Nurses are the backbone of healthcare, and we take pride in that. However, there are times when nurses don’t feel like they are as important in our community.
A bad work environment can also add up to the stress that many nurses feel. In some cases, many nurses do not feel like their efforts are given enough recognition, so they don’t perform well, or worse, they don’t provide quality patient care any longer.
While many nurses take their profession seriously, some are not sure anymore. What can we do to help our fellow nurses? Is there a way to inspire and encourage them to do better?
What needs to improve in a nurse’s work environment to help them feel empowered?
In this episode, we would like to introduce you to Alice Benjamin, better known as Nurse Alice, America’s favorite nurse. She is a cardiac clinical nurse specialist and family nurse practitioner with over 23 years of healthcare experience.
Alice is Nurse.org’s Chief Nursing Officer and Correspondent and hosts the popular ‘Ask Nurse Alice’ podcast.
QUESTIONS FOR GUESTS:
The questions below are some we’d like to tackle. We go off-topic all the time, so we don’t expect to hit them all. If you have any ideas, please let us know. Looking forward to our conversation!
Being in over 20 years in healthcare, what are some changes you would like to see in healthcare?
How do you think the pandemic has affected nurses?
How should new nurses empower themselves going into this profession in 2022?
What do you think about the RaDonda Vaught case?
She was sentenced on Friday to three years of probation in a Nashville criminal court. After the probationary period, she could ultimately have her conviction dismissed.
Found guilty in March of two charges, criminally negligent homicide and abuse of an impaired adult, after a medication error contributed to the death of 75-year-old Charlene Murphey in December 2017.
What are some of the biggest challenges you have taken on recently?
What is something nursing has thought you that you can apply in life?
ENDING QUESTIONS
Before we end the show we have one last question we like to ask all our guests. If you had the opportunity to have a Cup of coffee with anybody one last time, who would it be & why?
Learn how to become an empowered nurse by watching our full episode. Click here for more 👇
TIME STAMPS:
00:00 Intro 01:35 About Alice 02:30 What are some changes you would like to see in healthcare? 06:26 How can we improve the healthcare system? 09:46 Reasons for some patients’ noncompliance 15:24 One-size-fits-all patient treatment does not always work. 17:57 How should new nurses empower themselves? 20:26 How to be a better nurse 24:13 What are the challenges of being a nurse 29:52 Thoughts about the RaDonda Vaught case? 43:31 The last one cup of coffee with?
EP 155: Why Self-Care is Important For Women With Isabel Bogdan
How important is your health? Self-care is important, but what steps are you taking to meet your needs?
Do you do something about it? Or do you wait till you are diagnosed with a disease to get moving?
In the era we live in, it is easier to pop pills when you are not feeling well than reevaluate your entire body and mind to get to the root cause of the problem.
It is a known fact that many people today are more dependent on medication than on doing something to change their condition. Why is it easier to take pills than make the change you need? When did people stop eating well and doing exercises that can benefit them as a whole?
We are joined by our guest, Dr. Isabel Bogdan, founder and owner of belev.co. She is also a health nurse practitioner with a doctorate in nursing practice. Dr. Bogdan has the vision to intertwine traditional medicine with a holistic approach to transformational change.
Join us today as we discuss the importance of holistic care and how it can change our way of looking at our health in this fantastic episode of Cup of Nurses.
QUESTIONS FOR OUR GUEST
The questions below are some we’d like to tackle. We go off-topic all the time so we don’t expect to hit them all. If you have any ideas please let us know. Looking forward to our conversation!
Can you give us a background about yourself and your nursing experience?
What does it feel like to be in the daily life of Isabelle?
What have you seen as being the biggest factor associated with poor health, particularly women’s health?
On an emotional level, what do women struggle with the most?
How do you heal people in life?
What are women struggling with most in their lives?
Endometriosis?
How do you control your hormonal health?
How do you change people’s beliefs for them to think they’re superheroes of their journey.
What is your current obsession? – How are you making an impact in disease prevention?
Why is self-care important? Learn more and watch the full episode here 👇
You can connect with Isabel through her Instagram @dr.isabelbogdan or learn more about her business by visiting her website belev.co. or send her a tweet through her Twitter @isabel_bogdan.
TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 Intro 00:49 Plugs 2:52 Episode Introduction 4:58 The Reason: Why is Conventional Medicine Failing? 8:52 All about Yoga 16:19 How is yoga done, and how does it benefit the body? 20:45 Yoga’s spiritual side? 23:18 What are women struggling with most in their lives? 28:52 Isabel’s Take on What Is “Consciousness” 32:29 What is the impact of hormonal health? 38:40 What supplements can you take to stay optimal? 41:06 Dietary Consultation with Isabel 47:15 Everything is good in moderation. 51:37 All about gut health. 57:00 A study shows that cranberry juice prevents UTIs. 57:49 How to empower people to be the superheroes of their lives. 1:08:41 Where to find Isabel?
Life after you graduate nursing school seems a bit overwhelming, but with proper guidance and helpful tips, you can manage it too.
Where do you want to work? What are the key takeaways from nursing school? What do you need before you step into the unit? It can be tricky to find the right opportunity.
To ensure you are happy with your first decision, take your time and explore the market to learn about the types of opportunities that will be best for your career goals.
Understanding Different Opportunities
Finding a hospital to work in after you graduate from nursing school is often the main goal of many nursing graduates to start their careers.
Other career opportunities (non-bedside): Legal Nurse Consultant, Hospice Nurse, Public Health Nurse, Occupational Nurse, Dialysis Nurse, Nurse Educator
Research the facility you will be applying for to learn more about the role you’re applying for. Answer the following questions:
What are the facility’s mission, vision, and values?
Do you know what the facility’s designation is?
What population do they serve?
Do you know if they have been awarded or recognized?
Different Units – What Unit Do You Want to Work On?
How would you describe yourself?
Lead the team?
Do you love to collab?
Do you work best alone?
What does your ideal workday look like?
Consistent, likes to plan ahead?
Something new every day to keep you on your toes?
A mix of this and that?
Who is your ideal patient?
Elderly, acutely ill, new mom and infant, children?
When it comes to patients, the best way you can help is?
You can use this opportunity as a stepping stone to advance internally up the specialty ladder.
For example, starting in Med/Surg, then working up to PCCU, and then ICU. Other managers and supervisors can notice you and help you cross-train to their unit.
Utilizing your Network and Resources
Since you can’t rely on years of professional experience to land your new gig, using your network to get your foot in the door is your next best option.
After you graduate nursing school, many nursing schools also have a network to help with different employment available for you before deciding on your first job. While doing clinical rotations, you can also inquire about opportunities.
Build your support network early on, as they can offer advice, guidance, and job leads. You can start by getting all your classmates and professors’ email addresses.
Job fairs are another great way to look for opportunities. At a nursing job fair, you can meet with dozens of prospective employers in a single day instead of sending out stacks of resumes and waiting weeks for a response.
If you’re unfamiliar with which facilities are hiring, you can consider major job boards such as Indeed, Linkedin, and Hired.
Tips on using jobs board effectively:
Make sure your Linkedin profile and resume are congruent.
Adding new responsibilities and new volunteer opportunities you’ve taken
Be attentive to the language you’re using in your profile resume
Mirror the language of job listings that interest you in your profile and resume/
Don’t be afraid to reach out directly
Most job boards won’t list direct information to employers but that doesn’t mean you can’t reach out with a follow-up email about your application. The human connection can be the deciding factor.
Clean Up your Social Media Account
Have appropriate profile photos on all accounts.
Edit the biographies, headings, and descriptions to reflect a professional manner.
Run a Google search on your first and last name. Make sure all photos are appropriate.
Change your privacy settings to private if you do not want potential employers to view your social media profiles and photos.
Preparing for Your Interviews
The purpose of the interview is to determine if they like you and whether you’re a good fit for their team. Nursing is a team effort.
They also want to see if you’re as good as you seem on paper and can help them reach their goals as an organization.
Tip: Treat the interview like a conversation where both candidate and employer have a shared goal of getting to know each other.
You’ll be spending a lot of time at work, so make sure your core values align, and it’s an enjoyable work environment – not just tolerable.
Prescreen phone interview for nurses – Usually the first step of the hiring process. The goal is to reduce the number of candidates and invite the best-fitting candidates for the next step.
They’ll ask basic qualifying questions about:
Education
Employment status
Clinical experience
Goals
Tip: Know your availability, as the goal is to invite you for an in-person interview. Also, ask about the next steps, don’t get off the phone and wonder what’s next.
The Interview
This will be your first opportunity to meet the hiring manager or the unit. Ultimately, they are determining if they personally like you.
