Once a Nurse, Always a Nurse

The CVOID-19 pandemic has left physical, psychological and moral wounds for nurses who have sacrificed so much to provide care to patients and their families. Some healthcare workers describe symptoms similar to PTSD: having panic attacks, difficulty sleeping, unable to eat or eating too much, exhaustion, tearful, and reliving the tragedies they have witnessed. There is a name for this, which also brings the good news that it can be relieved. My guest in this important episode is Dr. Cynda Hylton Rushton, the Anne and George L. Bunting Professor of Clinical Ethics at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics and the School of Nursing, and co-chairs the Johns Hopkins Hospital’s Ethics Committee and Consultation Service. Together, we will explore the sources of moral suffering experienced by nurses and offer a roadmap for restoring integrity by cultivating moral resilience. Dr. Rushton is the perfect person to talk with us about the symptoms of this engulfing experience and how to find our way out of the cloud.

I hear from nurses/HC workers daily. I hear the incredible things you do to help patients & families under your care in COVID & Non-COVID units; there are stories of love for co-workers, exhaustion, rage; efforts to lighten the load of each other & mind-numbing, heart-aching memories. I hear your doubts about yourself & your abilities under these unrelenting experiences. Who wouldn’t? Do you just want to rest your mind & hearts—to feel LOVE and see LIGHT ahead of you? It has been my dream for the past 9 months to bring that to you in some concrete way. In January I discovered my Guests Melissa Cortez & Dr. Natalee Trevino of CortexEnergySystems.org and realized their dream, is my dream, is your dream. My Once a Nurse Marketing Director, Tanya Abreu & I joined with these women to create the Love and Light for Nurses Website. Join us to hear how we can help YOU reach the support & empowerment that will re-energize you to stay in the game, Monday, March 15 1 PM ET/12 N CT/10 AM PT.

We have the honor of welcoming Dr. Ernest Grant, President of ANA and Dr. Tim Raderstorf, the Chief Innovation Officer at The Ohio State University College of Nursing to Once a Nurse. The two collaborated on the Nurses Everywhere Website, which is exactly what it says: a thank you and dedication to the work, love, commitment, knowledge and experience of the Nurses of America. We have a LOT to talk about: COVID, Vaccines, Needs of Nurses and commitment of nursing organizations to put nurses FRONT and CENTER! Nurses have spent enough time quietly at the bedside doing work the public cannot even imagine! Nurses are also researchers, epidemiology, integrative medicine, education AND innovation specialists. It is time for nurses to be recognized for the unique role we bring to the practice of Health Care of our citizens. Please join us for an exhilarating Episode of Once A Nurse!

There is a new wave of healthcare coming to the forefront of medicine and my 3 guests are among the first to ride that wave. It is called Integrative Medicine and is being practiced by Advanced Practice nurses across the country. Kim Evans, APRN, RN is the founder of Integrative Medicine in Louisville, KY, Pam McDonald, IMNP, is founder of Penscott Corporation, and Mary Ann Osborne, DNP, FNP is the Owner of the Institute for Integral Health. These three dynamic women are here to discuss what happens to the health of a community when nurses are integrating the healthcare. We will also talk about the revolution in nutrition care through the use of the APO E Gene to determine an individual's correct diet. The combination of education, teaching, integrative practice, international speaking years of these women is astounding! Join us!

Post COVID, Nurses must recreate ourselves! We have more, or less, accepted the roles others and Media have portrayed us as. We are FAR more than that! My guest, Ann Scanlon McGinity is a decades-long model of Nursing Leadership, who continues to vibrantly move the role of nurses forward. In this Episode, we will share a DYNAMIC conversation on necessary changes nurses must make for our future reinvention. Let us look at Nurses’ current image. What image would TRULY do justice to who and what nurses are? How will we craft a new, more robust and comprehensive professional identity image? How will we, as Nurses, brand that NEW image, which will require the work of leadership in establishing a culture that supports this image, faculty and clinicians who can live this new image and how we communicate this to the public. DO NOT MISS this Episode if YOU are determined to help transform Nursing and Healthcare!

One of the MOST difficult and most HEALING things a human being can do is to speak about their own “secrets.” Have we ALL grown up believing that we are the only ones who have them and that revealing these truths will destroy us? Just about everyone I know would answer “Yes” to that question. The irony is that it is those who do tell the truth and then seek help, healing and a “maskless” life going forward, are truly the ones released from those demon secrets. My Guest, Kim LaMontagne, has not only stood up with the courage to do this, while she was a successful corporate executive dealing with alcoholism, but she has dedicated her life to helping thousands of others do the same. We will talk about the POWER such conversations bring to the healthy workplace and to the individuals who take their own power back by speaking up.

Much has been written over the past 30 years about Nurses Eating their Young. It has been debated up, down and sideways. My guest, Kathleen Bartholomew, MN, RN decided to do something to stop it. She and two colleagues, Dr. Martha Griffin and Arna Robins, wrote a book called, “The Dauntless Nurse: Communication Confidence Builder.” The book is a NO nonsense look at the reality of sometimes severe Nurse-to-Nurse Hostility. It Exists! It is Devastating to nurses and healthy care of patients! It has to GO! Here is How to do it! We will talk frankly about why nurses can and MUST change this behavior, but also how healthy nurses can heal our ailing America!

What is the cost to Healthcare for not listening to nurses in 2020-21? If Healthcare organizations in the World think they have had problems with turnover in the past, they have not seen ANYTHING yet. My Guest, Melissa Cortez, BSN is a very experienced nurse in high-risk areas. After traveling in the USA as a COVID ICU nurse and seeing the trauma, exhaustion and demoralization of nurses, she decided to share her practice of evidence-based Mindfulness to stimulate personal energy in the middle of even the toughest shifts. If you think that sounds boring, THINK again! Melissa launched her Cortex Energy System and Network in January 2021. Join us for a high energy discussion on COVID Nurse Energy Boost! We will also be talking about Transforming Healthcare! Are you IN?

Our Healthcare system is broken. In fact, we do not have healthcare in this country—we have disease care. We wait until you get sick and then try to fix you, easily the most inefficient and expensive form of “healthcare” in the world. Yet, we CAN truly transform healthcare. Each of us will interact with our healthcare system, whether for our families or ourselves. Let’s conscientiously create a system, based on science, research and experience, that we can each be proud of and that we would feel confident and comforted to take our loved ones to. Let’s transform our broken disease-care system into a model of true caring and compassion focused on health, wellness and disease prevention. The people who truly understand and practice this kind of care consistently, are trained and educated nurses. We come TO nursing with the desire and often mission to deliver this type of care. (Adapted from Transforming Healthcare: Healing You, Me and Our Broken Disease-care System, by Kim Evans)

This is Brian Mohika’s 2nd episode on Once a Nurse. He first appeared on December 30, 2019 to talk about his persistent and committed work as an entrepreneur to invent, sew, market and gain a small foothold in medical equipment with his Cathwear underwear for men and women who wear Foleys, Suprapubic, Biliary, and Nephrostomy catheters. As he watched the stress, embarrassment & frustration of individuals, who must wear leg catheters continuously, he designed CathWear to allow safe, clean, supportive and fashionable looking underwear. It was the DAY of that Episode that he was able to sign a manufacturing company to produce Cathwear in the USA. From there he has been catapulting to the stars, winning award after award and having his product accepted for Medicare payments. To capture the ascendence of his product and the foundation of his life as a compassionate, caring human being, Brian wrote a biography, called “Let It Flow”, soon to be released. We will talk about his and more!