Speaker 1: Welcome back to Nursing Uncensored. Hi guys, Oh my god,
Speaker 1: it has been forever, and yes I still exist. I
Speaker 1: feel like I put on an episode like this every
Speaker 1: I don't know, twice a year, saying like, hey, I'm
Speaker 1: still here. Still, I still have recording equipment, I still
Speaker 1: have things to say. But I wanted to use this
Speaker 1: episode as an opportunity to catch you up on what
Speaker 1: the hell has been going on. And you, guys, I'm
Speaker 1: not even the same person that you used to listen to.
Speaker 1: After nineteen years of night shift bedside, I now work
Speaker 1: day shift in a clinic. You guys, hell has officially
Speaker 1: frozen over. Pigs do fly and Adrianne works day shift
Speaker 1: five days a week. I work from home one day
Speaker 1: a week. It also means that I have a two
Speaker 1: hour rush hour commute every day. One hour in, one
Speaker 1: hour out. Well it's like forty fifty minutes whatever. I
Speaker 1: still see patients the clinic, but by and large, a
Speaker 1: lot of what I'm doing is behind the scenes, very desky.
Speaker 1: Because I am now a nurse clinical coordinator. I'm one
Speaker 1: of two in my clinic, and I've been working with
Speaker 1: a really lovely travel nurse because my permanent counterpart, and
Speaker 1: my preceptor had a very beautiful baby, like three and
Speaker 1: a half weeks into my training, so it was a
Speaker 1: little bit of a crash landing for me. But the
Speaker 1: team has been really supportive. Now that I've been doing
Speaker 1: this since like second week in November, I feel like
Speaker 1: I'm getting a grasp on what I'm doing, doing it
Speaker 1: without as many fumbles. Every learning process is difficult at times,
Speaker 1: but let me just tell you the hardest part of
Speaker 1: this journey so far has been going from using the
Speaker 1: inpatient interface of EPIC to using the out patient interface
Speaker 1: for EPIC. Now instead of charting assessments and that endless
Speaker 1: spreadsheet that grid, now I'm searching notes, encounters, placing orders,
Speaker 1: sending facts is via EPIC and other things that are
Speaker 1: like completely new to me, whole new world. I spend
Speaker 1: four days in the clinic, work from home on Fridays,
Speaker 1: but then.
Speaker 2: Also like over the holidays, there were some days I.
Speaker 1: Was able to work from home.
Speaker 2: It was glorious.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you now, don't get it twisted. There's
Speaker 1: still a lot of frustration and still lots of work,
Speaker 1: but leaving bedside was the best thing I ever did
Speaker 1: for this forty three year old body. I had convinced
Speaker 1: myself everything was normal and manageable. This is my life,
Speaker 1: this is how I do it. But honestly, I was
Speaker 1: sleep deprived, chronically migraining, having GI issues. Many of you
Speaker 1: know that I now have some respiratory issues because of
Speaker 1: my post COVID bullshit. But when I started this job
Speaker 1: in November, I caught I think virus, I don't know what,
Speaker 1: but it lasted for like nine weeks. It turned into
Speaker 1: it sinus infection. It has been quite the change because,
Speaker 1: you know, switching from nights to days, I'm switching from
Speaker 1: twelve hour shifts to eight hour shifts. I'm going from
Speaker 1: very physically to demanding on my feet work to like
Speaker 1: sitting at a desk. I had to do two rounds
Speaker 1: of antibiotics to knock out the infection that was plaguing
Speaker 1: me for the first few months of the job. It
Speaker 1: was kind of it was kind of a rough start,
Speaker 1: but we're leveling out now. Anyway, back to the dayshift
Speaker 1: clinic work. I still wear my scrubs most of the
Speaker 1: time because I'm realizing I don't have any like business
Speaker 1: casual clothes, and I literally have not been out shopping
Speaker 1: since I started this job in November.
Speaker 2: So I wear my scrubs a lot.
Speaker 1: I wear like the four business casual outfits that I
Speaker 1: have on repeat. So yeah, I need to go shopping
Speaker 1: or I need to just be fine with the fact
Speaker 1: that I wear my scrubs every day still even though
Speaker 1: I don't need to. I'm in an interventional pulmonary clinic.
