The Q Word Podcast

Patients rely on nurses to alleviate their suffering, but what can nurses do to protect themselves from the weight and stress of providing care for the sick and dying? Nyssa and Lisa talk to Ariel Brown and AnnMarie Papa about The Emotional PPE Project, an initiative born out of the overwhelmingly increased burden placed on healthcare workers during the COVID crisis. This no cost, no insurance resource connects mental health professionals eager to help professional caregivers shield themselves from the harm face-masks and hand sanitizer can't prevent. Nyssa made the call - and so can you!

The contribution a nurse makes to their community is heroic, and the Nurse Honor Guard was created to celebrate that contribution each time one of these heroes passes away. Nyssa and Lisa speak with Julie Murray about this important and necessary program to pay tribute to fallen nurses, one that can be easily established in every city and town to honor the work these healthcare professionals do to make the world a better place.

Nurses can learn a lot from case studies but they run the risk of being pretty snoozey. Not these three stories! Check out these bizarre case studies and the ER lessons that we learn from them. Nyssa originally presented this lecture live, in front of an audience at the excellent Southeastern Seaboard Symposium in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Enjoy "The Chef Without a Tongue", "Eleven Blue Men" and the "Pitcher Who Struck Out Murderer's Row".

In the critically ill trauma patient, optimizing airway, breathing, and circulation is not always as easy as the ABCs. In this episode, Nyssa and Lisa discuss resuscitative sequence intubation and how it differs from a crash intubation or a delayed sequence intubation. We also consider how to handle the special cases of TBI patients and the combative trauma patient.

Supraglottic airways are getting more and more spotlight time. Nyssa and Lisa discuss how, when you have a patient that comes in from the prehospital world with a SGA airway in place, the best practice is to leave it alone if it's working until you've addressed bigger issues. Seems simple, right? Let's find out why this paradigm shift is so important, and how to incorporate it into your practice.

In this special episode, recorded live at the FlightBridge ED FAST21 conference in Nashville in May, 2021 , Nyssa and Lisa reveal how and why one of the most ubiquitous tools used in every hospital and doctor's office may be inaccurate in up to 13% of the population, and what you can do to correct this serious and pervasive issue in your practice.

Let's face it: treating arrest after a blunt trauma may very well be a daily experience in your practice, but the standard protocols for resuscitation can actually do as much harm as good. Nyssa and Lisa talk to Dr. Amanda Humphries-Ventura about her approach to reviving a profusely bleeding and broken patient, so that nurses in both the ER and the pre-hospital environment can make simple but important changes in how they treat arrest when acute injuries raise the stakes.

Nyssa and Lisa review Paul Graham's classic productivity argument, and reframe it in the context of hospital employees, where the administration (a.k.a. managers) and the boots-on-the-ground medical personnel, specifically nurses (a.k.a. makers), are often at odds because of their wildly divergent schedules. So how is a 9-5, M-F management team supposed to train, meet with, evaluate, and develop an everything *but* 9-5, M-F nursing and hospital staff?

In the second half of this special episode, Britanny Smith shares her carefully cultivated "Toolkit" with The Q Word Podcast audience, explaining to Lisa and Nyssa how to assemble one to use in your practice when facing the complex interactions required when dealing with the neurodivergent population. This document (link on website) contains a comprehensive but concise list of Do's and Do Not's, as well as links to where you can investigate what simple items can be relied upon to help you and your patient communicate.

Following our Special Populations in Trauma series, and still sponsored by the Georgia Region V Regional Trauma Advisory Committee (RTAC), Nyssa and Lisa talk with educator Brittany Smith about how to care for what can be considered the most special, at risk population of patient: the neurodivergent. In this first part of our two-part series, learn how to recognize the signs of ASD, ADD, ODD, and other psychiatric disorders, especially in the pediatric population, and get tips on how to treat them without causing more distress.