SEE YOU NOW

Heather Bartlett, BSN, RN, CEN, CNML, is a nurse educator and supervisor in the Emergency Department at MyMichigan Medical Center Midland in Midland, Michigan. She is the person responsible for orienting every nurse, ED tech, and unit assistant who joins their team, equipping each one with the confidence, competence, and humanity to show up for patients on their worst days. Her mission is deeply personal. When Heather was 15, her father died of a massive heart attack at age 42. In the immediate aftermath, an emergency department nurse was her rock and her ally. That nurse's compassionate, honest, and unshakeable presence planted the seed for everything that followed.

Heather reflects on what it means to truly see your patients: to hear what they're saying, to notice what they aren't, and to stand with them in the hard spaces as their bridge, their advocate, and their confidant.

For more information on resources, visit ANA's Innovation Website at: https://www.nursingworld.org/practice-policy/innovation/

Have questions or feedback for the SEE YOU NOW team? Future episode ideas? Contact us at: [email protected].

Jaden Dennis, RN, is an emergency room nurse and former NCAA Division I track-and-field athlete, who knows exactly what it feels like to place something precious in someone else's hands and trust they'll run with it. After starting college on an athletic scholarship in Brooklyn, Jaden spent the pandemic taking stock. He had been studying economics, a path chosen more for convenience than calling, when a single mentor changed everything. His coach, Dr. Lena Washington, a physical therapist, All-American athlete, and the architect of a relay team that had qualified for Nationals, served as Jaden's possibility model for what it meant to live a good life. In September 2020, Jaden became a Certified Nursing Assistant. By 2022, he had earned his nursing degree.

Now in the ER, Jaden helps to build the synergy that makes high-stakes teamwork possible by lending a hand or an ear and building trust in the quiet moments. Those small handoffs, he explains, are baton passes: each one a vote of trust, each one proof that when the critical moment comes, nobody runs alone. Listen as Jaden reflects on what sports taught him about nursing, why the best teams are built in the margins, and what it really means to be a nurse who shows up, not just for patients, but for the person running next to you.

For more information on resources, visit ANA's Innovation Website at: https://www.nursingworld.org/practice-policy/innovation/

Have questions or feedback for the SEE YOU NOW team? Future episode ideas? Contact us at: [email protected].

Inspired by stories of the nurses who cared for her cousin, who traveled to the US from the Bahamas for open-heart surgery, Marguerite Rowell, MSN, MSM/HM, MBA, ONC, SCRN, NEA-BC, decided in the eighth grade that she wanted to be a nurse. She came to the United States, joined Baptist Health South Florida, and spent nearly 25 years advancing from staff nurse to charge nurse, to manager, to director, to Assistant Vice President of Nursing, where she helped open the Miami Cancer Institute and served as interim Chief Nursing Officer. But throughout every promotion, one problem never left her: healthcare finance. Nurse leaders are handed multi-million-dollar budgets and a binder from a training session, and then immediately sent back to the floor, where the commitment to patients and staff takes center stage.

So, she built Nurse Math: a mobile app that puts the financial calculations nurse leaders need, ROI, contribution margin, proforma, staffing ratios, right in their pocket, wherever they are. Marguerite makes the case that nurses are multi-dimensional creators at the helm of the innovations that will transform healthcare.

For more information on resources, visit ANA's Innovation Website at: https://www.nursingworld.org/practice-policy/innovation/

Have questions or feedback for the SEE YOU NOW team? Future episode ideas? Contact us at: [email protected].

Rachell Dumas, MSN, RN, is a nurse informaticist, health tech founder, and health advocate whose path into nursing began with a single anatomy class and whose journey into innovation began with nearly losing her life. After a four-year struggle through nine pregnancy losses, she finally welcomed a baby boy. Six months later, she woke up unable to see. When she arrived at the emergency department with acute vision loss and stroke symptoms, she was sent home with an antacid. As a neuro ICU nurse, she knew something was catastrophically wrong. She went to a second ED, got the CT scan, and eventually received a diagnosis: idiopathic intracranial hypertension. It took two brain surgeries to treat it. And in the space between dismissal and diagnosis, HEARD was born.

HEARD is a health technology platform that gives patients the language, tools, and confidence to advocate for themselves in real time: translating medical jargon, documenting incidents, facilitating better conversations with providers, and connecting users to second opinions and legal support when needed. Rachell makes the case that nurses aren't just caregivers, they are uniquely positioned to see the gaps in healthcare and to build the solutions that close them.

