Hi there. My name is dr.
Presenta, and I'm the host of the doctor nurse podcast.
I'm an advanced nurse practitioner and I want to be
your guide into the world of nursing professions.
This podcast is a platform for nurses to share their Journeys
as they made their way in the diverse field of nursing as
either entrepreneurs, Academia private, practice or even the
corporate world. I think we should celebrate just
how diverse the field of nursing is through mentoring one.
Another, with the stories of our career.
Journeys. Nothing is too mundane because
each journey is unique. This podcast will showcase
career options to encourage nurses to view their degrees
with a business mindset. After all we work in the
healthcare business and ultimately I hope I might
inspire you to make a change. If you're looking for something
different, I am motivated to see you live, your best, nursing
life and that looks different for everyone.
Thanks for joining me on today's podcast.
And let's get started with today's guests.
Hey guys. This week on the doctor nurse
podcast. I have the privilege of chatting
with dr. Joe Neal she is a RN MBA PhD who
has taken her bullying experience as a nurse and made
it her passion to combat against in her career.
Her expertise practical tools and strategies include the
meanness Matrix and tips to help you compatible.
Pat your job. She is a nationally recognized
speaker teacher certified facilitator and Coach.
Take a listen, she describes her journey to the headmistress of
the school of bully ology. Hi dr.
Joe Neal thank you so much for coming on the doctor nurse
podcast today. So happy to have you on from the
great state of Michigan. I'm tickled to be here.
Let's Dive Right In. Tell us about your current role.
/ job title. What are you?
For a living. Well, for a living.
I am currently the headmistress of the school of bully ology and
I actually have a company doctor, Joe Neal.com, but I have
transitioned into actually opening a school for nurses for
other people who have been impacted by the effects of
bullying. I not only work with
individuals, I also work with organizations.
So that's what I'm up to, right this exact minute.
So, how did you get to this spot right here in your career?
Take us through your ear. Senior Journey.
Absolutely, absolutely. Well, I am actually a diploma of
nursing graduate way back in the late 70s when it was, we had
three year school two year schools through your schools for
your school's. I was a graduate of a diploma
program. I eventually went back and got
my Bachelors of Science in nursing.
I have an MBA and I have a doctoral degree in
organizational leadership. But in terms of my clinical
practice, I started my original practice in the in the emergency
room. I found out early on that, I was
not gifted for bedside nursing and Luckily and I think all of
us need to recognize where were gifted for.
And we're we're not I went to the emergency room because it
was high paced and I'm kind of an adrenaline junkie.
I worked in the emergency room and I tell the story it was
before the days of hcahps when I told the patient to get his
blankety-blank blood on the blankety-blank stretcher and I
do something's wrong here, I might need to change.
So I love there. Let me just say going back to
the bullying topic. I was never bullied in the
operating room. I was very confident.
I had been a student nurse in that area and I was right out of
High School, people go, you don't go to the emergency room
but I had my mojo in the emergency room, so I transferred
to the operating room and all of a sudden, I had no Mojo.
I was brand new. I was bottom of the the food
chain and actually the operating room that I went to work in
there was actually 12 different services and you had to rotate
through every service and I was learning as I went.
But there's a lot of stuff to learn machines and doctors and
procedures. And all of that.
I was toward the end of my orientation, and I was orienting
in the vascular service, and it got to the place.
Place where my preceptor was actually scrubbed in the case
and I was circulating we were doing an aortic, aneurysm the
kind before vascular when you're open from nipples To Nuts kind
of a thing and the patient filleted wide open.
The surgeon was the chief of vascular surgery, I'm trying to
set up the Dynamics here, that's good.
This interaction eating of picture, getting to a place in
my preceptor looks to me and says, I need you to go get this
retractor blade. It was a specific one and I know
what she was looking for, but I went all the places it should
have been and it was no. To be found and I'm calling
central processing, and I'm sweating and I'm painting and
I'm like, grabbing strangers in the hallway or the operating
room. Where is this?
Retractor and I eventually went back into the room.
Now, he combined the longer, the patient stays on the operating
room table, The increased morbidity and mortality.