Speaker 1: We are the land of broncoscopies thor scentisis for those
Speaker 1: who don't know. Broncoscopy is where we take a long,
Speaker 1: snaky tube, put it down into the lungs with a
Speaker 1: camera at the end, can do biopsies that way, diagnose
Speaker 1: all sorts of things. And thora's are when the doctor
Speaker 1: poke people in the back to their lung sack and
Speaker 1: we drain out fluid they should not be there. In
Speaker 1: addition to give preop instructions, and I'm helping manage prescriptions
Speaker 1: for oxygen tunneled plural catheter supplies, refilling things that need
Speaker 1: to be refilled like Inhaler's steroids. You know, of course,
Speaker 1: there's all guidelines for this that I follow. They talk
Speaker 1: a lot about working at the top of your scope,
Speaker 1: which is a longer conversation that I want to have. Also,
Speaker 1: I'm working more closely with a lot of physicians, more
Speaker 1: so than I did at bedside. At the bedside, I
Speaker 1: was generally only calling our paging and provider something was
Speaker 1: wrong or something was missing from my orders. Occasionally, very occasionally,
Speaker 1: I would help with a bedside procedure, like I've helped
Speaker 1: with lumbar punctures before and bedside thoras and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: But those are all under predetermined parameters. And with the
Speaker 1: level of autonomy that I have comes you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of anxiety. So they basically feed me what orders
Speaker 1: they want me to put in. I put it in,
Speaker 1: I sign it. Our schedulers get them scheduled. When a
Speaker 1: patient is scheduled for a procedure, I call with like
Speaker 1: pre procedural and auctions, the usual stuff like NPO the
Speaker 1: morning of this is how long you have to be
Speaker 1: off your blood thinners? Patients can't do Oh yeah, here's
Speaker 1: here's a good note for all of you doing GLP ones.
Speaker 1: You should not take that within a week of having anaesthesia.
Speaker 1: So if your providers are not telling you this, you
Speaker 1: should know this. If you're going to have surgery, talk
Speaker 1: to them about your GLP ones. So anyway, this is
Speaker 1: what I do. I call people, tell them how many
Speaker 1: hours to be here, you need someone to drive you home,
Speaker 1: blah blah blah blah blah. Side note, you'd be surprised
Speaker 1: how many people think it's okay to come out of anesthesia,
Speaker 1: leave the recovery room and then hop in an uber
Speaker 1: or get on the CTA. No no, no, no, no, no no.
Speaker 1: I am not putting you in a downtown Chicago uber
Speaker 1: after you've just had a bunch of happy drugs because
Speaker 1: I want to make sure you actually get home. I
Speaker 1: don't want you to get kidnapped, fall down, go boom,
Speaker 1: not be able to find your apartment, lose your keys whatever.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so I call and I give people these instructions.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I have to call them multiple times because they
Speaker 1: don't get through them. Sometimes people don't remember the instructions
Speaker 1: and they call back and they go, hey, nobody called
Speaker 1: me with instructions, and I'm like, I called you twice.
Speaker 2: Healthcare stressful.
Speaker 1: People don't always know. There's lots of reasons why people
Speaker 1: need things repeated, and they're handheld.
Speaker 2: So this is what I do. I also help.
Speaker 1: Manage our clinic inbox, which actually entails a lot. I'm
Speaker 1: like helping facilitate referrals for new patients, communicating with providers,
Speaker 1: applying to patients that are calling us about symptoms, plan
Speaker 1: of care, stuff like that. People with chronic lung illnesses
Speaker 1: or that have just had procedures often call with questions
Speaker 1: and concerns, and I basically triage them over the phone.
Speaker 1: So triage, that's another skill that does not come naturally
Speaker 1: to me, because in the bedside world, if something was happening,
Speaker 1: I mostly knew it to look at, listen to what
Speaker 1: monitors to hook them up to. But when you're triaging
Speaker 1: someone over the phone, you can't see them. You can
Speaker 1: only only go off of what they tell you, how
Speaker 1: they answer your questions. This was a routine I had
Speaker 1: down at the bedside. I couldn't manage that shit like
Speaker 1: nobody's business. And if things got worse, I'd call in
Speaker 1: like rapid response or a physician or another team. Now
Speaker 1: I'm in a completely different world. The land of outpatient
Speaker 1: business is a little is different. I can't just be like,
Speaker 1: you know, here's here's a clean brief and an oxy codone,
Speaker 1: go to bed. I'm gonna abstain at this time from
Speaker 1: ranting about how people with terrible, scary symptoms always seem
Speaker 1: to call at the end of the day when I'm
Speaker 1: alone in the office without a provider to consult. So
Speaker 1: triage has been hard. Basically, you're not only trying to
Speaker 1: help the patient, you're trying to cover your ass from
Speaker 1: missing something that could be emergent. It's those of you
Speaker 1: that triage.