For more information on resources, visit ANA's Innovation Website at: https://www.nursingworld.org/practice-policy/innovation/

Have questions or feedback for the SEE YOU NOW team? Future episode ideas? Contact us at: [email protected].

Jester Lloyd Bautista, MSN, PhD, RN, grew up in the Philippines as the eldest of seven siblings in an impoverished family and dreamed of becoming a pilot. Instead, the people who funded his education chose nursing. He was 20 when he graduated, and 22 when he found himself standing in front of rooms full of nursing graduates preparing for their licensure exams. That experience unlocked something: the understanding that teaching one nurse to think critically could ripple out to every patient they would ever touch. He earned his MSN and then his PhD in Educational Leadership and Management, all while teaching nursing in the Philippines. Then in 2015, he immigrated to the United States, and he had to start over.

He began again in the US as a caregiver. Then became a dialysis nurse. Then an ICU nurse for five years. When the opportunity to return to education appeared, he took it. Today at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, Jester leads ASPIRE, the Affiliate Students Pathway from Internship to Residency Experience, a program that walks senior nursing students into their first RN role. He describes it plainly: he is building the bridge he wished had existed when he graduated.

All seven of his siblings are now nurses. And the young man who once wanted to fly a plane has decided he did become a pilot after all, just one who navigates families, students, and a profession toward somewhere better. He sees himself as an example of what is possible and shares that if people understood the impact nurses have, the world would be a better place.

For more information on resources, visit ANA's Innovation Website at: https://www.nursingworld.org/practice-policy/innovation/

Have questions or feedback for the SEE YOU NOW team? Future episode ideas? Contact us at: [email protected].

Anny Jenkins, MSN, RN, grew up in a small, rural town in West Virginia, the first nurse in her family. Her father, a fireman who everyone in their community knew by name, showed her what it looked like to drop everything and help people. That instinct led her to nursing, though the road was long and nonlinear.

She began as an LPN, earned her associate degree from Blue Ridge Community and Technical College, then returned to school during the height of COVID in 2022 to complete her BSN at Western Governors University, where she was honored as a commencement speaker for her own graduating class. She earned her MSN in 2024 and is now pursuing her doctorate, with a clear purpose: to bring advanced nursing education back to the rural communities that need it most.

She believes that you can't be what you can't see and strives to set an example for nurses to achieve more than they might think they can. This hit home for her when, on the verge of leaving nursing altogether, Anny attended a Washington, D.C. conference hosted by the Black Nurse Collaborative and found herself in a room with 250 Black nurses and advanced-degree holders. It was the first time she had ever experienced that and it was a lightbulb moment. Today, she serves as Executive Secretary of the Black Nurse Collaborative, chairs the WV Nurses Association Membership Committee, and travels the Eastern Panhandle recruiting the next generation of nurses.

Her message is simple and urgent: get involved, use your voice, and remember that you are more than your title.

For more information on resources, visit ANA's Innovation Website at: https://www.nursingworld.org/practice-policy/innovation/

Have questions or feedback for the SEE YOU NOW team? Future episode ideas? Contact us at: [email protected].

Protecting nurses and healthcare workers physically and mentally is not just one component of the Safer Together National Action Plan; it may be the one that holds all the others together.

In this third episode of our Safer Together series, Patricia McGaffigan, RN, MS, Vice President of Safety at IHI, President of the Certification Board for Professionals in Patient Safety, and co-chair of the National Steering Committee for Patient Safety talks with Christine Pabico, Senior Director of the American Nurses Credentialing Center's Pathway to Excellence and Well-Being Excellence Programs. Patricia and Christine trace the development of ANCC's Well-Being Excellence Credential, the first of its kind to encompass the entire workforce across every type of care setting. We also hear from two of its pilot organizations, Children's National Hospital in Washington, D.C., and BayCare Health System in Tampa Bay, to hear how they became certified through the ANCC Wellbeing Certification and what that means for their organizations.