So I'm out of the room for about 12 to 13 minutes.
I come back. I stand at the foot of the
table, I'm a sweaty mess. I look up and I say to my
preceptor, I'm so sorry. I couldn't find it.
She turns to The Physician pets. Him lovingly on the hand and
says it's okay. She doesn't know anything.
She's brand-new and I stood there and like Not only was I
thrown under the bus, I was run over by the bus and so my
credibility for that surgeon was diminished.
Now here's the end of the story. We finish the case.
It's one of those ones. Are you tell yourself?
Don't cry. Don't cry, don't cry.
Don't cry. We finish the case I go out, I
take the patient to the recovery room.
The manager for central processing comes upstairs and
goes to me, she goes, don't heal the person.
She knew that Retractor blade was out for repair.
You are kidding me, can't make it up.
I can't make it up. No, so not only did she hook me
a trip. She put that patient at risk and
that risk old lady, so that she could look special in front of
the chiefest of that survey. And she was the queen of the
service. We all have those Queens.
What is it? Like the Mean Girls?
I would say. So everybody wants to be their
friend but I like so yes that was the first time I can
remember really and truthfully having this nurse to nurse
bullying but I knew from that point on, that was going to be
something that I was aware of. Now, again, there's things in
our profession and again, I graduated in the late 70s and
even in the late 70s. Now, keep up.
Remember, how long ago we're talking about?
Our teacher said, nurses eat their young.
Now this is in the late 70s. We are in 2020 and God dang it.
It's still going on. Why patter is fixed it.
So I knew from that point, that was something that I was going
to be a bully seem to come up in my life in other areas.
And I got stronger, but it seems like every time I got stronger
for one level of bullying. I got bullied by somebody else,
and I are position. It's like, what Joyce Meyer,
says, new level through devil. And so I was constantly aware of
it and constantly growing, I will say that I was impacted by
the consequences of bullying. And I think, let me just pause
for a second and say, bullying affects our mind, our body, and
our spirit. Now, it affects our mind where
we start to lose confidence in ourselves.
It's like we start questioning Earning our ability.
And a lot of the folks that I've interviewed who have been
bullied as nurses are really super stars.
They're very, very good. But they've got an Achilles heel
and somehow that pulley just goes for the Carotid kind of a
thing. I'm gonna get you and so our
self-esteem starts to we start questioning ourselves, we know
very well what the physical consequences of bullying?
We eat too much. We smoke too much, we get
diarrhea. We have our bodies are like it
takes an impact on that but most of all it takes are We start to
lose hope. Now, the most extreme cases that
I've talked with folks are people who actually committed
suicide because of that bullying, so if we wait.
So there are nurses that you've heard of that, have killed
themselves because of the bullying that was going on their
floors or in their communities. Yes, I'm aware of six that I can
name their names and that's the thing that should take.
That should take everyone's breath away.
It's like a punch to the guy dr. Daniel, one of the things that
I've as if kind of described her story and you've got to this
point, And you're standing there in the operating room and you're
being embarrassed, you're being belittled like what is one of
the things that through your education you were able to
develop to kind of help nurses through that process?
Well this has been a journey it and every place I grabbed a
little bit more knowledge, what I want everyone to understand is
that the main goal is not to let those people under your skin.
And that is so hard to do. Let me just go on record.
And if any of you are Juan division, It's like building
your hex around you. I did my doctoral dissertation
on bullying in the operating room and so this isn't anything
that I just left that day at the foot of the or table.
I continued on with this, I do want to also say not only are
nurses impacted by bullying, but there is a direct correlation to
a nurse being bullied and a patient outcome, which we can
touch base in a couple minutes, but one of the things kind of
came to me, sort of like synthesis of all this
information is, I created a tool.
It's called the meanness Matrix and it's a three by three grid.
Rid and along the bottom is a delineation of what kind of a
person am I actually dealing with, am I dealing with a person
who's route and again those people are unintentional.
They don't wake up in the morning and say I'm going to
aggravate so-and-so's life. And moving to the right there,
there are people that are true. Bullies and a bully is someone
who has real or perceived power over you and chooses to use
that. And a narcissist, or someone who
has narcissistic personality, Tendencies is someone who really
The capacity to have empathy or care for anyone else and that's
a pathologic condition and we know some folks like that.