Speaker 2: I'm sure there.
Speaker 1: Are lots of people that triage are over the phone,
Speaker 1: lots of people triage in person. It's a skill, it's
Speaker 1: definitely a skill. So so this whole thing has been
Speaker 1: such a dramatic change, and I am loving it because
Speaker 1: I'm learning again. Now. It's not that I wasn't learning
Speaker 1: at the bedside, but this is like a whole new discipline. Normally,
Speaker 1: in the bedside world, my patients would go off to broncoscopy,
Speaker 1: they'd come back. I would have a little idea of
Speaker 1: what happened, why they were gone. I knew they got scoped,
Speaker 1: but I didn't know all the intricacies of it. I
Speaker 1: didn't know what went into it, all the hands behind it.
Speaker 1: And I had never seen a bronc with my own eyes.
Speaker 1: Well since his job started. I've been able to witness broncoscopy,
Speaker 1: thora's tunneled plural catheter insertion. There are plenty of things
Speaker 1: I would love to have the opportunity to see, like
Speaker 1: a rigid broncoscope, which is what some physicians I've heard
Speaker 1: not so affectionately called swords following. Instead of having like
Speaker 1: a flexible tube like bronchoscope, it's a long, rigid scope.
Speaker 1: I'll talk about that another day when I've learned more
Speaker 1: about the procedures we do. The things that I've learned
Speaker 1: have been so eye opening, and actually seeing these procedures
Speaker 1: happening in the in the Bronx suite feels like I'm
Speaker 1: a nurse for a first time in some ways, because
Speaker 1: I still have this awe of like, wow, that's really cool.
Speaker 1: I can't believe they're doing that. Can I see? What
Speaker 1: are you doing? What are you doing now? And unlike
Speaker 1: on the unit, I was like I've seen a lot
Speaker 1: bar or some other bedside, I've seen an LP like
Speaker 1: I don't need to watch this, I'm gonna go get
Speaker 1: some charting done. And now I have this whole other
Speaker 1: part of my brain that's lighting up because you know,
Speaker 1: I'm learning from providers, from books, from the pas.
Speaker 2: That I work with the other nurses.
Speaker 1: I literally learn at minimum one new thing every day.
Speaker 1: Some days it's a lot of new things. I alluded
Speaker 1: a little bit to my health status as a day shifter.
Speaker 1: I find it very interesting that for those of you
Speaker 1: who know, I was having chronic mind bending migraines for
Speaker 1: years and I have not had a single migraine since
Speaker 1: I switched to day shift, and due to other circumstances,
Speaker 1: I've been off of the intense medications I was on
Speaker 1: for them. So it's a coincidence. Now it hasn't been
Speaker 1: a long stretch, like it hasn't been six twelve months
Speaker 1: without a migraine, but it's been what like going on
Speaker 1: four That's unheard of for me historically. Now, I'm not
Speaker 1: saying that night shift was the reason for my migraines.
Speaker 2: But I don't know. Maybe night shift was the reason
Speaker 2: for my.
Speaker 1: Migraines, as I was saying before, I developed asthma from
Speaker 1: one encounter with COVID around Christmas of twenty two. I
Speaker 1: know the exact moment I got infected. It was from
Speaker 1: a ventilator and PP.
Speaker 2: It was a whole thing.
Speaker 1: And that's what contributed to me being gone from the
Speaker 1: podcast and the blog for so long, because I had
Speaker 1: asthma and I didn't know it. So here I was
Speaker 1: having these like horrible asthma attacks and going in for
Speaker 1: emergent or urgent care and they were like, girl, do
Speaker 1: you have asthma? And I was like, no, I've never
Speaker 1: had asthma before. I'm out a life, and They're like,
Speaker 1: well you do now. So I'm getting that under control
Speaker 1: now that I have daily meds for it.
Speaker 2: I feel good.
Speaker 1: I feel healthy, I feel energized. After starting this job,
Speaker 1: I ran into an old coworker at the taco place
Speaker 1: that's within the hospital, and oh yeah, and that's the
Speaker 1: other thing. The taco place is open when I'm at work.
