Latest / The Shift Podcast / 140. Growing Confidence Through Evaluations

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140. Growing Confidence Through Evaluations · The Shift Podcast

0:00
Welcome to Frontline Static, we will get to hear interviews with
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some of my clients journeys of getting into flight and how they
0:05
utilize coaching to help them create success of getting hired
0:08
with less confusion and more ease.
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Make your dream a reality of getting into flight.
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Listen in as you hear some of the stories of the people
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getting there and come join the flight prep group.
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Hey guys, welcome to episode 140 of Frontline Static.
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Growing confidence through evaluations Fun fact, this is
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take two of this podcast episode.
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I had something not working correctly with my recording
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device and I couldn't recover everything that I had already
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recorded. So I was about halfway through,
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but I know that this time is going to be better.
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These are some thoughts that I'm working on this year in 2026, it
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was always supposed to happen this way.
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And then also the second time is always better than the first
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time. So I want to start out by just
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telling you guys that I, I wanted to really talk about
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evaluations, especially at the beginning of the year.
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Evaluations is something that I teach inside my programs.
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And whether you work with me one-on-one or in the flight prep
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Academy or inside the shift program, I talk about
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evaluations. And I think this is the perfect
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time to talk about it because as we're closing 2025 and as we're
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starting 2026, I see a lot of you guys either continuing on
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with goals or moving on towards new big goals.
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And so evaluations just really help us make what's working
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better and then help us improve what's not working as well.
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So I'm going to teach you kind of today the process that I
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teach and I take you through when it, when it comes to
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evaluating. And I think evaluations are
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really important, one for people who set really big goals for,
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for themselves and also for people who work high level
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acuity, high pressurized jobs. Evaluations really teach us how
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to move forward. And evaluations are so important
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because they help us close the loop.
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Often times we want to move to the next goal before achieving
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it without closing the loop. And what I mean by this is when
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we set big goals for ourselves, we just create a timeline of how
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long that we think it's going to take.
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And most of the times, goals take us longer than we thought
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they were going to take. And I just see a lot of people
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quietly pull back from that goal or give up altogether and then
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move to the next one. And what I really want to offer
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for you guys to do is instead of moving to the next one, let's
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just keep going with the goal until you achieve it.
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It's just going to be taking a little bit longer than you
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thought it was going to be taking or maybe even a lot
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longer. But evaluations help us close.
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If we are done with that goal, the loop of like, what went
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well, what didn't go well? What do we want to do
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differently moving forward? Evaluations also help us create
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a future by making the past better.
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We have to make peace with the past otherwise where we can make
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the future better, but there's we can make it even better by
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coming to terms with the past and really getting really clear
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of what really worked for us and what didn't work for us.
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An example of this that I want to give you is that every
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October in my hometown, it's really cool.
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We have a corn maze that opens up.
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They have like corn maze, a pumpkin patch and it's open I
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think like the beginning of October and it goes to the
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beginning of November. But they start growing the corn
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a couple months before and it's really cool to watch.
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And all the sudden it becomes really, really tall and really,
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really big over the course of a couple months.
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And they also do like a special picture, so an aerial view.
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It's like a pumpkin or scarecrow.
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And it's different every year. But I think about this corn
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maze, when I think about evaluations, it would be like
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going into the corn maze, turning left, hitting that
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roadblock in that wall, and then instead of course, correcting,
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going back to the beginning and doing it over and over and over
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again and hitting the same wall. And that's what I see some of
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you guys do in your goals. And then what you do is you're
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like, it's not for me. I, I guess I wasn't supposed to
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do it. And you subtly give up.
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But that's not what we would do in a corn maze and a corn maze.
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What do we do is we go left, we'd hit the wall, we'd go back
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to the beginning and we say, OK, we're not going to go left this
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time. We're going to go right and
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maybe you go right this time. Then you go left and you hit a
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wall again. Then you're not like, oh, no, I
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give up. This isn't I'm not going to do
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this. No, you go back to the
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beginning. You go right.
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You go right again instead of going left.
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And you keep going and you enjoy the challenge and you work your
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brain all the way through it. And during this course of
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evaluation in the corn maze, you're telling yourself, OK,
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what's working? What's not working?
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And you're constantly walking through your thought process of
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this, of getting through it. And maybe it's because it's fun
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for you. And I really have a podcast
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episode called Enjoying the Challenge, Finding Joy in the
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Challenge. Go back and listen to that
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because the reason why we are big goal setters is because a
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lot of us love the challenge. We love pushing ourselves to the
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limits. And I know this because This is
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why you guys work highly pressurized jobs and high levels
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of acuity, because you love the challenge.
