Feb. 12, 2025
Facing High-Stakes Challenges Using Intuition and Wisdom - Stories of A Nurses' Resilence
Jen Johnson, a devoted registered nurse from Ontario, Canada, shares her remarkable stories working in a rural hospital to tackling the fast-paced demands of a stroke center using her intuition and wisdom. Her story is a testament to the often unrecognized but invaluable contributions of nurses everywhere. Jen talks about the critical role of intuition in nursing, emphasizing its importance for both personal sanity and career survival. Her book, "Nursing Intuition: How to Trust Your Gut, Save Your Sanity, and Survive Your Career," serves as an essential guide for nurses and anyone interested in understanding the inner workings of healthcare from the perspective of those who keep it running.
The episode brings to light the emotional and mental challenges faced by frontline workers, especially during the early days of the pandemic. Jen recounts the pressures of maintaining a balance between her work and personal life under extreme circumstances.
We examine how intuition, bolstered by experience, becomes a lifeline in high-stakes environments. The discussion uncovers the science behind intuition and the impact of sleep deprivation on decision-making, bringing to the forefront the need for healthcare professionals to trust and act on their gut feelings, even when self-doubt lingers.
This episode is a tribute to the resilience and essential role of nurses, encouraging a deeper appreciation and support for these frontline heroes.
Bio
Jenn Johnson learned more about intuition after she started listening to what her body was telling her. After years of nursing in the ER she started having a feeling about what was going on with her patients before tests would clearly show the diagnosis. In this episode, Jenn shares some of the science behind intuition and how she started relying on her own experiences when caring for patients.
Jenn is waiting for her book, Nursing Intuition, to be published this fall. In the book, she will talk more about the science behind using intuition and how she incorporates it into her care of patients. Jenn has a wealth of information to share and I cannot wait to read her book when it comes out. You can find Jenn at www.nursejenn.ca. Check out her work!
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00:00 - Nursing Intuition and Compassionate Care
03:39 - Trusting Nursing Intuition and Gut
13:27 - Navigating Nursing Intuition and Trust
18:03 - The Reality of Nursing Experiences
25:41 - Appreciating the Nursing Profession
WEBVTT
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I didn't really put much stock into it at the time, but I remember, after working five years up north in a very, very rural hospital and moving back down south to a huge stroke center and all of a sudden seeing 80 to 100 to 120 patients in 12 hours, you know, I thought it was just a game that I was playing at triage where I would start to guess what people were coming in with.
00:00:21.019 --> 00:00:24.791
You know, obviously, if they're having their hand on their chest, it's potentially going to be chest pain.
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They've got it on their chest.
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It's going to potentially going to be chest pain.
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They've got it on their stomachs, probably abdominal pain.
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But it was just a way for me to stay interested for 12 hours, like hearing story after story after story and trying to figure out who's sick, who's not sick, who's really sick.
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And the more I practiced on it, the more I would trust when something would kind of ping in me, so a heaviness in my gut or an idea that would pop in my head or just a sense that, holy crap, I need to stop and I need to do something now because something's coming down the tracks.
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Hi, I'm Linus Woods Mullins and I love to help women to vibe, to be more vibrant, intuitive, beautiful and empowered in their life.
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So come on, let's vibe.
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I'm really happy to be able to spotlight a topic that I think is so important.
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First of all, you know how, when you are walking down the street and you see someone dressed in military garb and you say thank you for your service, you know and I don't know if we ever get a chance to say that to our nurses, because we don't know who they are, they don't necessarily always have uniforms on.
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But I first want to tell our guest, jen Johnson thank you for your service.
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Jen Johnson is amazing because she is a registered nurse in Ontario, canada, and worked in ED and, rather than go through a whole thing, you can read her bio on the show pages, like I always tell you to, so we can have more time to chat with Jen.
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Jen, thank you so much for being on the Vibe Living podcast.
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It's wonderful to have you here today.
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Oh my God, linus, thank you so much for having me, yeah, and thank you for your service.