Speaker 1: Lord help me, I've been eating so many fucking steak tacos. Anyway,
Speaker 1: ran into a woman that I used to work with.
Speaker 1: I'm inpatient. I said hi to her, and the first
Speaker 1: thing she said to.
Speaker 2: Me was, you look so happy. Damn right.
Speaker 1: I'm sleeping, I'm eating at normal times, I'm shitting at
Speaker 1: normal times. I'm able to be with my partner on
Speaker 1: the weekends because I don't work weekends or holidays anymore.
Speaker 1: That's a perk that I've got for the first time
Speaker 1: ever in my adult life since I moved out of
Speaker 1: my parents' home twenty twenty four. The holiday season was
Speaker 1: the first time that I have not worked a single
Speaker 1: winter holiday. No Thanksgiving, no Christmas, no New Year's. I
Speaker 1: didn't have to barter out of my shifts. I didn't
Speaker 1: have to trade and rearrange holiday dinners, and for the
Speaker 1: better part of the time between Christmas and New Year's
Speaker 1: I was working at home a lot. So I felt
Speaker 1: like I had fucking died and gone to heaven, like
Speaker 1: for real. When I get frustrated, like when I have
Speaker 1: a caller that's agitated or a doctor that's rud to
Speaker 1: me on the which by the way, is never one
Speaker 1: of my docs. The docs on my team are wonderful.
Speaker 1: They are not rude to me. It's like a whole
Speaker 1: separate thing. I'll talk about that in a minute. But
Speaker 1: there are frustrations, But I have to check myself and
Speaker 1: remind myself. You don't have four or five six collites
Speaker 1: going off. There's no one screaming for you. You don't
Speaker 1: have the overstimulation of alarms and beeping of phones and monitors, compewters.
Speaker 1: So I remind myself to sit in gratitude in this
Speaker 1: job because it would be very easy to become locked
Speaker 1: into the same negative mindset. So early in the game,
Speaker 1: trying to keep myself very aware that I am now
Speaker 1: in a place that I dreamed of being for years
Speaker 1: and I didn't think it would happen. So let's back
Speaker 1: up for a second. I'll tell you a little tale.
Speaker 1: How did I get this job? Okay, it was an accident,
Speaker 1: but it was on purpose.
Speaker 2: So what does that mean?
Speaker 1: Me and the girls, my night crew on night shift?
Speaker 1: Who I miss dearly?
Speaker 2: I really do.
Speaker 1: I don't miss the work, I don't miss the stress.
Speaker 1: I don't miss the emergencies. But I do miss the
Speaker 1: girls that I used to sit with. And I call
Speaker 1: them girls because they're like half my age. But they're
Speaker 1: wonderful because they didn't make me feel like an old part.
Speaker 1: We're all sitting around it's like two o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 1: I hear one of my coworkers talking about how she
Speaker 1: got a job in the pulmonary clinic, and I kept charting,
Speaker 1: but my.
Speaker 2: Ears perked up.
Speaker 1: I was like, at first, I was sad because I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, another nurse that I like is going
Speaker 1: to be leaving the unit. I'm listening to them talk
Speaker 1: and as we're talking about this great pulmonary position, we're
Speaker 1: all sitting at the cluster of computers where we were charting.
Speaker 1: And so I start just like casually, like I open
Speaker 1: a browser, I start looking at the in house ads
Speaker 1: for jobs, and quietly without saying much, just like scrolling through,
Speaker 1: and there was one that said clinical Coordinator IP, which
Speaker 1: is interventional pulmonology. Now, at the time, I thought this
Speaker 1: was the same clinic that my coworker had gotten into,
Speaker 1: And I thought, wouldn't that be great, not only if
Speaker 1: I applied for this job, but had someone that I
Speaker 1: know already there. They can potentially put in a good
Speaker 1: word for me, and I'll have a familiar face when
Speaker 1: I start this totally new world. So at the time
Speaker 1: of applying, I didn't know if the job was still available,
Speaker 1: if they were still interviewing for it. The way the
Speaker 1: system is set up, it's not that easy to tell
Speaker 1: those things. But I couldn't hold back. I was like,
Speaker 1: fuck it, I'm going to apply. I have a resume.