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And so I want to offer you guys that we want to become the
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person who continues to evaluate.
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And I think about my career as a critical care nurse and as a
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flight nurse. And I think that what I was
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really good at was being able to take criticism, especially on
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the quote, UN quote, negative criticism that I got.
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Or maybe in times where people were yelling at me in front of
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other people, or maybe it wasn't the best way delivered.
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I always, not always, but I got really good at not making it
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mean anything about me and really questioning how can I
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look at this, evaluate and just be better and move forward
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better for my patience, for my team, for me and for my growth.
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And what starts with this and what a lot of people don't think
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about is it's really easy when things are going really well,
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but it's really kind of difficult to put our brain to
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evaluating because we don't want to look at what's not going
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well. And so it's the willingness to
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course correct and really take the time to say, hey, what's not
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going well, not make it mean anything about me.
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But the very first start of evaluations, and I want, I want
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to offer all of you guys to do, I'm going to explain this
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process in a second, is you also have to get really clear what
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you're good at and what's going well.
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Because as you're building on what's not going well on your
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course correcting, you also want to be building on what's going
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well. And you want to magnify that at
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the same time. So you're magnifying what's
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going well while also course correcting and, and building on
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what's not going well and changing that that and
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evaluating that. So I want to put that in there.
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This is why I talk about what's going well first.
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I'm going to take you through that process in just a second.
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Evaluations make us stronger. They have us critically think
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it's easy to get stuck in confusion and a spinning loop.
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The way that this looked for me was I would hold on to a call or
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I would hold on to a shift where maybe the patient outcome didn't
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go well or maybe I found out later that the patient didn't do
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well. I would play in my mind, what
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could I do differently where? And I would just play it as a
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loop over and over and over again.
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And I would just be overthinking it and spinning and confused and
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be beating myself up. That's what it looked like for
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me when I didn't evaluate. So what evaluations do is they
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help stop that fat pattern. They help us break free of that
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and help us get really clear of what didn't go well and what do
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we want to do differently. So an example of this for me was
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ICU two rounds. When I first started in the ICU,
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this was the thing that I was the most afraid of.
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I remember ICU rounds would come and I would turn beet red and I
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would stumble and I would try to keep it really short and I just
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like got stuck in my head, which is very odd for me because I
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actually enjoy public speaking. But when you're starting out at
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a new job, you have a lot of imposter syndrome and a lot of
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doubt. I let it get the best of me.
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And So what I decided to do was, hey, I got to get better at
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these. So I decided this is what I'm
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going to do. I'm going to journal after every
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shift. And I would write down what went
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really well during that round, what didn't go well and kind of
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what do I want to do differently.
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And this helped me create an experiment.
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So what I would say is like, for example, to hey, I knew my labs
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really well today. I knew like what my patients
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electrolytes were, what needed to be fixed for those.
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And maybe what didn't go well today was I didn't think about
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what I might need for the rest of the 24 hours or how how if my
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patient crumped, what might I be thinking about ahead of time so
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that that doesn't happen? And so I would like just put
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that down in my journal. And then what I realized as I
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was journaling things is I remember there's a poignant
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moment was like, OK, what if I think about what I need for my
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patient prior to having the rounds instead of waiting to see
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what they all say? And what I did was I started to
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make a list on the dry erase board of like, this is what I
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think I need for my patient. And then I would start to
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discuss it with them. And then I became really, really
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good at at the end of the four years, the rounds were shorter.
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People knew exactly that I was like confident about what I was
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presenting and I knew exactly what I wanted to ask for.
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And they were confident in giving that to me.
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And so that became quicker. But that only happened because I
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was willing to evaluate what wasn't working and then make
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best guesses and experiment with how to get better at it.
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Inside this specific example, it helped me get really specific,
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and that's what evaluations do. It creates specificity, and it
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helped me build on what was working.
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It helped me to trust myself, and it also helped me to make
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the next best guesses of how to move forward.
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All of these combined really made me a solid critical
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thinker. This is what grew my confidence
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and critical thinking. Another example that I want to
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give you is now coaching people getting into flight.
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I've seen them in a lot of flight interviews and I've
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narrowed it down to two reasons why people don't get hired from
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a flight interview or they get a no one is because people just
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don't convey how much they want it.
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They know how much they want it, but they don't convey that in
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the interview. And I think the conveying starts
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prior to the interview, right? That's right.
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Why I really believe in doing right alongs and making
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connections. You want that flight crew and
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that interview team bought into before going into that
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interview. You want them to know how much
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you want it and that's where you can convey it.