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Seriously, I know from years ago managing nurses and being in the nursing industry for about 10 years, all the different hats that you wear, all the different things that you do and I know you're in Canada, but it's still the same in terms of patient care and putting up with so many different things that you never, very rarely, complain about, unless you're talking to another nurse, that you just kind of take on the chin, and over time it just really becomes amazing.
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And you have written a book and first of all which I think is wonderful because people need to read the book to get a perspective on what goes on in a nurse's world and it's called Nursing Intuition how to Trust your Gut, save your Sanity and Survive your Career.
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So I know it's written for nurses too, but in particular, I think that the lay person should read it, you know, so they can think that the lay person should read it, you know, so they can think about the next time you know they have interaction with a nurse, before they decide to go off because the doctor's running behind or because you know the person didn't answer the bell on the floor or whatever.
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Maybe we need to lead with compassion first, because you all do such an important service.
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First of all, tell us about why you decided to write the book.
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Yeah, so the book was never something that I actually thought would happen, with COVID burned out so hard.
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So we ended up when COVID first started.
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Daycare shut down, so my kids were four and five and a half at the time that everything started.
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So I was doing straight nights so I'd be up all day with the kids, because you can't exactly just space out enough with them running around and then I go to work all night and then I come home and stay up all day, then I go back into work and then I'd stay up all day.
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It was something I wouldn't wish on anybody.
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You know, take the sleep deprivation, then mix it with the fear and the anxiety and not knowing what's going to happen, and just it broke me.
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It 100% broke me.
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So it got to a point where, you know, everybody was still volunteering services and offering things and the food was like nonstop, which was insane but lovely and we had lawyers come forward who very graciously offered to do all of the frontline workers wills for free.
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And you can't help.
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You know that they're coming from a good place because, yes, I know, but I'm like my gosh it makes sense, but it's like wow.
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That just lets you know how catastrophic this thing was, because I'm sure most people would not have even thought of that.
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No, and neither did we.
00:04:49.053 --> 00:04:58.125
And so when that kind of came forward, we all kind of looked at each other going like oh, like we really aren't expected to survive, like holy crap, like okay.
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So, which again added a whole other level because you can work with.
00:05:01.172 --> 00:05:10.440
You know we encountered deadly things all the time that are infectious, but you know we kind of get used to it Whereas this was just so new and nobody knew what was going on.
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That just was insane.
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And so it got to the point where, you know, I'm like how could you explain to your kids if you were to die?
00:05:20.608 --> 00:05:25.927
Like how does somebody explain to them that mom chose to continue to go to work Because we all had the option not to go?
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We all had the option, and you know it would take one note from your family physician or your psychiatrist or your therapist or anybody like it would just take one note and that was it, that's all it took.
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But we all just continued to come in, and so I thought, well, how do you explain to kids that mom chose this?
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And so I started to write down some of my really good stories from, you know, the last 14 years at the time.
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You know times I helped patients, times things went well, and those stories were few and far between.
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It's not typically those stories that tend to stick Writing the good stories and then all the very bad stories like everything that you hadn't unpacked in the last 14 years comes flooding out.
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You know patient deaths and times you thought you didn't do enough and all these things, and it all came together and I'm writing them.
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And I'm listening to Llewellyn, who's a publisher out of the US, was doing online book fairs and so they were talking, their authors were talking about their books and what was going on, and one of the authors that I just happened to catch her book was Intuition at Work.
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And I'm like Intuition at Work.
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I'm like I use my intuition all the time at work and I'm like, holy crap, that's it, that's the thread.
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And so I went back and, sure enough, every single story had some aspect of intuition, whether I listened to my gut or I didn't.
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You know, did I say anything or did I not?
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And was I believed or was I not?
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And so, going back, I'm going okay, like I know this now, being 14 years in that this is something that I do use.
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You know, every single time I'm at work whether or not it's a full blown like I, my feet are stopping as I'm walking down the hall because I see somebody, I'm like what is going on.
