The Handoff

Nurses are the nation’s largest group of healthcare professionals and use more products than any other group of clinicians, giving them what Karen Giuliano calls  a “uniquely practical and care sensitive perspective on healthcare delivery.” 

Karen started her career as a critical care nurse. She was a self described “tinkerer” whose curiosity about products in the ICU ultimately helped her pivot her career into product development, and she wants to encourage more nurses to get involved in product design and development.

In this conversation, Karen and Dan talk about why nurses are the ideal clinicians to address everyday problems in healthcare, how she hopes that COVID-19 will speed up the role of nurses in healthcare innovation and advice for nurses who want to build new products. 

Karen can be reached at kkgiuliano(at)nursing(dot)umass(dot)edu 

Links to recommended reading: 

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Karen_Giuliano2 

The full transcript for this episode can be found here: www.trustedhealth.com/the-handoff-podcast/karen-giuliano

Nurses don’t think about how politics and policy making shape their roles, and Marketa Houskova believes that needs to change. 

Marketa is the Executive Director of the California chapter of the ANA. On this episode of The Handoff, she speaks with Dan about why growing up in Czechoslovakia gave her a unique perspective on why it’s important to make your voice heard in government, and how that led to a career at the intersection of nursing, healthcare, politics, policy and administration. 

Marketa believes that nurses have huge political power and that many of their skills around things like conflict resolution are highly transferable to the political sphere. In this conversation, she shares advice for nurses who want to get involved in politics and policy making, the legislation that she’s focused on right now and how California stacks up relative to other states when it comes to policies and regulation around nurses.

Links to recommended reading: 

• https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200AB890 
• https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200AB2288 
• https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200SB1237 
• https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200SB1053
• https://www.trustedhealth.com/blog/is-california-part-of-nurse-licensure-compact 
• https://www.trustedhealth.com/blog/trusted-guide-california-licensing

The full transcript for this episode can be found here: www.trustedhealth.com/the-handoff-podcast/marketa-houskova

When it comes to ethics in nursing, easy answers are hard to come by. ANA’s Bioethicist Liz Stokes says that the questions she helps nurses tackle are rarely a case of “wrong vs. right,” but rather “right vs. right,” and her job is to help ANA’s members think through those issues in a constructive and ethical way. Between COVID-19 and increasing urgency on conversations around health equity, Liz is fielding more ethical questions than ever these days, and in this episode of The Handoff, she speaks with Dan about what she’s hearing. 

Liz shares insights into the kinds of ethical dilemmas she’s seeing nurses struggle with as a result of COVID-19 and how they are weighing their professional obligations to deliver care against a lack of PPE and other resources. She recommends several resources for nurses working on the frontlines of the pandemic. 

Liz and Dan also discuss the intersection of racial justice and the nursing profession, and the tools for nurses who want to avoid health disparities in their own organizations. One surprising insight? While we often talk about the intersection of racism and healthcare as it relates to patients, Liz says she is often asked by ANA members about the racism that they experience from their patients. 

You can reach Liz at ethics(at)ana(dot)org

Links to recommended reading: 

https://asbh.org/

https://www.healthynursehealthynation.org/ 

https://www.nursingworld.org/practice-policy/work-environment/health-safety/disaster-preparedness/coronavirus/what-you-need-to-know/the-well-being-initiative/

https://www.nursingworld.org/practice-policy/nursing-excellence/ethics/code-of-ethics-for-nurses/

https://www.trustedhealth.com/mental-health 

https://www.trustedhealth.com/blog/the-burden-of-caring-the-moral-injury-of-covid-19 

The full transcript for this episode can be found here: www.trustedhealth.com/the-handoff-podcast/liz-stokes

Why does the U.S. have such disparities in health outcomes across different patient populations? It’s a question that has come up with increasing frequency in the wake of COVID-19 and larger conversations around racial equality in the U.S. 

On this episode of The Handoff, Dan and a special co-host speak with Shawna Butler, a Nurse Economist and the host of Johnson & Johnson’s See You Now podcast about what health equity means to her and her advice for nurses who want to ensure more equitable outcomes for their patients.  

Shawna believes that health is inherently local and that by focusing so much on global comparisons, we’re missing an important part of the story. She encourages us to look at our cities and towns to understand the root of the problem and start to find solutions. 

Dan also speaks with Shawna about everything from how the U.S. healthcare system stacks up against other countries and the number one thing she would change (hint: it’s probably not what you think!) to school re-openings and even her takeaways from multiple encounters with late Congressman John Lewis. 

Links to recommended reading: 

https://nursing.jnj.com/see-you-now-podcast 

https://exponential.singularityu.org/medicine/

https://www.trustedhealth.com/blog/how-nurses-can-help-dismantle-racial-healthcare-disparity 

The full transcript for this episode can be found here: www.trustedhealth.com/the-handoff-podcast/shawna-butler

Being a nurse leader is never easy, but during a once-in-a-generation public health crisis like COVID-19, it’s particularly difficult. On this episode of The Handoff, Dan speaks with Marion Broome, Dean of Duke University’s School of Nursing, about how she and her team are coping with the COVID-19 pandemic, and how she thinks about leading through difficult times. 

Marion is a big believer in two things: relationships and communication. She encourages all leaders to build a strong foundation with their colleagues before a crisis hits. When you’re in the thick of it, Marion says it’s all about communication and that it has to come from the top. She shares with Dan how she’s put this into practice at Duke with weekly town halls to keep everyone informed. She and Dan also discuss the art of decision making in a crisis, and why non-decisions effectively become decisions. 