Now, when once we identify, what kind of a person were looking
at? We go up the vertical axis and
at the bottom are people that don't matter.
Now, again, they don't matter to me, they matter to Jesus.
They just don't matter to me. And then you go up the chain and
then you have people who matter a bit.
And these are people that you have tangential relationships
with. It could be your next door,
neighbor, whose dog is barking? It could be your kids teacher.
It could be a distant relative, these are folks that kind of
come in and out of your life but they don't necessarily impact
direct some directly, but not as much but the key part are the
people who really have influence on your life, your spouse, your
parents. Now, your manager or leader, can
either be matters a lot or matters a little bit, but then
when you figure out what kind of a person am I dealing with,
where do they fall in this degree of influence?
You can find yourself in a grid that has a strategy for each one
of those techniques. But the main part I want
everyone to get their minds around is I want you to
recognize. You have to build your force
field or your hex or whatever you want to call it.
And don't let them get through. Because once they get the past
your wall of protection, or your boundary, or whatever you want
to call it, then those consequences of bullying, start
to impact. Now I'm going to go on record as
saying it's hard as heck to do this, but Step One is having an
awareness of what's going on. And one of the things that's on
the mean, This Matrix. And again, I'll make sure that I
send you a copy and you can share it with your listeners.
Step one or one of the key strategies, never believe, what
the bully said, never believe it, because they're trying to
influence you, in a way again, sucks the life out of use, makes
you start questioning yourself, all of that.
So then they somehow feel better because you feel worse.
And so, the less and and there are times that you have to
directly interact with them. But the one thing I'm going to
say about us for nursing and I have another tool that I'm also
Going to share with you is, we need to start taking some
emotion out of it and we, as nurses as women are pretty much.
I lead with my emotion. You can tell where I'm at but in
this instance, I've had to get to where I can explain this, non
emotionally, and this tool, it's how to chart bullying.
So your voice will be heard. And the key aspect of this is
don't go into your manager saying, oh my God, they were so
mean to me and they made me cry and then your manners are going
to go. Oh, okay.
Because then it becomes Has your word against their word.
And again, I've been a nurse manager director of, nursing all
of the above. Another thing.
Please do not slip, a note under your managers door that says,
so. And so was awful and don't sign
it. Because guess what?
She throws that right into the wastebasket.
I'm sure of it. So if you can say, here's the
date. Here's the time.
Here's where this happened. Here's what was said.
Now this again is use the exact words.
You can add a little bit after you say she or he set this,
this, this this Here's who heard it.
Here's the staff. Here's the patient.
Hears, the impact on me. Here's the impact on our unit.
And here's the impact on our organization and I'll give an
example of that. Is that say?
You got so distraught that you couldn't get your work done.
And so you ended up staying an hour-and-a-half overtime.
Figure out the cost of an hour and a half over time, and that
was the impact on the organization they had to pay
over time because you got bullied and it's hard to make
that correlation. But if you can get to that but
that will get your managers. Attend that one.
And that's what I want you to kind of get your minds around.
That can't just go, I could have said, oh my God, my preceptor
was so awful, she made me look bad instead.
I said she sent me for a retractor that was out for
repair. The patient stayed on the
operating room, 15 minutes longer therefore increasing
their morbidity, mortality by X percent and or time is $110 per
minute. So you see how that kind of
flows down to that? Does that make sense?
It takes the emotion out of what's happening and actually
relays In a way that hospitals can measure and say this is
affecting patient outcomes. It's not just about my emotions
that was hard for me to have to deal with, but I'm a big girl, I
can do it, but you realize you were hurting other people,
whatever. This little stunt was that you
just pulled. So that is way more powerful
appealing to what matters to the hospital is going to make them
care about the bullying issue. That is a very, very good
Insight on the issue and through your journey you saying.
After that moment in the Yo, are you then you said, I didn't let
it go. I kept pursuing that and that's
what led you to get your master's degree and then your
doctoral degree. Correct.