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But in flight interview specifically, there's two
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reasons. 1, you didn't convey to them how much you want it.
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You didn't verbalize it, you didn't say it out loud and or
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two, you didn't tell them and leave on the table who you are,
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what you valued and what you are like as a team player.
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And you weren't willing to say that to the best of authenticity
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and to the best of your knowledge and what I say, quote
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UN quote, leaving it all on the table.
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And so I really think it's important to evaluate flight
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interviews to know maybe where you didn't convey those two
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things. So within the next flight
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interview, sit in, you're not doing the same thing.
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You're able to tell them how much you want it authentically
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in a way that feels good for you.
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And then you are also able to tell them who you are, what you
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value in the team player you are without a shadow of a doubt.
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And so evaluations also for flight interviews specifically
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get you really clear on what are you really good at.
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Maybe you're really good at critical care testing, so you
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know you ace that, so you're not going to spend more time with
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that. Or maybe you're really good at
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psychosocial questions and answering the panel interviews.
11:45
So you're not going to really go over those anymore, but you are
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going to focus on case scenarios.
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So you want to magnify, again, in flight interviews, what
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you're doing really well at, and then also be able to course
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correct things that aren't going well and take a guess of how to
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fix those. So now let's talk about like the
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process that I walk you through in evaluations.
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So let's talk about this in general.
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If we're talking about your flight plan and getting to
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flight, where are you now on your flight plan and getting to
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flight? And So what you want to think
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about, and I always offer to go to three things.
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What you want to think about first is what are three things
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that are working? And be really specific about
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those three things. I'm going to give you the
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example of three things that I know really worked really well
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for me as a critical care nurse and three things that after I
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became a flight nurse, what I needed to work on better.
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And those things become exposed. Like whatever you're weaker in
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before you get into flight, they're super, super magnified
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after you get into flight. So three things that I knew that
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I was really good at when I got into flight that I really just
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magnified was my critical thinking skills.
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I did really well under pressure and I was able to ask for what I
12:55
needed. No matter how uncomfortable it
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made me feel or made that person feel, I always, always just kept
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asking for what I needed. Three things that I knew I
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needed to work on once I got into flight and were super
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apparent to me was that I was not a good test taker and I
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needed to get better at that. So one thing, especially with
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flight you, you have ongoing testing and then you have
13:21
certifications and things that you have to complete in a very
13:23
timely manner. And it's just ongoing.
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You have them quarterly, you have you, you have them
13:27
annually, you're always testing. And so I had to get really good
13:32
at Test taking. And I remember I would get like
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really clammy, really, really nervous.
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I didn't know what to say. I could always like perform in,
13:39
in real life situations. But then when it came to like
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scenario based or with mannequins, I tightened up, I
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tensed up, I, I didn't do very well.
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So because of that, I knew I needed to work on test taking.
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So therefore I was like, what would it be like if I hired a
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tutor? So I hired a tutor that helped
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me with the mindset going into these verbal case scenarios and
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also with certifications and test taking.
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So that was really helpful when I evaluated that.
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The other thing that wasn't working for me was seeing calls.
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I worked for a company that did a lot of seeing calls and I
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didn't have pre hospital experience.
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I was all ICU. So what I experimented with and
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what really helped me in in in getting clear that I wasn't
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great at those was I ran scenarios with my partner.
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And the way that this looked for me is my partner was a flight
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medic and so medics have the, they have the confidence and all
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the pre hospital experience and they're the person who brings
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that to the table. And then as the nurse, you bring
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all the hospital experience to the table.
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So with my specific partner, with whoever I was working with
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that day, I'd say, let's run some scenarios.
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Tell me about a real life scenario.
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I'd go outside to the helicopter, we'd take the Gurney
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like we were taking the patient from the scene, loading them,
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all those things. So we just practice scenarios.
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I also wasn't great at intubations at first because I'd
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never been doing, the medics had been doing them on the ground
15:05
already. And So what I did it to get
15:09
better at it was I practice different kinds of intubation.
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So we would go out on the tarmac and I would put the mannequin
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upside down and we would say, hey, your patient, it hasn't
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been extricated yet, but they need an airway and they're
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upside down in the car. Let's go ahead and intubate
15:25
them. So I practice that.
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I practice hard intubations inside the helicopter because
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sometimes we got to take the airway inside the helicopter.
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It's not ideal, but we we would have to do it sometimes.
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So I practice that and just like getting really clear out what I
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wasn't good at really helped me have ideas of doing these
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things. And then the third thing that I
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knew that I wanted to get better at was protocols.