The full transcript for this episode can be found here: www.trustedhealth.com/the-handoff-podcast/marion-broome

What are the best tools and resources for nurses who are thinking about their next career move? How should a nurse go about exploring non-traditional career paths? Is now even a good time to think about making a move? In this episode of The Handoff, Dan covers these questions and more with veteran healthcare executive and career coach Beth A. Brooks. 

Beth’s career spans more than three decades across three distinct sectors of the healthcare industry: for-profit companies, academic administration and nursing operations within health care systems (though she says her favorite job ever was at an advertising agency!). She’s an expert in the quality of nursing worklife and developed Brooks' Quality of Nursing Worklife Survey. Today she helps nurses and nurse leaders make smart decisions about their careers. 

She’s particularly passionate about helping nurses get on to company boards. She shares advice for nurses who want to go down this path, while being candid about the fact that it’s still a struggle, even with recent legislation in California mandating that every public company needs to have at least one woman on its board. 

Links to recommended reading: 

https://www.careeranchorsonline.com/SCA/

https://www.aonl.org/resources/online-assessments

https://matter.health/ 

https://www.nursesonboardscoalition.org/

https://www.trustedhealth.com/blog/5-simple-ways-to-advance-your-nursing-career 

The full transcript for this episode can be found here: www.trustedhealth.com/the-handoff-podcast/beth-brooks

It’s easy to look at other organizations’ innovation initiatives and feel envious and overwhelmed by the idea of trying to initiate similar change within your own workplace. But Chris McCarthy and Christi Zuber argue that nurses are actually well-suited to this challenge because of their skills as “conveners of people” who are accustomed to working with stakeholders across multiple disciplines. They also believe that the purpose-oriented nature of nursing is one of its superpowers and gives nurses the unique ability to be change agents. 

In this episode, Chris and Christi, who spent more than a decade working together as co-founders and leaders of Kaiser Permanente’s Innovation Consultancy, discuss the role of human-centered design in healthcare, the role that culture plays in innovation and why value trumps both passion and methodology. 

Links to recommended reading: 

https://www.nursefamilypartnership.org/ 

https://hopelab.org/ 

https://www.aspenlabsnetwork.com/ 

https://www.nurseleader.com/article/S1541-4612(20)30070-7/pdf

https://hbr.org/2010/09/kaiser-permanentes-innovation-on-the-front-lines 

The full transcript for this episode can be found here: www.trustedhealth.com/the-handoff-podcast/chris-mccarthy-and-christi-zuber

On this episode of The Handoff, Dan speaks with Joey Ferry and Taofiki Gafar-Schaner, the nurse entrepreneurs behind SafeSeizure pads-- self-inflating, single patient use seizure pads that are tailored to fit hospital beds and cribs. They talk to Dan about how their experience as bedside nurses using a combination of bed linens, tape and mesh underwear to create a safety pad for seizure patients inspired their invention. They point to this as just one of the many workarounds that the nursing profession is full of and explain how those are the areas that are ripe for innovation in the field. 

Joey and Taofiki also share the advice that they’ve given to other aspiring nurse entrepreneurs, as well as their thoughts on how hospital leaders can encourage innovation from within their own facilities. 

You can find out more about SafeSeizures and Joey and Taofiki’s story at www.safeseizure.com and www.frontierhealthresources.com.

The full transcript for this episode can be found here: https://www.trustedhealth.com/the-handoff-podcast/safe-seizures

On this episode of The Handoff, Dan speaks with Dan Pesut a Professor of Nursing and Population Health and the Director of the Katharine J. Densford International Center for Nursing Leadership at the University of Minnesota. Dan has spent 43 years in academia dedicated to bringing more creativity and innovation to the practice of nursing, and activating nurses to think more about the future.

During the conversation, he shares advice for how healthcare leaders can foster more creativity in their staff, what kinds of cultures encourage innovation and how to build a creativity mindset in nursing. He also discusses the difference between change and transformation and the roles of both leaders and managers in those respective processes. 

Resources referenced during this episode include: 

• Foresight Leadership: The Future of Nursing and Health online hub 
• Foresight Leadership: The Future of Nursing and Health LinkedIn Group 
• Strategies of Genius by Robert Dilts
• The Creative Power: Transforming Ourselves, Our Organizations, and Our World
• Liberating Structures 
• FutureWe Framework

The full transcript for this episode can be found here: www.trustedhealth.com/the-handoff-podcast/dan-pesut 

On this episode of The Handoff, Dan speaks with Dr. Arup Roy-Burman, a pediatric physician and Associate Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at UCSF. Arup is also the founder and CEO of Elemeno Health, a mobile platform that helps healthcare organizations engage frontline staff to deliver consistent best practice, and bring quality, safety, and efficiency to the point of care. 

Arup and Dan discuss how EHRs, facility guidelines and clinical innovations have led to a massive increase in complexity across the healthcare industry. Arup recounts how he saw firsthand as a physician that this led to deviations from best practice that resulted in errors, and wanted to find a solution. Drawing inspiration from Salesforce, he sought to use technology as an enabler and founded Elemeno to deliver just in time micro learnings for frontline clinicians. Elemeno also uses gamification to drive adoption and accountability within a unit. 

The full transcript for this episode can be found here: www.trustedhealth.com/the-handoff-podcast/elemeno-health