Leading with Health

Did you know that 45% of nurses have been verbally harassed or bullied by other nurses? That’s according to a 2017 survey by employment agency RNnetwork. And nurses are not the only part of the healthcare world affected by bullying and cliques. In this episode of Leading with Health, I talk about my own experience with cliques

The way we perceive our world influences our reality. For good or ill, we base our decisions on our perceptions, which can even alter the course of our lives. In this episode, I talk about the impact of our perceptions on healthcare and society as a whole.

An other-focused life improves health but our culture has gotten far away from that. What does it mean to focus on community health within a society that is focused so strongly on the individual? What is the health impact of our focus on individuals over community? In this podcast episode, I reference a few articles – here they are:

Did you know that the US now has 45 accredited graduate training programs in genetic counseling? It’s a growing field and, in this episode of Leading with Health, Taya Fallen joins me to talk about her work as a genetic counselor.

Taya is a licensed and board-certified genetic counselor in the state of Illinois and the lead genetic counselor at

In this episode, I dive into the complexities of healthcare screening of newborns. Then I take a winding path into the world of insect egg evolution. The connecting factor is … how our viewpoint affects what we focus on and what we see. I reference a few articles, which you might want to look up:

One thing that always gets my goat is when people caution against “negative” emotions. I know from personal experience that expressing those so-called negative emotions is the key to tremendous healing. So imagine my surprise – and delight! – when I learned that something called Emotional Awareness and Expression Therapy (EAET) has now been shown to reduce chronic pain. (See Can You Reshape Your Brain’s Response to Pain?)

This method is essentially what i figured out on my own 25 years a

Jennifer explores our healthcare system’s attitudes towards doctors with disabilities. This was inspired by the article, What Medicine Can Learn from Doctors and Researchers with Disabilities.

Highlights include:

8:29 – “You’re talking about a system that is all about healing that doesn’t actually value the basic health of its participants, of its own members, of its own staff.”

10:37 – “It’s not so much that we are scared of being disabled … but it’s what will happen to us. What will happen to our social circle, what does that mean for us as people and our identity … we’re scared of becoming that ‘other’.”

11:04 – “We’re so scared of looking at this that we simply don’t.”

11:18 – “Our culture does not do a very good job of helping people
understand how to handle emotions, especially uncomfortable emotions.”

11:29 – “There are no negative emotions; there are just emotions that are more comfortable than others.”

11:50 – Why people close down in the face of people with disabilities.

13:34 – “If we devalue our providers with disabilities, what does that say about our patients and what we think about them?”

15:42 – “Why are we not educated on how many options there are to help people with different disabilities?”

18:10 – “We don’t value real-life experiences as much as didactic, academic knowledge and training.”

21:06 – “We are not taught how to ask difficult questions or to discuss anything uncomfortable.”

Leading with Health is hosted by Jennifer Michelle. Jennifer has a Master’s in Public Health and Epidemiology and is a certified EMT. As President of Michelle Marketing Strategies (https://MichelleMarketingStrategies.com), Jennifer specializes in healthcare marketing. She is on a mission to help women find their voice so they can create a stronger, more responsive healthcare system.

Article link:  https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/06/13/732440454/what-medicine-can-learn-from-doctors-and-researchers-with-disabilities