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But I'm walking down the hall because I see somebody, I'm like what is going on, but I'm always using it, and so I'm like, okay, well, I know that we've talked about this.
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You know, 3 am conversations when the ghost stories come up and everybody's little teachable moments come up, but we never really talk about it out loud, even though it's like an understanding, this concept that we all know and trust, but we don't talk about it because, again, it feels very woo-woo.
00:07:27.403 --> 00:07:59.264
So I thought, well, in August of 2020, I can't put this out without science behind me, because all the misinformation, disinformation was really starting to pick up at that time and so I did a deep dive into all the different angles of intuition you know, insight versus pattern recognition versus experience, and then behavior and all this kind of stuff and what I found was that there's not just information that's purely science based on intuition, but so much information on intuition in nursing that's supported by science.
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You can't help but go like let's do this, let's teach.
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That's amazing because that is such a niche in terms of the nursing piece, but the information that you found out it could be transferable to just about any situation in terms of how we use our intuition and you would think, because this podcast is mostly for midlife women, at this stage of the game, we should know about the idea of our intuition and that we have and that we should use it.
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But I don't think it will come to anybody's surprise.
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Is listening to this?
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How many times have you had that voice but you did something else and it ended up being a hot mess?
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You know, so many times we do not lean into our intuition for a plethora of reasons when it comes to trusting our gut.
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But what, first of all, what does trusting the gut really mean to you and what does it feel like how did you begin to learn that?
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you know it was okay to trust your gut, yeah.
00:08:51.823 --> 00:08:58.506
So thankfully I had one professor in fourth year who mentioned it one time to just trust your gut and go with it, and that's all that was said.
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It was kind of a little bit out of context and I didn't really put much stock into it at the time.
00:09:02.761 --> 00:09:21.553
But I remember, after working five years up north in a very, very rural hospital and moving back down south to a huge stroke center and all of a sudden seeing 80 to 100 to 120 patients in 12 hours, you know, I thought it was just a game that I was playing at triage where I would start to guess what people were coming in with.
00:09:21.553 --> 00:09:25.417
You know, obviously if they're having their hand on their chest, it's going to potentially going to be chest pain.
00:09:25.417 --> 00:09:27.763
They've got it on their stomachs, probably abdominal pain.
00:09:27.763 --> 00:09:37.572
But it was just a way for me to stay interested for 12 hours, like hearing story after story after story and trying to figure out who's sick, who's not sick, who's really sick.
00:09:37.572 --> 00:09:54.889
And the more I practiced on it, the more I would trust when something would kind of ping in me, so a heaviness in my gut, or an idea that would pop in my head, or just a sense that, holy crap, I need to stop and I need to do something now because something's coming down the tracks.
00:09:54.889 --> 00:10:01.363
And so the more I leaned into it, the more I would be right.
00:10:01.363 --> 00:10:06.741
And I'd follow these people through their journey through the ER and you know, were they admitted, did they crash?
00:10:06.741 --> 00:10:07.442
Was it nothing?
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And I was completely wrong.
00:10:08.735 --> 00:10:10.836
You know, it was interesting to see.
00:10:10.836 --> 00:10:18.624
And then I also got to order blood work because we've got medical directives that allow us to order certain sets of blood work at triage, depending on what your chief complaint is.
00:10:18.624 --> 00:10:27.196
And working with my docs for a long time, at that point we kind of went a little off script and we kind of would add things here, there and everywhere that we wouldn't typically order.
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And again those tests when I was like, okay, well, I want to order this test because this person you know it sounds like they've been potentially on the floor for a lot of time and you can have a lot of muscle wasting and this one enzyme can be released that can really cause a lot of damage if it's not flushed out of your system.
00:10:43.442 --> 00:10:47.914
And I was right again, and somebody was like who's ordering CK?
00:10:47.914 --> 00:10:52.995
So creatinokinase, who's ordering CK on, like this patient over here, and I'm like oh, that was me.
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They're like oh, because it's through the roof.
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So thank you so much for doing that.