No one wants to work with a negative Nancy. This includes a number of things:
How they feel about you
How you’ll fit within their unit
Your level of enthusiasm
How your strengths can help them reach their goals
During this time, or maybe for the next interview, you will undergo a panel/peer interview which will include multiple people, usually from the unit, to help the hiring manager pick the best candidate.
We advise maintaining good eye contact with everyone, engaging in conversation with the entire group, sharing your personal stories, and smiling.
Before the interview, make sure you understand yourself.
Your strengths and weaknesses, the experiences you’ve had in clinical settings.
What is your 5-year goal?
Teamwork: Talk about a conflict within your healthcare team. What was the conflict, and how did you handle it?
Patient care: Tell me about a time when a patient’s family was dissatisfied with your care. How did you handle that situation?
Time management: Talk about a time you worked in a fast-paced setting. How do you prioritize tasks while maintaining excellent patient care?
Tip: Be a storyteller. Storytelling is powerful and memorable. Most importantly, it provides evidence to support the assertions made in your resume.
It gives the employer a glimpse at the type of nurse and human being you are.
What to Buy Before You Enter the Unit
Click pens
Penlight
Nursing scissors
Good scrubs
Right shoes
Stethoscope
Giving End of Shift Report
An end-of-shift report is a detailed report of your patients and their overall care and medical status.
nd-of-shift reports include medical history, recent procedures, lab values, medications, head-to-toe assessment, pain management, and plan of care.
Episode 115: Goes in-depth about the end of shift duties and gives a report
After you accept your position, remember that getting off orientation is not a race.
If you are hired with other new graduates, it is common to look at them and feel like you are competing in the race of who can be the best new grad nurse.
Who can take care of higher acuities quicker? Who will be let off orientation earlier? Your work culture can bolster this, especially if your manager starts making comments that make you feel like you’re behind.
Tip: You must focus on your journey and fill in the gaps you need. It’s not about winning a race.
Don’t forget about self-care days!
Treat yourself, take yourself out, get massages, and buy something nice.
Get those feel-good endorphins pumping. The Self-care culture is at an all-time high with talks about the pandemic and burnout.
Here are the things you need to know after nursing school. Click here for the full episode 👇👇👇
TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 Introduction 0:57 Sponsor Ads 1:34 Cup of Nurses Introduction 3:51 Episode Introduction 6:39 Understanding different opportunities 11:35 What unit do you want to work on? 18:46 Utilizing your Network and Resources 23:29 Tips on using jobs board effectively 24:30 Clean up your own social media account 25:50 Preparing for your interviews 31:01 What to buy before you enter the unit 34:24 Giving end-of-shift report 37:01 Don’t forget about self-care days
Problems in nursing have been there since the beginning, but not a lot has been changed or resolved.
Nursing is the nation’s largest healthcare profession, with over 4 million registered nurses nationwide. Yet it feels like nurses have no voice, no say in what goes on in healthcare.
The struggles nurses face seem to be a nationwide occurrence.
Nurses are plagued with the same revolving problems nationwide. Management in nursing seems to be driven by politics.
The idea of healthcare is centered around patient care. It looks more like hospitals are centered around money.
Top 4 Issues in Nursing We Are Facing
Slowly nursing and healthcare are becoming more of a business. Patient ratios, nurse retention and recruitment, burnout, and patient satisfaction are the current nationwide issues that nurse managers are facing.
Here are some of the problems in nursing we face:
Patient ratios are among the problems in nursing
Currently, California is leading with the best and most complete nursing union. The whole state is union-based, meaning that every hospital in the state is required to have a nursing union.
Some people are anti-union, and it is understandable why but as nurses who have worked in both union and non-union hospitals, we see some major differences. The main difference is patient ratios.
California has the best nurse-to-patient ratios because its nursing union sets strict guidelines on how many patients a nurse has.
It also states that based on a certain level of acuity, a patient might need closer monitoring. These guidelines are clear-cut and strictly adhered to.
When there are good patient ratios, this increases nurse satisfaction. It is hard to understand that nurse managers don’t seem to address this issue.
If you were to ask nurses what would make their job less stressful and empowering, they would all say better staffing ratios. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, as it is a common problem in nursing.
With appropriate nurse ratios, care would be more personal to the patient and patient-centered.
Let’s face the facts, nurses are overworked, and the amount of tasks they have to do decreases the nurse-patient experience.
This means nurses have less time to get to know the patient, and the concept of holistic care fades because we only have time to treat the body, leaving out the mind and the soul.
Nurse Retention and Recruitment
Another problem in nursing that we face is nurse retention and recruitment. Retention and recruitment are something managers struggle with all the time.
