can converse in ways that they feel comfortable, right?
• 41:30
  It doesn't feel scripted, it doesn't feel like I'm speaking in these high medical terms, and I've always told people that I've taught and I've trained along the way that really a lot of the things that you do to these patients in your job that really matter and make an impact are the things that you don't even think really matter.
• 41:47
  It's your interaction.
• 41:48
  Any of us can pass a pill.
• 41:50
  I mean, schools to me, with the exception of pharmacology, a lot of it's a joke.
• 41:54
  You really do need the hands-on experience, and we learned that in COVID when they let all these nurses bypass these programs that have never talked to a patient, everything was on simulation, they have no clue how to interact with anybody, and they've they they don't know certain things because they just never have the interaction because they they shut it down, right?
• 42:11
  They didn't let you come into the hospital, and if you did, you weren't allowed to touch the patients.
• 42:15
  So I think it really plays a huge role in how you interact with people just as a human being and and being able to relate and be empathetic and past experiences and things that I saw in my life that when I became a nurse made me more empathetic to what was happening.
• 42:34
  So, you know, I am the nurse that people bring in to close the deal, is what I like to call it when there's a problem.
• 42:41
  It's kind of like the mafia, you know, um, when things are not going well, or they're considered a quote, I'm doing air quotes, difficult patient or family.
• 42:49
  I'm the nurse that they would bring in and be like, oh, and it's gonna be Nicole, Nicole's gonna take the assignment.
• 42:53
  And again, most of these people just wanted to be heard, or there was a misunderstanding, or the person before me was a complete moron and and did not do things that they should have, and so this perception occurred that made them react a certain way.
• 43:06
  And so I think all of those experiences um learned on the job.
• 43:11
  I mean, those are things for me personally made me the nurse that I am, and then I went back to school, so I was an LPN, then I went back for RN school, and then I went back for my BSN.
• 43:20
  So I've had plenty of exposure in school, and there were a lot of things that I just didn't understand why are we doing this.
• 43:28
  It's not going to make sense, and I had an advantage because I was already an LPN, so I knew what was going on in the hospital.
• 43:34
  And then they would tell me some you know, BS jargon about how this is gonna go this way and that way, and it just didn't really set you for success, so that the uh the accelerated program co you know, employees did far better than those that were coming in.
• 43:49
  And when I hear that there's programs that you can start from like an RN and go all the way to your nurse practitioner and you've never interacted with a patient and you've never had that hands-on and you've never worked in that capacity, I think it is one of the most dangerous things that we can do, and I've seen it where you can be very highly educated and lack extreme common sense and not be able to interact, and people look at you like they have no clue.
• 44:16
  And so you have to be able to interact, and so I think it can vary person to person, but overall, if you have that opportunity to have experience and the hands-on and learning on the job and seeing it and going through the motions and not just for like a couple of weeks.
• 44:29
  I just met some friends earlier on a unit I used to work at as a heart transplant nurse, some of them are still there, God bless them, the stories that they're telling me.
• 44:37
  Um, there are nurses that are training other nurses that are brand new, as they're brand new themselves with less than three months experience.
• 44:47
  There are nurses that are taking charge shifts that have less than six months experience.
• 44:54
  The stories that we're hearing is absolutely appalling, and like you said, there is a system that is so broken, but is as I said previously, it is all by design.
• 45:05
  And this is why we are the third leading cause of death in the United States because of medical errors and all the things that come with it.
• 45:11
  So I feel like burn it all to the ground, start over and really look at what we're doing here because it's not working, as evidenced by the harm, the lack of staff, the consistent shortage, and the fact that people are not being trained at all.
• 45:28
  And and a lot of them don't they they want the experience, but when you don't have enough staff or resources, you can't train people properly.
• 45:37
  And and even as a student, how many times do we get students and you're like, if I have to take on a student, I'm gonna I'm gonna lose it because you are trying to reinvent the wheel, everything's on fire, and then you have to stop and try to teach someone who's you know, like head dear in the headlights, and it's not a great experience for them.
• 45:55
  So it's just a whole hot mess.
• 45:57
  Well, and it's not a great, it's not a great experience for you because in addition to feeling so disheveled and broken that you can't provide your patients the care that you want to, you know, and you have this duty and responsibility to this student because you genuinely want to see them succeed, you know, and then so for those of you listening, if you can't see our faces, David and I both are jaws dropped when Nicole said three months.
• 46:25
  This is a highly specialized unit.
• 46:27
  Okay, transplants, no joke.
• 46:30
  And are they taking ECMO like uh on these units?