Patricia McGaffigan, MS, RN, CPPS · Senior Advisor for Safety, Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI); President, Certification Board for Professionals in Patient Safety; Co-chair, National Steering Committee for Patient Safety

Christine Pabico, PhD, RN, NE-BC, FAAN · Senior Director, Pathway to Excellence and Well-Being Excellence, American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC)

Nikki Daily · Chief Team Resources Officer, BayCare Health System

Rocky Hauch, DNP, RN, PCCN · Advanced Professional Development Practitioner and Nurse Well-Being Lead, BayCare Health System

Trish Shucoski, DNP, MSN, RN, NEA-BC · Chief Nurse Executive, BayCare Health System

Simmy King, DNP, MS, MBA, NI-BC, NE-BC, CHSE, FAAN · Chief Nursing Informatics and Education Officer; Associate Professor of Pediatrics, The George Washington University School of Medicine

Safer Together Series

In the first episode of our Safer Together Series, Donald Berwick, MD, co-founder and President Emeritus of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, and Patricia McGaffigan, RN, MS, Vice President of Safety at IHI, President of the Certification Board for Professionals in Patient Safety, and co-chair of the National Steering Committee for Patient Safety, issued a call to action: safety is not a matter of individual effort; it is a total system responsibility, built on four interlocking pillars, one of which is workforce safety and well-being.

In the second episode, Kelly Randall, PhD, Vice President for Patient Safety and Regulatory Services at Ascension, where she leads the health system's comprehensive patient safety program, high reliability strategy, and system-wide deployment of the Safer Together National Action Plan, showed us what it looks like to answer that call, shifting culture across nearly 100 hospitals, one huddle, one conversation, one near-miss at a time.

Resources

1. The Foundational Workforce-Safety

Lucian Leape Institute. (2013). Through the Eyes of the Workforce: Creating Joy, Meaning, and Safer Health Care. Boston: National Patient Safety Foundation. https://www.ihi.org/library/publications/through-eyes-workforce-creating-joy-meaning-and-safer-health-care

Gandhi, T. K., Kaplan, G. S., Leape, L., et al. (2018). Transforming concepts in patient safety: A progress report. BMJ Quality & Safety, 27(12), 1019–1026. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjqs-2018-008768 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6288701/

2. The Safer Together National Action Plan

National Steering Committee for Patient Safety. (2020). Safer Together: A National Action Plan to Advance Patient Safety. Boston, MA: Institute for Healthcare Improvement. https://www.ihi.org/partner/initiatives/national-steering-committee-patient-safety/national-action-plan-advance-patient-safety

Integrating the Safer Together National Action Plan to Improve Nurse-Led Models Focused on Patient Safety. PubMed. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40876046/

3. Nurse Burnout and Patient Safety

Li, L. Z., Yang, P., Singer, S. J., Pfeffer, J., Mathur, M. B., & Shanafelt, T. (2024). Nurse burnout and patient safety, satisfaction, and quality of care: A systematic review and meta-analysis. JAMA Network Open, 7(11), e2443059. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.43059

Getie, A., Ayenew, T., Amlak, B. T., Gedfew, M., Edmealem, A., & Kebede, W. M. (2025). Global prevalence and contributing factors of nurse burnout: An umbrella review of systematic reviews and meta-analyses. BMC Nursing, 24(1), 596. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12912-025-03266-8

Smiley, R. A., Kaminski-Ozturk, N., Reid, M., et al. (2025). The 2024 National Nursing Workforce Survey. Journal of Nursing Regulation, 16(1), S1–S88. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2155-8256(25)00047-X

4. Workplace Violence Against Nurses

Pascale, A., George, N., Potter, C., & Warshawsky, N. E. (2025). Alarming rise in nurse assaults: Urgent call for legislation. Nurse Leader, 23(3), 321–327. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mnl.2024.12.012

Wolf, L. A., Delao, A. M., & Perhats, C. (2014). Nothing changes, nobody cares: Understanding the experience of emergency nurses physically or verbally assaulted while providing care. Journal of Emergency Nursing, 40(4), 305–310. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jen.2013.11.006

5. ANCC Well-Being Excellence Credential

Carson, W., & Bates, M. (2024). Elevating professional well-being in healthcare: A crosswalk of the NIOSH Impact Wellbeing campaign and the ANCC Pathway to Excellence Framework. Nursing Administration Quarterly. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11373476/

American Nurses Credentialing Center. (2025). ANCC Well-Being Excellence Credential. NursingWorld.org. https://www.nursingworld.org/organizational-programs/well-being-excellence

6. Nurse Well-Being: Building Peer and Leadership Support Program

American Nurses Foundation. (n.d.). Nurse well-being: Building peer and leadership support program. NursingWorld.org. https://www.nursingworld.org/foundation/programs/nurse-wellbeing/

7. Healthy Nurse, Healthy Nation

American Nurses Association. (n.d.). Healthy Nurse, Healthy Nation. https://www.healthynursehealthynation.org/

What if the biggest risk to patient safety in your organization is a broken communication loop? When one of the nation's largest health systems conducted its first National Action Plan assessment, leaders expected to find gaps in the process. What they didn't expect was to find gaps in communication and assumptions held at the top that didn't match the reality on the ground.