Speaker 1: I've got the resume in my Google drive been working
Speaker 1: on it for a while, which, by the way, side
Speaker 1: note not sponsored and I'm not at all affiliated with her,
Speaker 1: but I use Nurse Fern's resume template and let me
Speaker 1: tell you, two o'clock that morning, I don't remember what
Speaker 1: it was. It was like a Thursday or Friday or
Speaker 1: something like that. Submitted my resume to the website, and
Speaker 1: by Monday I had a phone call in an interview scheduled.
Speaker 1: I could not believe it. I got they want to
Speaker 1: hire me? Are you serious? This was totally accidental. I
Speaker 1: didn't expect to hear shit from them, let alone like
Speaker 1: two business days later, so you know, like you do,
Speaker 1: I have no discretion, And I tell everyone, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I got an interview. I'm so excited, told everyone that
Speaker 1: would listen. I was talking about how the education portion
Speaker 1: of this job was like right up my alley. The
Speaker 1: hours are great, still here at the same hospital. I
Speaker 1: don't have to go through onboarding again. Everything appealed to me.
Speaker 1: When I finally in land at the interview, I could
Speaker 1: not shut up about it. And then a few days
Speaker 1: into the non stop talking about this role, which I
Speaker 1: knew little, very little about at the time, I thought,
Speaker 1: what if I don't get it. What if I'm telling
Speaker 1: every person under the sun that I applied for this
Speaker 1: job and that I want to get the hell out
Speaker 1: of here, and then I don't get it. I'm always
Speaker 1: telling my friends, keep your shit close, brag once it's done.
Speaker 1: But I did not follow this role, not even for
Speaker 1: a minute. And it reminds me of a phrase that my.
Speaker 2: Dad used to say.
Speaker 1: He used to say, even a fish wouldn't get in
Speaker 1: trouble if it just kept its mouth shut. And I
Speaker 1: did not keep my mouth shut. And thank goodness, after
Speaker 1: two rounds of interviews and one kind of shadow day,
Speaker 1: I guess I'm warning in the clinic. I think it
Speaker 1: was really for all of them, so that they could
Speaker 1: meet me and see how I vibed with the team,
Speaker 1: got the job, they hired me. I had been told
Speaker 1: continuously throughout this process interviewing that this team was like
Speaker 1: really possessive of their culture and don't want some bad
Speaker 1: apple coming in and fucking up the friendly vibes in
Speaker 1: the room. And that made me want it even more.
Speaker 1: Are you kidding me? People who get along, there's no cattiness,
Speaker 1: there's no toxic nurses. They basically made me sound like
Speaker 1: they had been restructuring this particular department for years and
Speaker 1: they had finally got into a sweet spot where like
Speaker 1: everybody gets along, everybody does their role really well. And
Speaker 1: I thought, oh God, please, I want this so bad,
Speaker 1: so when they hired me, I would have agreed to anything,
Speaker 1: even a pay cut, which I was expecting a pay cut.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't love hospitals. I don't love healthcare
Speaker 1: as a business. But I am so glad they didn't
Speaker 1: cut my pay. They actually increased my pay a little bit,
Speaker 1: not tons, but it was enough to mean that my
Speaker 1: paychecks haven't really changed it all since, even bedside, even
Speaker 1: though when you stack up night shift weekend shift, in
Speaker 1: theory it's a little more, but it's kind of even doubt.
Speaker 1: So I'm really grateful. And on top of it, I'm
Speaker 1: not crying after every shift. My body doesn't hurt. It's
Speaker 1: just it's one of those things that those of you
Speaker 1: that still are working at the bedside getting ready for work.
Speaker 1: While you're listening to this, you're like, a, yeah, shut up,
Speaker 1: shut up. We still have to do the hard work.
Speaker 1: But after all those years, it's the change I needed
Speaker 1: to keep me from ditching nursing altogether. I've been at
Speaker 1: the bedside for a long time. My first hospital job
Speaker 1: was started in two thousand and five, and I've been
Speaker 1: continuously in hospitals ever since. I don't think that I
Speaker 1: wouldn't change my profession. I wouldn't change all those years
Speaker 1: that I've done. But man, I'm glad that challenge is over,
Speaker 1: because I was getting to a point where I was like,
Speaker 1: I don't know how I'm going to keep doing this.
Speaker 1: So there are two final topics I want to touch on. First.