00:11:06.351 --> 00:11:07.977
I'm like okay, I'm like all right, I'm like I'm not going to get in trouble today.
00:11:07.977 --> 00:11:08.821
Like okay, like let's keep continuing on.
00:11:08.841 --> 00:11:10.687
So it's been a journey to not only figure out what it feels like when it's not like your own.
00:11:10.687 --> 00:11:14.094
You know women's intuition where, again, you're walking down the street and something get off.
00:11:14.094 --> 00:11:18.500
You know move, go down this side street or cross the street or pop into a.
00:11:18.500 --> 00:11:21.251
You know there's somebody behind you that you really shouldn't.
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I don't have a great feeling about this.
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You know, when it's your own wellness and when it's your own life, you know, you just, we trust it without any sort of hesitation, we just go with it.
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But when it's other people's wellness and health and that kind of thing, we're not as in tune to it.
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So getting to a point where you know you have ideas pop in your head and you trust it and you go with it, is huge.
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And once you get to a point of then, okay, I realize that this is happening and I'm having these ideas and I want to go through with this, you know.
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Next thing is how do you bring it forward to your coworkers or your physicians and then begin advocating for patients?
00:12:01.919 --> 00:12:10.081
Because if a lot of people aren't really comfortable with the word intuition again very woo-woo concept but we all are allowed to advocate for our patients.
00:12:10.081 --> 00:12:16.475
We're all allowed to say, hey, I'm just not sure about what's going on with Mrs So-and-so, can you just come and have a look?
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That's completely acceptable and the science even says that.
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You know, if you're a newer nurse and you think something's wrong with somebody, you have the doc come and have another touch point on that patient, even if you're wrong.
00:12:28.745 --> 00:12:33.844
So the patient's not as sick as you thought, or you know, you're just not quite there yet.
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The physician having another touch point on that patient still improves patient outcomes.
00:12:37.874 --> 00:12:41.782
So why not play with it and bring it forward, ladies, are you?
00:12:41.841 --> 00:12:43.043
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00:13:19.183 --> 00:13:22.698
You know you mentioned something that I thought was very interesting.
00:13:22.698 --> 00:13:27.062
You said, basically, you were sleep deprived during a lot of this whole COVID thing.
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So how did sleep deprivation impact your intuition, or did it?
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Oh, I was a mess.
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I shouldn't have been nursing, I should not have been at the bedside, I should have been at home and sleeping as best you can with a four and five and a half year old sneaking into your bed all the time.
00:13:44.336 --> 00:13:55.797
But you know, when I finally did reach out to a counselor or a psychotherapist and we started talking, the very first thing she said was like well, how's your sleep?
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And I'm like you know, it's not great, it's fine, whatever.
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Like thinking that was not such a big deal.
00:14:00.417 --> 00:14:02.942
But man, she like grasped onto that.
00:14:02.942 --> 00:14:04.246
She's like no, like this is.
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This is priority number one right now.
00:14:07.514 --> 00:14:15.402
You know, keeping you safe is also related to sleep and you know you can't function through the day and there's a reason why it's used as a torture method.
00:14:15.402 --> 00:14:27.245
Like you need your sleep and I'm going because again you think that, oh, I can, I can push through, I can, I can keep going, it's fine, whatever, and I'll get through it.
00:14:27.245 --> 00:14:36.597
But in reality, like no, like I was nowhere near my baseline, let alone even my low points previously, like I was so far past it what was some of the?
00:14:36.697 --> 00:14:38.846
yeah, well, I was also thinking sleep deprivation.
00:14:38.846 --> 00:14:40.871
Your immune system has to be compromised as well.
00:14:40.871 --> 00:14:43.135
That's a whole, whole nother can of worms.
00:14:43.135 --> 00:14:47.101
But what were some of the things that you found were interesting through your research?
00:14:47.121 --> 00:15:04.139
when it comes to intuition, that was science based and experience, but a lot of the medical stuff was, you know, the difference between those who trusted their intuition and those who didn't.