And I knew that I was going to
study bullying. I knew that I knew from day one,
that that was going to be my focus.
And it was interesting because when I, when you're in a non
quote-unquote nursing program, I had people go.
Oh, Tony. Oh, that's not a problem
bullying in nursing isn't a problem.
It's like, oh dear God, please just just go along with me on
this one. Yeah, just trust me.
Have to Jeff real interesting. Enough is I went through three
committee chairs in my doctoral program until I finally got a
nurse as my committee chair. And she and I was done in nine
months, her name is Darlene, has just my seat and I got done in
no time because she got it, she got it.
And she got me to. That is really cool and you
said, you had some experience in nursing leadership as well.
Oh, you worked on the bedside and then at some point, I mean,
you worked in the OR but that, at some point you became like
the manager of the, or did he did I became a manager ran You
are bored, trust me. You can get bullied by surgeons
like give me a time. I need to go now all of those
kind of things. And that's where you have to
say, follow the policy. The policy says, if you want a
bump so and so you have to call them and then all of the sudden
their emergency wasn't quite such an emergency.
So that's a part of it. And then I became director and
all of that. Then I actually spent 10 years
with a company called The Advisory Board based out of
Washington DC, where we did Healthcare research, and I was
in for hospitals and five days. Nurse leaders become better
leaders. But one of the areas that I
became sort of clinical expert as we did a program on
disruptive behavior. I think many of us know that in
2008, The Joint Commission issued a sentinel alert saying,
organizations that do not address disruptive behavior,
which will liing is for sure. A disruptive behavior will be
cited and will be in all of that and that came out in 2008.
And here we are in 2021 and it's still happening.
Clearly something is Miss here and I think it's still happening
and it's not getting talked about either.
I think that the way that you word it in the documentation
shows, like it doesn't matter. If this is just a catfight girl
games, like, we need to get in here and start talking about
this because it's directly affecting patients and other
nurses. Well, beings.
And of the people that I interviewed nine interview at
the beginning of 2020, the year of the nurse, I was really going
to go. Gung ho about this covid
happened so that got kind of pushed but I'd interviewed 20
nurses. And most of the nurses said that
they It's more bullying in their early years of practice and so
of late. I've been very concerned about
our new graduates who are graduating post covid and that
we as a profession kind of need to wrap our arms around them and
say we're going to welcome you into our profession.
We're going to we're going to be preceptors, we're going to help
you. You didn't get the clinical that
you should have but that doesn't matter.
We still want you we want to help you and I think that's an
area that our entire profession along with all the things we've
been through with covid, we can look at this particular moment
in time and Say to those who we are welcoming into our practice.
We want you, we want to help you, we want to care for you.
We want to make sure that you're successful.
What would you describe as a difference between a hard
preceptor? Meaning one that's like making
sure that you're on your game versus one that's bullying
because I feel like in my experience I've had hard
preceptors and there have been moments where they've asked me
hard questions in front of patients and I wasn't prepared
and I wasn't ready and then Makes me think like I never want
to be in that position again. She was right.
I didn't know the answer to that question and so before I walk
into the room I want to know this.
This and this that first is one that you're like she's just
being mean to me. She doesn't like me.
Like, how do you differentiate between the two?
I think, relationships understanding communication.
I think the precept T has to own a piece of their process and
have those hard conversations with the preceptor.
Like I really want to be the best.
Push me as hard as you want to push me.
Versus somebody who wants to deliberately and the keyword to
I think is deliberate. I think it's they deliberately
want to make themselves look better.
So you look worse and humiliation and all of that
stuff. I think they have a sense of
let's shoot. I got humiliated in my
orientation. I'm going to do the same to you
and I've heard that many a time. If you can't, if you can't stand
the heat, get out of the kitchen.
That's, that's not a healthy way to deal with this.
It's like hazing exactly. Exactly.
And I think, One of the key elements to that, you're going
to see on the meanest Matrix is, can we see each other as people?
You have to recognize, you will never change the bullies
behavior. Only the bully can change if
they so choose to change. Now, I'm going to have a little
sidebar here. Organizations must have a code
of conduct that is enforceable, enforced and have the courage to
do it. I think organizations can
address the bullies behavior when it's documented and all of
that. But you, You yourself must
protect your heart, your spirit, Your Mind, Body Spirit.