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So when you go from an in hospital critical care nurse,
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you know, you have maybe 100 pages of protocols that you can
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run off of. But when you go as a flight
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nurse, you have 1000, you have hundreds.
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And so instead of getting really overwhelmed by that, which I did
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at the beginning, I told myself what I'm going to do to become
16:07
really good at this is I'm going to memorize the things that I
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know that I need to know offhand that I can't reference.
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So I really got confident and good at.
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I memorized my ACLS drugs, my PALS drugs, and my NRP drugs,
16:22
and then I memorized everything that I needed to know for
16:24
anaphylactic shock, both for adult and pediatric.
16:27
And then the other thing that I memorized was all my RSI drugs
16:30
and my pain medication drugs and my formulas that had to do with
16:34
RSI. And that just got me really
16:37
honed in on, hey, wait, these are the old crap drugs that I
16:41
need to know that I don't have time to reference.
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And that gave me a lot of confidence knowing those to
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where like as I started to see the common protocols, this
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aren't common drugs. I knew what the protocols were,
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but I didn't let myself get overwhelmed at the beginning.
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So I want to offer you when you're doing evaluations, think
17:00
about more than one thing first that is working.
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So offer you the questions, what are three things that are
17:07
working? And then go down to what are
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three things that are not working?
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And then create, ask yourself, how can I move forward from
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these things that are not working?
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What are my best guesses to make them work better?
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And that's where you start to experiment with how to make them
17:24
work better. And then the last question that
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you want to ask yourself is what do I need to be thinking
17:32
differently to move forward with this now, to move forward with
17:36
this plan? And if I would have shut down
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and I would have been like, you know what?
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I am not a good flight nurse. Flight nursing is not for me.
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I would have eventually created the result of quitting, but
17:46
what's really important with this question is you have to ask
17:49
yourself what do I need to be thinking differently to be able
17:52
to move forward confidently? And sometimes that starts with
17:56
just putting possible in front of it.
17:59
But I want to offer you guys a thought.
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I am capable. I am capable is going to help
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you move forward with lots of things is going to help you move
18:09
forward with evaluations. And if I am capable of something
18:12
that you can't get to right now, put the possible in front of it.
18:16
It's possible that I am fully capable and then you're going to
18:19
move to. It's possible that I am fully
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it, then you're going to move to.
18:23
It's possible that I'm capable, then you're going to move to I
18:27
am fully capable. And So what matters is you have
18:32
to create thoughts that are going to have you show up
18:36
differently, going to have you show up confidently.
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And I just like this thought I am capable.
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That's going to move you into capability.
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That's it for this week. I hope you guys got some good
18:50
information on how to evaluate how to be better.
18:53
This is really, I think, how you show up and highly pressurized
18:57
situations, how you close the loop on your goals, how you
19:00
become the person who can set really big goals, not get caught
19:04
up in spinning and making it mean anything about you, and how
19:07
you can continue to better yourself over and over and over
19:10
again. This is how you grow your level
19:12
of confidence is being willing to take the time to do do this.
19:16
And if you guys know that flight is for you, I want you guys to
19:19
know that for by the time you're listening to this, the replay of
19:22
how to become a flight nurse in three simple steps is still
19:24
available until January 16th at midnight.
19:27
So take a look at that. I will put that in the show
19:30
notes for you. And if you know that you want
19:32
flight nursing, quit thinking about it.
19:35
Quit spinning in confusion. Just decide that this is the
19:39
time that you're going to finally move towards it.
19:41
No more scrolling, no more thinking, no more dreaming about
19:44
it. You do not, you have to be
19:45
confident, you do not have to be ready, but I do want to offer
19:48
for you to decide to start taking action towards it now.
19:52
If you want to get out of confusion, you want to get
19:54
clear, you want to learn how to do it in a simple, doable way.
19:57
You no longer want to do it alone and you want to cut your
19:59
timeline in half. This is what we're doing inside
20:02
the Flight Prep Academy. Come and join us inside.
20:05
All right, you guys, that's it for this week.
20:07
I hope you guys have a great week and I will talk to you all
20:10
next week. Bye.
20:11
If anything in this episode sparked your interest into
20:13
getting into flight, come join my Flight flight group.
20:16
We are an entire community that meets together on a weekly basis
20:19
with an ongoing group chat. And if you are already flying
20:22
and you are currently a flight nurse or flight medic, you can
20:24
join my all Flight clinician group as well.
20:26
You can click on the link to join in the show notes or you
20:28
can DM me on Instagram. I hope to see all of you guys
20:31
inside.