00:15:04.159 --> 00:15:14.773
You know, nine times out of 10, it was the critical care nurses who used their intuition and ran with it, for the simple fact that they didn't have time to not trust it.
00:15:14.893 --> 00:15:24.884
They didn't have time to second guess themselves, so they just went with their intuition and ended up, you know, then things went right and then you ended up leaning on it again and things went right.
00:15:24.884 --> 00:15:36.110
So you end up in this positive feedback loop when you're finally trusting your intuition versus anybody who's potentially not in a critical care scenario where you've got the time to talk yourself out of it.
00:15:36.110 --> 00:15:39.135
You know, oh, do I really think that this person's as sick as they are?
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I don't know, and it's 2 sick as they are, I don't know, and it's 2 am and I don't want to wake up the doctor and I don't want to get yelled at and all these kinds of things.
00:15:49.753 --> 00:15:53.269
So you talk yourself out of it and then, potentially, you're putting yourself in a situation which you want to talk about resilience and all this kind of stuff.
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You're putting yourself into a position where you know what happens when the patient crashes or something, an adverse outcome happens.
00:16:05.090 --> 00:16:06.817
Then all of a sudden, you've got to live with that guilt of I didn't say anything.
00:16:06.837 --> 00:16:08.465
I didn't come forward Like I should have said something, and the guilt.
00:16:08.465 --> 00:16:10.933
And then you're potentially carrying that for an entire career.
00:16:11.514 --> 00:16:15.951
Right, and I would imagine that guilt kind of undermines your overall self-confidence.
00:16:16.653 --> 00:16:17.655
Oh for sure, Cause.
00:16:17.655 --> 00:16:22.958
Then all of a sudden it's like well, instead of growing with trusting your gut, you start to shrink back.
00:16:22.958 --> 00:16:23.360
You're going.
00:16:23.360 --> 00:16:29.982
Well, you know, I was wrong last time and the doctor yelled at me, and so why would I put myself in that position again willingly?
00:16:29.982 --> 00:16:31.652
So I'm just going to shrink back.
00:16:31.652 --> 00:16:36.399
I'm just going to not say, I'm going to keep my head down, I'm just going to do what I'm told and go from there.
00:16:36.658 --> 00:16:45.571
And you're going no, no, no, no, no, that's not good either, right, and we're going to take a quick break, and when we get back, I got a question to ask you about that very thing.
00:16:45.571 --> 00:16:51.221
Okay, okay, we're back and you were talking about.
00:16:51.221 --> 00:16:54.673
You know that's not a good thing to back down and not say anything as well.
00:16:54.673 --> 00:17:06.643
How did you learn what your sweet spot was in terms of when to let intuition rule or when to maybe not beat upon yourself as much, because you didn't communicate the intuition?
00:17:08.170 --> 00:17:11.520
Yeah, it's one of those things where it just takes time.
00:17:11.520 --> 00:17:18.298
You know it takes a lot of time to figure out what's going on and then even more time to voice it, because we all worry that we're going to.
00:17:18.298 --> 00:17:31.230
You know the doctor's going to think I'm nuts or I don't know what I'm doing or you know, I'm being oversensitive or any of this kind of stuff, whereas in reality the physicians call it spidey sense and that's an acceptable term for physicians.
00:17:31.230 --> 00:17:43.964
And so in talking to physicians, you know, throughout Ontario over the last 16 years, the more I open up about it and talk about it and I go, hey, if I were to come to you and say, hey, I've got this patient XYZ, this is what I think is going on.
00:17:43.964 --> 00:17:47.071
But I don't know, is that valid?
00:17:47.071 --> 00:17:48.055
And they say absolutely?
00:17:48.055 --> 00:17:50.820
And they say, okay, what if I said it?
00:17:50.820 --> 00:17:53.194
You know my gut's telling me that something's wrong.
00:17:53.194 --> 00:17:55.422
They're like absolutely, we'd 100% listen to it.