If your preceptor can see you as a person and you have those
conversations, you say, make me the best.
And then the preset, I've had preceptors that did that and
then they give you the wink afterwards because they know
that it was good for you and maybe I'm not into describing it
well, but those are the it's that relationship piece.
It's that understanding piece, it's that willingness to make
that precept. T the best they can possibly
even if they're better than you. I had some students.
And I was really hard on them and I got feedback that they
felt like I was putting them down.
And I struggle with that like I have not taught since then
because I felt like seeing her really need to look at yourself
because you've experienced bullying.
You don't want to be a bully. And I remember thinking I was so
worried about them making mistakes because I had made
mistakes that I was actually teaching out of my wounding and
being so afraid that I was like, listen, you need to be perfect
here. Because I made a mistake here
and I don't want you to ever make a mistake here.
I want you to know what you're doing, while you're giving it
where you're giving it. I had to spend some time with
myself and realize, like, I, I was so hurt by that situation,
that then I was kind of, like, living out my trauma with my
students and they were like, dude, what's your problem?
If we can prevent The Bullying from the front end, then we
probably would not have so many other nurses that kind of go
through that same process and think like, oh gosh, I don't
want you to deal with this. And so you might be reacting out
of Of your own issues. It's definitely a really
sensitive topic and it's an it is an issue that a lot of new
nurses are going to be dealing with.
And I think it's amazing that you're tackling it and you're
bringing it to the Forefront and you're making people look at
this issue because it is sensitive.
And it's one of those things that we just like to cover it up
and pretend like it's not happening and just go like oh
this isn't a big deal and then you start to see this ripple
effect. I'm really glad that you're that
you're talking about this that you've spent your whole career,
your profession. So can you give me an example?
Love may be one of the biggest successes in your career up into
this point. Well, one of the things we
haven't talked about is that I was married to a bully as well.
And so that's a whole other podcast episode.
But I was a rock star at work. I mean, I was, I was good, I was
really good, but I was married to this person who literally
suck the life out of me. I think that some of the things,
the tendencies that we get bullied at work are also in our
personal life, too. And it's a long, long story.
I was in the last semester of my BSN And now ex-husband had come
home from prison and I got breast cancer in the last
semester of my BSN, and God bless my BSN cohorts, they took
care of me. And that's like I said, that's a
whole other thing. But when I decided to leave my
ex-husband, I left him with my 9 year old daughter and a one
suitcase full of sequence formals, that's a whole nother
story, but the point being is that I was a single mom doing
cabbages on call working and try and getting my Master's Degree.
So, when I got my master's degree, me and my ex-husband had
a college degree, but not a masters and this is kind of like
their own personal moment. When they Hood, you, you turn to
the person and you turn around to the state, to the people in
the audience, and in my mind, and this is all captured on
video, I'm smiling. And in my head, I'm going blank
ex-husband name, you will never touch me again and I so maybe
that's a different kind of success.
You're looking at but that's a journey for me.
That was my Rocky moment. Can't you see Rocky standard up
there? Feel that?
Like that's such a beautiful picture of you just being here.
It is like waking up as like a Jedi Knight.
Just like I'm this and that and that was sort of like that sort
of healing moment, kind of thing.
It's like all the things you said to me, that I was fat and
ugly and had only one boob and nobody would ever want me.
And all those kind of doesn't matter.
You can't touch me. And that's the message.
I think if we, if people can take away from this conversation
is that you have to do your own internal work to get to where
you can't touch me, you're out there and you're doing crappy
things. But what I'm strong.
Ang I'm good. I got up my thing, your could do
all you want. I'm going to turn around and
raise my fist and say you can't get me now.
You can't do it. That's the takeaway dr.
Joe Neal. What are the things that I feel
like? And again, this, hopefully, this
is something that you can understand, but whenever you're
a young nurse and you're starting off in your career, how
do you get that hood Spa? How do you get that fire inside
you? When you're at least when I was
a new nurse? I was 21 years old.