• 46:33
  Do they take ECMO or post post ECMO?
• 46:36
  So it's a couple days out that they take it, correct?
• 46:39
  It's still absolutely wild.
• 46:42
  These are very, very ill patients who have gone through significant surgeries, major changes in their lives, and you have these brand spanking new nurses coming out of school who have not probably had clinical experience, do not understand multi-system failure, and it is a recipe for disaster.
• 47:02
  And so there's no I mean, God bless these nurses.
• 47:08
  This is like a war scene, and it's no wonder that nurses are fleeing.
• 47:14
  Before we before we switch into that, because this is what is the next topic.
• 47:18
  It is nurses regretting their choice as a prof their choice of nursing as a profession.
• 47:25
  Because that's very real.
• 47:27
  I think we've all experienced that, and I would have loved to have kind of gone into and each heard from each of you about a time where you experienced that regret.
• 47:35
  I don't think we're going to.
• 47:37
  Where I want to sew a little bit of hope in here is the fact that we do have the power to change this.
• 47:45
  We do have the ability, we have to shine light on the issue, and it has to come to life.
• 47:50
  In the past couple years here in Indiana, I have seen incredible changes to our legislative um requirements for nursing schools, reducing the clinical hours, making more time in um sim labs, simulation labs.
• 48:06
  So they're not actually working with real patients, they're working with dummies.
• 48:10
  These changes are happening at the state level.
• 48:13
  You have an immense power to make change at the state level.
• 48:17
  When you are experiencing some of these difficulties, and when you unfortunately face harm, you need to take that to your state legislature.
• 48:30
  Send them this episode.
• 48:32
  Like, no joke.
• 48:33
  I might send this to my legislators, they're probably not gonna listen.
• 48:36
  They hate me for good reason because I'm not very nice to them, but they deserved it, so there's that.
• 48:42
  But it's all by design.
• 48:44
  The people advocating for change, as Nurse Nicole has said, are the hospital systems, it is the associations, and and to David's point of this cultural competence and the push for transgenderism, the American Nurses Association put out in their their position about improving the quality of care, which I'm all about giving good care.
• 49:07
  Like, do not take me wrong.
• 49:09
  Trans or gender, whatever, all the things we need to take excellent care of them, and we need to give them the care that they deserve as human beings.
• 49:21
  But what they are talking about is not making sure that we're addressing these issues appropriately.
• 49:27
  It's not, you know, preventing them from having lifelong scars, disfigurement, and mutilation to their body parts, which then results in chronic infections and all sorts of other things.
• 49:40
  It's affirming that mental health illness, and that's my personal opinion.
• 49:45
  I'm not gonna speak for any other nurse.
• 49:47
  But the American Nurses Association is out there promoting this ideology.
• 49:55
  And they're the ones that are advocating and representing nurses.
• 50:00
  With these legislators.
• 50:02
  They're the ones out there making these changes.
• 50:05
  And when we talk about setting these things up by design, all of these different pieces are in place.
• 50:10
  And this is where I think for me, it feels very overwhelming.
• 50:14
  And I think for the average person, and I know Dave and I have had multiple conversations about this.
• 50:20
  He's like, it's it's just what's the point?
• 50:24
  Like, why do you keep going?
• 50:26
  This is why.
• 50:27
  And I go back to that movie with St.
• 50:30
  Maximilian Colby and him being in this cell with other men.
• 50:34
  They know they're not getting out.
• 50:36
  You know, he hears their confessions, which is a very much Catholic thing, whether you agree with it or not, please take the lesson.
• 50:43
  He hears the confession, and I'm not gonna tell you what it is.
• 50:46
  Please watch the movie.
• 50:47
  It's so great.
• 50:48
  But somebody deeply actually injured him, and that's their confession.
• 50:53
  And he forgives them.
• 50:57
  This is a call to repentance, acknowledging what we're doing wrong and how we improve it, but also understanding that by coming overcoming our own failures and rising up and continuing to push through.
• 51:15
  They worked together to overcome to overcome some of the issues that they could have faced in death.
• 51:23
  They all died.
• 51:25
  But they chose how they died, and they chose to die with dignity and inspire Auschwitz in the process.
• 51:32
  That is the power of human spirit.
• 51:35
  Our circumstances are not dire like that of Auschwitz.
• 51:41
  I'm sorry.
• 51:42
  We're not there.
• 51:43
  And so maybe this is a little bit of tough love and me telling people to suck it up.
• 51:48
  But we each have our own individual voice, and when we sing together, the camp is going to hear.