00:18:03.109 --> 00:18:08.088
Fun fact, the ones that would say that they didn't want to listen to it, or what I've gotten pushed back personally is residents, and so residents go like oh, what are you talking about?
00:18:08.088 --> 00:18:09.431
Like I need data, I need you know hard.
00:18:09.451 --> 00:18:32.761
Well, that kind of makes sense to me because they don't have the benefit of a whole lot of experience yet, because I would imagine your experience or your experiential set kind of feeds into your intuition, what it calls to your reference, but also to your belief in your intuition because you have that experience to back it up.
00:18:32.781 --> 00:18:42.396
It's fine because really you'll go to the physician, you go to them as many times as you want and I have no problem bugging the heck out of them because that's your job and this is my patient and I'm covering my behind.
00:18:42.396 --> 00:18:49.698
So if you see ever in your charting you know, doctor notified no new orders received, that is the nurse going.
00:18:49.698 --> 00:18:53.030
I said something and I got nowhere.
00:18:53.030 --> 00:18:58.002
So I'm just charting this at this point in time to say I said something and I got nowhere.
00:18:58.002 --> 00:19:05.299
You know if I'm mad mad if I actually use the physician name, because I tend not to use a physician name because there's that level of like.
00:19:05.299 --> 00:19:20.994
We want to protect each other because we all know how hard it is, but it's when these residents, you know, put you off and and then something does happen and then you go back to them being like so, um, maybe next time, maybe give me a little bit of credit.
00:19:20.994 --> 00:19:23.876
And it's hard because it takes a critical.
00:19:23.876 --> 00:19:28.159
Put a light up there for the crosswalk.
00:19:28.179 --> 00:19:33.903
It just seems to be part of the human condition and I know that our listeners there could be nurses.
00:19:33.903 --> 00:19:53.021
There's a whole lot of different people from different backgrounds that listen to this, but the majority of our women between the ages of 45 and 55.
00:19:53.021 --> 00:19:59.596
So they've had a frame of experience to be able to reference, to maybe help them with their intuition.
00:19:59.596 --> 00:20:05.173
Could you tell us about a time when, with all your experience, you didn't listen to your intuition?
00:20:05.173 --> 00:20:06.013
What happened?
00:20:07.656 --> 00:20:14.624
I don't know if there's one that sticks out recently because again I've gotten to the point where I've fully entered my villain era.
00:20:14.624 --> 00:20:17.836
I am starting to give no cares as to what anybody thinks.
00:20:17.836 --> 00:20:30.186
It's a glorious feeling that I'm trying to impart on newer nurses and not to like support the ego or anything, but like we are here, we're watching, we notice the changes, like this is it?
00:20:30.186 --> 00:20:37.737
But when I first started, there was a patient who probably my first patient this was my license, I had my own license.
00:20:37.737 --> 00:20:51.625
At this point I was finally working on my own out of orientation and had a patient with pancreatitis that was alcohol induced, who had been in and out of this very small hospital multiple times through the years what we lovingly refer to as a frequent flyer.
00:20:51.625 --> 00:21:02.595
And you know, taking his vitals first thing in the morning and everything's fine, until he in front of me doubles over and cries out in pain and I'm going, whoa, this is not right.
00:21:02.595 --> 00:21:03.598
What's going on here?
00:21:03.598 --> 00:21:08.316
And you know, redo the vitals and they're starting to trend in the wrong direction.
00:21:08.316 --> 00:21:10.722
But I'm like, okay, well, maybe it's just because he's having pain.
00:21:10.722 --> 00:21:13.519
Call the physician Physician kind of puts me off.
00:21:13.519 --> 00:21:14.941
She's like, oh yeah, he's been in here before.
00:21:14.941 --> 00:21:19.686
His one enzyme that relates to his pancreatitis has been higher before.
00:21:19.686 --> 00:21:23.696
It's actually not that bad this time, so don't worry about it and just brushes me off.
00:21:23.696 --> 00:21:25.579
I'm like, okay, I'm new, what do I?