Especially during a pandemic with increased demand for nurses finding and keeping them is tough. If your hospital was already short prior to the pandemic, it is most likely in an even worse state.
Trying to keep a nurse is always a struggle because there is endless opportunity for the nurse.
They don’t have to be tied down long-term to one area because almost every staff position has openings, meaning nurses can almost come and go as they please.
The struggle with nurse retention is related to job satisfaction. Nurses don’t just leave because they feel like it. There is a reason for them wanting to work somewhere else.
Job satisfaction seems to be the biggest motivator for a change in employment. This means that nurses are unhappy. It can be due to many things, such as unit politics, working conditions, stress, workload, and pay.
There shouldn’t be a surprise that nurses are leaving a unit to pursue travel jobs. They pay more, allow you to travel, and explore different units.
If you can’t pay your nurses fairly, don’t expect them to pass up opportunities.
Tough on Managers
Recruitment is also tough on managers. Finding nurses to hire in your unit is a mission in itself. New grad nurses are easier to hire but usually more expensive and use up more resources upfront because they are fresh out of school and need a lot of training.
New nurses are an investment. Nurses from other positions need to be sold on the new job because they don’t want to leave their current job and get stuck with a worse one.
Higher pay and a better working environment are the best way to maintain nurse retention and increase recruitment.
It may seem impossible to provide those, but as we’ve seen during the pandemic, there is money for nurses in healthcare.
Burnout is one of the most common problems in nursing
Another problem in nursing that plagues nurse managers is the burnout of their nurses. Being burnt out leads to less productivity and a weaker work environment.
There are two culprits to nurse burnout, one is related to the work environment, and the second is related to overtime,
Unit politics plays a big part in this because no one wants to work at a job where there is constant negativity.
Nurses talk about other nurses, day shift vs. night shift mentality, and a lack of teamwork deafly to a unit. It is important to foster cohesiveness in the unit to promote a better work experience.
A lot of this also has to do with ratios and proper staffing. It is hard to be happy in a career where the expectation is to always do more because there is a lack of support.
Too much overtime
Some nurses work a ton of overtime. For whatever reason, a lot of nurses pick up too much overtime.
It’s great to help out your peers, but there comes the point where you start to forget to help yourself. You lose touch with yourself and your emotions, get stuck in a fog, and slowly fade from your true self.
You start feeling tired every day, and in a slump you cannot get out of; that’s how burnout feels.
Nurses also pick up overtime for financial benefit because they can earn more. This can be due to college debt that many nurses suffer through.
Making more money is always good, but money isn’t always the root of happiness.
Many nurses that pick up overtime to make more money don’t even enjoy that money because they don’t even put aside the time to spend it on themselves and take care of themselves.
It’s just more numbers in the bank. And it’s a growing problem in nursing that we all face.
Patient Satisfaction
We hear about patient satisfaction scores during our huddles and monthly meetings. Are we hitting the quota for the month?
It’s ironic because if you’d like to increase patient experience, we would need more time to deliver holistic care, which does not happen in our current healthcare system.
Making time for patients, listening, and having empathy take time; our time is only so finite in work. Nurses are currently busy charting on the cash registers instead of giving empathy to patients.
Topics covered in HCAHPS Survey:
Nurse Communication
Doctor Communication
Responsiveness of Hospital Staff
Pain Management
Communication About Medicines
Discharge Information
Cleanliness of Hospital Environment
The Quietness of the Hospital Environment
What are these nursing issues we face? How can we solve the problems in nursing? Watch the full episode here 👇👇
TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 Introduction 0:49 Sponsor Ads 2:34 Episode Introduction 2:58 Issues in Nursing We are Facing 6:48 Patient Ratios 11:17 Nurse Retention and Recruitment 20:00 Burnout 20:24 Stressful Work Environment 23:16 Too Much Overtime 27:24 Patient Satisfaction 28:02 Topics covered in HCAHPS Survey
Want to know what nurses find funny? Click here for the full episode 👇👇👇
TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 Cup of Nurses Introduction 1:53 Episode Introduction 2:24 Jessica’s Nursing Background 8:30 Day Flow of a Labor & Delivery Nurse 12:30 What are the difficulties in L&D? 17:56 What are the nurse personalities in L&D? 19:35 What part of L&D Struggles you the most? 47:54 Advise to Nursing Students 50:48 What made you leave the bedside? 55:43 What are your future goals? 1:04:00 Where to find Jessica Sites?
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