Speaker 1: I'm going to say, just briefly, the providers with whom
Speaker 1: my work are wonderful. I've worked in hospitals and on
Speaker 1: teams and places where I've been yelled at, spoken to
Speaker 1: like I couldn't find my ass with both hands, and
Speaker 1: also treated like my very valid concerns for my sick
Speaker 1: patients were invalid. I've been talked to you in so
Speaker 1: many disrespectful ways by providers of all titles. During the
Speaker 1: last few months of me learning my new role, my
Speaker 1: providers have been happy to answer questions guide me, even
Speaker 1: when they are clearly overburdened with their own work. Their
Speaker 1: behavior illustrates to me that they do view us as
Speaker 1: a team, and I'm not just some underling that they
Speaker 1: can order around, which is really refreshing because I've had
Speaker 1: people basically say, do what I tell you to do
Speaker 1: and don't question it, when my job as a nurse
Speaker 1: is to question it make sure that everything is above
Speaker 1: board for my patients.
Speaker 2: So all of these providers that.
Speaker 1: I'm working with, I recognize my learning and becoming a
Speaker 1: strong clinical coordinator is vital to keeping this team as
Speaker 1: strong as it has been, and this is also important
Speaker 1: to the clinic growing which we are doing. It's a
Speaker 1: wonderful field with research and all sorts of stuff that
Speaker 1: I'm still learning about and would love to talk more
Speaker 1: about in the future as I can talk about them
Speaker 1: with some.
Speaker 2: Level of knowledge.
Speaker 1: The provider, the nurses, the medical assistance, the patient liaisons.
Speaker 1: This whole team is made up of people that I enjoy,
Speaker 1: and that is kind of miraculous in my mind because
Speaker 1: I think back to some of the bullies and lazy
Speaker 1: people and assholes and all of the various undesirables that
Speaker 1: I've come across in my almost twenty years in hospitals.
Speaker 2: This is chef's kiss.
Speaker 1: So all right, I'm gonna end this by talking about
Speaker 1: something that's been on my mind since the first day
Speaker 1: of training, and that is I don't want to talk
Speaker 1: about this. I am so happy that I have all
Speaker 1: the perks of being a clinic nurse now, but I
Speaker 1: am also so resentful and angry of the chasm that
Speaker 1: exists between bedside nurses, how they're treated, and the perks
Speaker 1: they get compared to clinic nurses. I'm just gonna talk
Speaker 1: about this from my experience. I'm not giving any disclaimers.
Speaker 1: This is just what I've seen. I know other places
Speaker 1: may be different, better, worse, whatever. We just came off
Speaker 1: the winter holiday season and one random day before Christmas,
Speaker 1: I'm in the workroom doing my thing and somebody's like, oh, hey,
Speaker 1: there's food in the other room, go grab some. And
Speaker 1: I'm like, what food in the other room? So I
Speaker 1: go in the other room, Shit you not. The consultation
Speaker 1: room has tables with chafing dishes on them from a
Speaker 1: wonderful steakhouse, tender sliced beef, mashed potatoes, caramelized onions, cake,
Speaker 1: capri salad, beautiful layout, three different kinds of cake. It
Speaker 1: was like, I ate that food. It was so delicious
Speaker 1: and it made me think about all this shitty pizza,
Speaker 1: dried out cookies, unripe bananas offered to me as a
Speaker 1: bedside nurse. And this is not to say that I'm
Speaker 1: not grateful for every time someone fed me on a
Speaker 1: twelve hour shift. But let me tell you, the amount
Speaker 1: of catered, excellent food I've had just from being in
Speaker 1: the proximity of physicians and conference rooms and meetings has
Speaker 1: blown my mind. I went to a training a couple
Speaker 1: weeks ago. It was just for nurses transitioning from bedside
Speaker 1: out patient. No physicians, no pas, nobody else. And I
Speaker 1: someone said, oh, at least he'll be breakfast, and I said,
Speaker 1: you don't understand. This is not going to be the
Speaker 1: kind of breakfast. I get there and it's literally some
Speaker 1: green bananas on the table with a basket of those
Speaker 1: granola bars, you know, the ones that disintegrate into sand
Speaker 1: when you bite into them. Everybody makes jokes about them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what we got. The difference was stark and sad. Oh,
Speaker 1: and they have like, I think, bottles of orange juice.
Speaker 1: Hardly anyone one took any of the meager offerings, and
Speaker 1: at the end they were like, take as much as
Speaker 1: you want take a granola bar. Nobody wants your sandy
Speaker 1: granola bars. I'm sorry. This is like a theme in nursing.