00:21:26.621 --> 00:21:44.509
And you know, continuing through the day, you know, every hour I'm checking him because I'm like I don't know about this, and just his vitals keep getting worse and worse and worse and I'm continuing to call the physician and continuing to get put off until the point where 11 o'clock-ish rolls around, she finally comes in.
00:21:44.509 --> 00:21:54.646
I'm like, hey, like you got to see this guy, like please, like it's all I can do not to shake you at this point and drag you physically to go see this guy because I'm worried, I don't know what's going on.
00:21:54.646 --> 00:21:57.810
And so you know she finally sees him.
00:21:57.810 --> 00:22:31.164
We get a little blood work, we get a little fluid into him just to try and support his blood pressure, because now his blood pressure is falling and his heart rate's up and now he's got a fever and within the hour of her being there, you know we've moved him into our one cardiac room in the entire hospital and we're getting them all set up and he's starting to tank and he's just the vitals are going into the crapper and he just looks worse and then all of a sudden his heart stops and so we're doing compressions, we're trying to bring him back, but it's too late and by 1 o'clock he's gone.
00:22:31.164 --> 00:22:38.463
But it's too late and by one o'clock he's gone, and it took all of me to put myself together enough to continue on working the rest of the day.
00:22:38.483 --> 00:22:41.922
But, you know, trying to reach out for help to be like what did I miss?
00:22:41.922 --> 00:22:43.429
You know, did I not push hard enough?
00:22:43.429 --> 00:22:45.155
You know what could I have done better?
00:22:45.155 --> 00:22:49.625
Because I feel like this is my fault and, you know, nobody really said anything.
00:22:49.625 --> 00:22:58.557
And it wasn't until I left that job, five years later, that that physician actually kind of reached out to me and said like hey, like don't let anybody tell you, you don't know what you're doing.
00:22:58.557 --> 00:23:02.106
And I knew in an instant what she was talking about.
00:23:02.106 --> 00:23:09.536
And I'm like you're joking right now, like you've waited five years to tell me this only as I'm leaving.
00:23:09.536 --> 00:23:12.305
Had I never left that job, would you have ever said anything in the first place?
00:23:12.305 --> 00:23:16.405
And you've let me live with this guilt for five years, wow.
00:23:16.405 --> 00:23:23.221
And so it's one of those things where it's you push through and you're like, okay, well, if nobody's going to listen to me.
00:23:23.335 --> 00:23:34.417
That's a very interesting story and a cautionary tale, because we, as lay people, don't realize how much support nurses don't get work when they're going through all of that.
00:23:34.417 --> 00:23:44.977
And I wanted to ask you because I do believe that there are nurses that might hear this, and definitely people who have children as nurses If you're a new nurse in particular, what is it that you want them to know?
00:23:46.599 --> 00:23:47.480
It's okay to cry.
00:23:47.480 --> 00:23:50.164
It's okay.
00:23:50.164 --> 00:23:54.258
I cried every day after my shifts, at least for a year, probably two.
00:23:54.258 --> 00:23:58.210
It was a mix of bullying issues also, but it's hard.
00:23:58.210 --> 00:24:00.676
It's going to take time to get comfortable.
00:24:00.676 --> 00:24:02.962
There's so much that nursing school doesn't teach us.
00:24:02.962 --> 00:24:06.296
It barely scratches the surface of what it's like to work at the bedside.
00:24:06.296 --> 00:24:08.917
So give yourself grace.
00:24:08.917 --> 00:24:18.984
It takes time to learn not only a new language of medical terminology but to get comfortable and to get skills and to get experience.
00:24:18.984 --> 00:24:29.191
So don't cut yourself short because you feel like you're not learning fast enough, hard enough, pushing or knowledgeable enough Like it.
00:24:29.191 --> 00:24:32.877
Everybody feels like that when we start, so please do not stress.