In this Insight from Episode 127: Safer Together | From Plan to Practice, Kelly Randall, Vice President for Patient Safety and Compliance at Ascension, walks us through the honest, sometimes uncomfortable conversations that revealed hard truths, and the intentional communication strategy that brought healthcare teams back into alignment around one shared goal: zero preventable harm.

To listen to this Insight clip's full episode, visit the SEE YOU NOW Podcast Episode 127: Safer Together | From Plan to Practice on APPLE, SPOTIFY, YOUTUBE, or your favorite streaming platform.

For more information on resources, visit ANA's Innovation Website at: https://www.nursingworld.org/practice-policy/innovation/

Have questions or feedback for the SEE YOU NOW team? Future episode ideas? Contact us at [email protected].

More than 25 years after To Err Is Human put patient safety on the national agenda, the crisis persists. The WHO estimates that 1 in 10 patients worldwide experiences harm during medical care, and half of it is preventable. And yet one foundational factor remains overlooked: the well-being of the people delivering care. With more than half of nurses reporting burnout and hundreds of thousands expected to leave the profession, the workforce crisis and the patient safety crisis are now one and the same.

In this Insight from Episode 123: Safer Together | The Architecture of a Movement, Donald Berwick, MD, MPP, FRCP, President Emeritus and Senior Fellow at IHI and former Administrator of CMS, and Patricia McGaffigan, RN, Vice President at IHI and President of the Certification Board for Professionals in Patient Safety, make the case that healthcare must look beyond its own walls, drawing on lessons from aviation and other industries, to build cultures where psychological safety, dignity, and the freedom to speak up are the foundation of safe care. Not sentiment but essential reality.

To listen to this Insight clip's full episode, visit the SEE YOU NOW Podcast Episode 123: Safer Together | The Architecture of a Movement on APPLE, SPOTIFY, YOUTUBE, or your favorite streaming platform.

For more information on resources, visit ANA's Innovation Website at: https://www.nursingworld.org/practice-policy/innovation/

Have questions or feedback for the SEE YOU NOW team? Future episode ideas? Contact us at [email protected].

There is a palpable mix of excitement and anxiety about the latest impending wave of Artificial Intelligence. AI tools are being developed that will fundamentally impact our jobs, our relationships, our access to knowledge and creativity, our children's lives, and our planet. But for an industry like healthcare — where fax machines and pagers are common, where people struggle to find affordable care or adequate resources, and nurses are leaving the profession due to administrative burdens and moral distress — can AI be an answer?

In this two-part feature of our AI in Play series, where we explore AI's role in transforming healthcare, host Oriana Beaudet, Vice President of Innovation at the American Nurses Association, Credentialing Center, and Foundation, talks with a nurse and a clinician helping to shape the future of AI in healthcare for one of the largest technology companies in the world.

Episode 130 features nurse Mary Varghese-Presti, Corporate VP and COO of Microsoft Health and Life Sciences, whose team built Dragon Copilot, the first commercially available ambient AI solution purpose-built for nursing workflows. We learn how Microsoft co-designed this tool directly with staff nurses, nurse managers, and nurse executives across more than 10 health systems, and why that collaboration is essential. We'll learn about Microsoft's vision for a three-stage AI future, from co-pilots to agents to a true hybrid workforce, and what it would mean for nurses to have the ability to delegate tasks the way physicians have long been able to do. Finally, we hear the deeply personal story behind Mary's mission, from growing up in an immigrant household surrounded by nurse "aunties," to advocating for a voiceless patient at 4 am as a young nurse at Johns Hopkins, to now leading the technology that she believes will restore humanity and dignity to the very profession that shaped her.

Episode 131 features Dominic King, former surgeon and VP of Health at Microsoft AI, where his team builds and scales consumer health tools that see more than 50 million health-related sessions a day. In this conversation, we learn about Microsoft's partnership with Harvard Medical School and how it's working to ensure that the billions of health questions people ask AI every day are met with credible, clinically sound information. We also hear how he thinks about patient safety and trust in AI, and we'll get his candid take on what AI cannot replace, why clinicians must be central to scaling these tools beyond the pilot stage, and how he believes technology is the single biggest lever for making health systems sustainable in the face of growing global demand.

For more information on resources, visit ANA's Innovation Website at: https://www.nursingworld.org/practice-policy/innovation/

Have questions or feedback for the SEE YOU NOW team? Future episode ideas? Contact us at [email protected].