Speaker 1: This is like, you know, you see the catering tray
Speaker 1: go by as it rolls into a conference room, and
Speaker 1: then you get some hot chocolate packets and a care
Speaker 1: off of a water. Good job on meeting our metrics.
Speaker 1: Here's your shitty hot chocolate that's probably less desirable than
Speaker 1: whatever you brought to drink from home. Okay, I keep
Speaker 1: telling my friends at the bedside, apply for clinic, come
Speaker 1: to the other side, come get these perks, come eat
Speaker 1: the beef, so to speak. So I don't really know
Speaker 1: what to do with that emotion.
Speaker 2: It is what it is.
Speaker 1: We all know that, like, their disparities are not disparities,
Speaker 1: they're different, different, different disparities and the types.
Speaker 2: Of work we do.
Speaker 1: Some people want to be on their feet encoding people
Speaker 1: and feeling the satisfaction of like saving a life because
Speaker 1: you've got that fucking IV and you were able to
Speaker 1: get their pressors. Whatever the scenario is. I know that feeling.
Speaker 1: It feels really good. However, I'm done with that. Eleven
Speaker 1: years is a CNA, Eight years is a nurse. I'm
Speaker 1: really lucky. I know how old I am, but after
Speaker 1: all that time, my body, my brain, my patience, it's
Speaker 1: all worn pretty thin. Like I have I don't know
Speaker 1: how to say it. I like spot spawn spond aliosis.
Speaker 1: My back is breaking down. I've got arthritis in both knees.
Speaker 1: But now I feel as though I will never leave
Speaker 1: clinic nurses and I want to bring all the nurses
Speaker 1: that I love with me because it's kind of bomb.
Speaker 1: The perks have been outstanding. I wish like we're doing
Speaker 1: a happy hour next week, like just the team, We're
Speaker 1: just going to go to a place nearby for a
Speaker 1: happy hour. There were a couple other parties that I
Speaker 1: missed during the holidays because I was sick, and nobody
Speaker 1: wants somebody with a sinus infection sitting next to them
Speaker 1: at the dinner table. Anyway, the perks have been great.
Speaker 2: I wish. I guess my.
Speaker 1: Wish is that I could even the playing field a
Speaker 1: little bit and give those bedside nurses busting their ass
Speaker 1: an uninterrupted thirty minute break to eat catering out of
Speaker 1: a chafing dish. You know. Wish I could spread it
Speaker 1: around and make sure that everyone deserves it as getting
Speaker 1: the perks. I don't know. All I can say is
Speaker 1: that I'm pissed, but I'm also happy. This is like
Speaker 1: luxurious compared to what I was doing before. I'm like
Speaker 1: listening to audio books on the way to work, drinking
Speaker 1: my coffee, thinking about nice things instead of being like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, oh I don't get the patient thirty six,
Speaker 1: he's so mean, or I don't want to be cleaning
Speaker 1: up shit all night and getting yelled at by my
Speaker 1: patient's family member. I mean, those are the kinds of
Speaker 1: thoughts I had driving into work, like what is my
Speaker 1: assignment going to be? Am I going to inherit a
Speaker 1: shit show? Am I going to be working with people
Speaker 1: that have my back? Which for the most part, I
Speaker 1: felt like my team has always had my back, But
Speaker 1: like you get floated, you don't know people, they may
Speaker 1: or may not want to help you. I didn't listen
Speaker 1: to a single audiobook last year because if I had downtime,
Speaker 1: I was sleeping, or I was just completely shutting off
Speaker 1: my brain, or I was just burned out and not
Speaker 1: willing to do anything for myself. So now I think
Speaker 1: I'm on my seventh book of the year. Seventh eighth
Speaker 1: book because I have uninterrupted time to sit and listen
Speaker 1: to books as I sit in traffic, and bonus points.
Speaker 1: The books make me not hate being in traffic so
Speaker 1: much because I'm usually laughing at some comedians, memoir or something.