00:24:32.877 --> 00:24:57.306
If you can find somebody on your unit or in your team who has some experience and is willing to teach, latch onto them and do not let go, because we're out there and we we understand how valuable our understanding and our knowledge is to those coming in, and that support means the world to somebody coming in, because I would have killed for that support and I didn't.
00:24:59.258 --> 00:25:04.520
Well, it hurts my heart to hear that you would think that would be just an unspoken, that they would provide that, but it's really not that way.
00:25:04.520 --> 00:25:05.825
In fact, I have to ask you this question.
00:25:05.825 --> 00:25:13.891
You know what I want to ask you what show on television best reflects the role of an?
00:25:13.891 --> 00:25:16.476
Er nurse, or is there one?
00:25:18.019 --> 00:25:41.198
so the newest one that just came out, the pit pi I was watching that the other day it is so good and the fact that you know they do each show is roughly an hour long and they do it like 7 to 8am, 8am to 9am, 9am to 10am, and because I binged it all in one go so far, I think there's three episodes out right now.
00:25:41.638 --> 00:26:05.327
I got lost in the fact that this was just three hours into a shift, because this is absolutely what this feels like and you know the pushback to the administrators by the physicians I was just thinking of the administrator, because I know what that's like because I worked for a nurse's registry but I also worked for an HMO in administration in charge of nurse recruitment, so I know what it feels like nurses to see me walking on the floor.
00:26:05.327 --> 00:26:25.241
You know, even though I was an advocate for nurses, I still know what that feels like and many times I would have just gotten out of a meeting having to deal with butts in beds, which is crazy, because we're supposed to be helping to heal people but we got to have so many folks that are sick in order to keep going because of how our American system is.
00:26:25.241 --> 00:26:39.845
I know, maybe Canada's system is a little different, but I've always had a heart for nurses because of all the time I spent talking with them when I was in a nurse's registry and then talking with them when I was in charge of recruitment and then when I became in charge of hospital staffing the whole thing.
00:26:39.845 --> 00:26:51.787
It just gives you a completely different viewpoint and it was one of the reasons why, when I got to the top of that, I left that environment because I had a full-fledged anxiety disorder.
00:26:51.787 --> 00:26:54.579
I just couldn't sit in one more meeting about butts in beds.
00:26:54.579 --> 00:26:55.141
I just couldn't.
00:26:55.141 --> 00:26:58.897
A lot of those nurses have my undying respect.
00:26:58.938 --> 00:27:13.308
In fact, we had this little thing in the registry that we used to say and it was kind of mean, but it was kind of true too there was always a reason why a person's working registry, and part of it was because those were the nurses that couldn't get jobs anywhere else and we had to send them out.
00:27:13.308 --> 00:27:29.548
But the other part was before we got to a certain level here in California where nurses were making pretty good money that they would be working on the floor and then they would sign up for additional shifts just to make ends meet, because so many nurses were single moms because relationships and holding down a marriage.
00:27:29.548 --> 00:27:40.696
Moms because relationships and holding down a marriage so difficult, or they had issues and had to go out on diversion because of all the other things that happened on the floor or in their personal lives.
00:27:40.696 --> 00:27:45.077
They're trying to handle it all and so they try to help with drugs, just a lot of things.
00:27:45.077 --> 00:27:48.826
And these are all the things that go on that nobody talks about.
00:27:49.394 --> 00:27:53.417
And I haven't read your book yet, but I'm going to and I wanted to tell everybody.
00:27:53.417 --> 00:27:56.425
First of all, if you're a nurse, if you know someone who was a nurse.
00:27:56.425 --> 00:28:06.147
Share this podcast with them I think everybody knows someone who's a nurse and then tell them to go to Jennifer Johnson's website because in there is something that's so beautiful.
00:28:06.147 --> 00:28:16.826
It's journals journals to help people kind of work through what they're going through, because sometimes, for so many reasons, that might be all that a nurse might be able to do.
00:28:16.826 --> 00:28:20.804
Because families, when you get home, it's all about what they need, right?
00:28:21.325 --> 00:28:22.307
And your girlfriends?
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