• 51:57
  So don't be discouraged by the fact that the ANA and the hospital associations and our legislature and everybody else are stacked up against us.
• 52:07
  We each rise and work within the scope that we can work.
• 52:12
  And that's what you see here on the nurses' report.
• 52:15
  Each one of these nurses are rising up in their own capacity.
• 52:20
  They're using their voice and they're making change.
• 52:23
  And so we want to invite you to do that with us.
• 52:28
  If you have questions about how you can do that, email us.
• 52:32
  Nurses at AmericaOut Loud dot news.
• 52:36
  Let us know what you're working through.
• 52:39
  Tell us what your issues are.
• 52:40
  We'll do an episode.
• 52:42
  Heck, we might even have you on.
• 52:43
  It'd be fun.
• 52:44
  Let's chat.
• 52:46
  So with that being said, we only have about four minutes left.
• 52:53
  Merry Christmas.
• 52:55
  I hope and pray that this episode has blessed you.
• 53:02
  I want to ask now, and this is totally impromptu, so sorry about it, guys.
• 53:08
  I want you guys to share where you have found hope so that our listeners can go out into the world and spread a little bit of hope of their own.
• 53:24
  Well, you kind of gave a call to action to listeners, and um I find hope in that I've actually been able to make some progress along those lines as some random psychners from Wisconsin.
• 53:39
  I talked about how kind of bitter I am that I wasn't given a better education in nursing school.
• 53:44
  I read a lot of propaganda.
• 53:47
  One of my big soapboxes is, of course, about psychmeds, because that's where I've spent my career in nursing.
• 53:53
  And I've been reaching out to the publishers of the textbooks that misled me.
• 53:58
  I've been reaching out to the patient education vendors, and I have been successful in getting several of them to change their content to change it to what's actually in the evidence space, not what's pharma propaganda.
• 54:14
  So I really enjoy your call to action because you can make a difference.
• 54:20
  Amen to that.
• 54:21
  I I just, you know, I think it can be um really really different for everyone, but for me, when I continue to see that there's something not working, and I have the capability of giving myself to a cause or a calling, um, that that is something that I empower others to do.
• 54:39
  You know, some people always think that you have to really go and go on stage or be in a documentary or go to legislation like you know, Ashley and I do, and that they don't really have an impact, but there's so many ways to get involved, and the hope is is that the time's gonna pass anyways, and we have so many people that are counting on you to want to care, to want to make things better, and we have a choice.
• 55:05
  You know, you can spend your life, you know, not being aware, not putting yourself out there, not trying to better a situation for society.
• 55:14
  Um, and I'm not saying that that's wrong, but or you can step up and you can find something that you're passionate about or something that brings you joy and then figure out a way to use that to spread joy to others.
• 55:25
  And so, you know, especially for this holiday season, there's a lot of people that have lost loved ones that are going to be alone that don't have people to sing songs or rejoice in the Lord, if you will.
• 55:38
  And so, you know, any way that you can extend yourself to be there for others, I think is the most important thing we can do as human beings, and why I think some of us in this field are just so exhausted all the time because we do give 110% to make sure that others don't feel or go through what we have.
• 55:56
  And um so yeah, I encourage to not only go with the call to action to Ashley that she just mentioned, but also trying to find something that brings you joy and figure out how you can share that with others this holiday season and Merry Christmas.
• 56:10
  Amen.
• 56:10
  That was beautifully put.
• 56:12
  I'm gonna take this last 30-ish seconds and just say thank you to everybody for listening to us on America Out Loud.
• 56:19
  I'm gonna pause for a moment and pray with all of you.
• 56:22
  So, in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, dear Heavenly Father, thank you for the gift of um America out loud.
• 56:29
  Thank you for the gift of free speech and for allowing us to be together.
• 56:32
  Thank you for the gift of your son for his humble beginnings, but yet his powerful message of hope and healing and the salvation that he brings to all of us.
• 56:43
  Lord, I thank you for changing hearts, opening ears, and clearing the scales from the eyes of the people of America and giving them the hope to make change because they can.
• 56:55
  Lord, we just want to thank you.
• 56:57
  And we we leave from here with a renewed sense of of hope.
• 57:03
  And our spirit is encouraged.
• 57:06
  May everyone take action this year as it closes to do your will and to understand what that is for them.
• 57:13
  In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
• 57:16
  Merry Christmas.
• 57:18
  Merry Christmas.
• 57:20
  Amen.
• 57:21
  It's time and this is war.
• 57:29
  It's time and this war.