Speaker 1: I listened to Kelly Bishop's book, The Third Gilmore Girl.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I loved it. I haven't loved a
Speaker 1: book and so long. It was so good. I used
Speaker 1: to feel like all I read were nursing journals and studies,
Speaker 1: which I still do, but it's nice to read things
Speaker 1: for non academic purposes. I feel like now I have
Speaker 1: the brain waves to focus on something else besides my
Speaker 1: own stress. Whatever. Okay, hold on, I feel like I'm
Speaker 1: sit talking bedside. Bedside wasn't all horrible, Okay. I love
Speaker 1: the team that I worked with. I have valuable friends
Speaker 1: that I have gathered from all the different hospitals I've
Speaker 1: worked at, and I wouldn't trade them for anything. I
Speaker 1: also wouldn't give up the experience that I've gotten as
Speaker 1: a bedside nurse, because, of course, it allows me the
Speaker 1: clinical knowledge that makes me qualified for the role I
Speaker 1: have now, even though my confidence and expertise and imposter
Speaker 1: syndrome are all like quaking a little bit in this
Speaker 1: new role. I am gonna stick with this and I
Speaker 1: know I'm going to get better at it and I
Speaker 1: will eventually be as good a clinic nurse as I
Speaker 1: was a bedside nurse. That's where we are, and I
Speaker 1: don't know what the future of the podcast is. I've
Speaker 1: talked with a few different people about a few different iterations.
Speaker 1: I would love to say that I will get back
Speaker 1: to regular posting for many, many more years, but I'm
Speaker 1: just taking it as it right now. So doing interviews
Speaker 1: when I'm working five days a week and I'm not
Speaker 1: getting home till like six pm may not be a reality.
Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean that I can't Stele moth Off
Speaker 1: on the blog or in little random episodes, so that
Speaker 1: will still be happening. I'm if I completely.
Speaker 2: Go away, I will tell you I've.
Speaker 1: Been revamping the blog or the website for months now.
Speaker 1: It'll eventually come back up. You can still listen to
Speaker 1: all the old episodes, and new episodes might be a
Speaker 1: little different. I don't know. Might start a storytelling journey
Speaker 1: sharing information about things I've experienced. I might pull in
Speaker 1: a permanent or semi permanent guest host. But all I
Speaker 1: know is I miss this. I miss this forum. I
Speaker 1: miss talking to you guys. I miss learning from nurses
Speaker 1: around the world. I miss the messages that you guys
Speaker 1: send me. I still get some. I'm still making waves
Speaker 1: with episodes that already exist. So for those of you
Speaker 1: that have been with me this entire time, this whole
Speaker 1: like almost eight years, thank you. For those of you
Speaker 1: that are new to the podcas, I have episodes going
Speaker 1: back seven or eight years. I've tried my best over
Speaker 1: time to listen to feedback, improve my equipment, improve my quality,
Speaker 1: so the content that I'm bringing to you is actually
Speaker 1: good and you want to listen to it.
Speaker 2: I've tried to listen all the feedback too.
Speaker 1: In the early days, people were saying my voice was
Speaker 1: too sexy, I talked too fast, I interrupt too many people,
Speaker 1: and some people would get salty about that. But you
Speaker 1: all have contributed to my growth, even if you did
Speaker 1: so with not so nice comments that are still on
Speaker 1: my accounts. I don't delete that shit, whether I can
Speaker 1: or not, I just want to say thank you to
Speaker 1: all of you for being with me on this journey. Okay,
Speaker 1: it is twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2: Shit is hard out there. If this first couple.
Speaker 1: Months working at this job or is any indication that
Speaker 1: I'm going to feel better long term, think clearly and
Speaker 1: maybe come back to you guys with some more So,
Speaker 1: I don't know, no promises on the schedule. I'm still
Speaker 1: the answering messages. I'm still very active on Instagram on
Speaker 1: my personal page. I'm on Goodreads now too, so if
Speaker 1: you want to find me in good Reads and see
Speaker 1: all of the random shit that I'm reading, please do so.
Speaker 1: Connect with me. And eventually nursing onsensor dot com will
Speaker 1: be back up and running. I don't know when, you guys,
Speaker 1: I work on it. I'm still a one woman show.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get my ass back on the patroon pay
Speaker 1: oh my god, Patreon as well, because I got a
Speaker 1: couple Dozney you hanging out in the breakroom and I
Speaker 1: want to make sure you stay in the community grows.
Speaker 1: So h that's a very long goodbye, per usual, but
Speaker 1: I'm done for now. We have a long road ahead
Speaker 1: full of who knows what, and we have a lot
Speaker 1: of shit to talk about, a lot of serious shit,
Speaker 1: some fun stuff too. Over the next few years, It
Speaker 1: will be more important than ever for us to speak
Speaker 1: up in the face of tyranny, disinformation, confusion, false news.
Speaker 1: All that be an advocate, be a disruptor, be uncensored.
Speaker 2: Peace