I barely knew myself. I'm a I just got and you know I
don't have a school. And so how do you find that
thing inside of you that voice when you don't have the life
experience? Like, do you have to go through
the life experience? I like, how can you infuse it in
someone without you having to experience something terrible?
I actually work with teenage girls as well in a program.
A club kind of a thing, and we talked a lot about that is who
are you? And what were you brought here
to do? I have a strong belief in that
and not everybody. Does I think everybody's here
for a reason? But I gained knowledge by just
ask and the one thing I would tell any new nurse recognize,
you don't know what all recognize that recognize.
You don't know it, all and find the person and it may not be
your preceptor, you could say. Okay mrs.
So and so did this in this. And here's what I think it is in
my right, can I do this and you're going to gain some of
that? Some of it really?
It is a passage of time and in the passage of experience but
what I'm hoping is that our nursing profession Can allow our
new members are apprentices. If you will, to spend to be
nurtured and grown and helped. And if a season nurse is doing
something that doesn't happen very often.
Grab that. Apprentice and say, hey, come
with me for just a minute. So, I'm going to take a second
and then say, hey, Susie, watch so-and-so's patient while I show
her this, but we don't do that. We don't because we think power
and we think a knowledge makes us powerful and if I know how to
do this and she doesn't then I'm needed on this unit.
Well, what happened? When you go on vacation and
nobody can do that thing that you can do with some of the
books that I've been reading about leadership and development
and intentional living. They talk about not feeling this
mindset of like scarcity. Like there is this scarcity
mindset where you just think there isn't enough and you're
like I have to hoard what I have and it's like actually if you
give away what you have you will end up getting more.
I feel like as women we have this idea of like there's not
enough husbands or enough, it's not enough this there's like we
got to get like we're all Fighting For.
Spoons. And it's your that game where
you put all the spoons in the middle and everyone's like, oh,
it's one less spoon and you just, you don't want to be the
one that doesn't get a spoon and like, a think that scarcity
mines. Yep, pulls us back from
advancing. And if we were like, you're
describing, like, absolutely go get that nurse.
Let me go show her how to do this.
Hey listen, what? I know I want to share with you.
Like here have it like that. You will begin to live a life
with an open palm and you realize your palm will never be
empty. Yes, yes, yes.
For sure, one of the concerns I have is, my generation of nurses
are pretty much for the most part retired, and I think about
the intellectual Capital, that's gone.
Now, I feel strongly about that too.
But there's a, there's a chance that you think about the
archetypal sitting at the foot of somebody knowledgeable kind
of thing. And I think we, as a profession,
haven't we've shown under Elders, we've shunned all of
those people and then we're mean to our kids.
So we need to have that identity of the kind, loving people that
Are because people who go into nursing, I believe 99.9999 are
kind and loving and what amazes me is.
I've seen nurses be so unbelievably kind in a room and
they'll come out in the hallway and rip the face off of somebody
who walks by. And I think.
What is that all about? That was a beautifully painted
picture and I feel like that is that part of your?
You're probably challenges that you've had to overcome is breast
cancer, and husband that was just a total whack job.
Job. And I told, I spent 10 years at
The Advisory Board. It was like the best.
Those were, those are some of the mentors that I had hundreds
of hospitals that I went to. I was able to touch people's
lives and and they touched mine as well.
And to just hear the stories. And to be with nurses every
single day, it was wonderful, but I actually left that job.
I got remarried to a wonderful husband who I met in an airport.
That's another story. But I just, I took a job as a
director of nursing in our local hospital and it was it was sort
of like, I know it was the ER, and or and I'd been there.
Week and we flunk The Joint Commission and we had to spend
the next year being in survey hell but the piece of that one
is the CEO of that organization was toxic and people say oh it's
just toxic leaders by blah blah blah.
But let me tell, he said to me one time, until you've been here
for six months. Keep your damn mouth shut.
It's like, say, what? And he put that in writing.
So let me just tell you. The end of the story is that I
kept records. I documented on emotionally, all
the things that happen and why. When I woke up was seven ulcers
and gained 30 pounds, I knew something had to change.
And a long story short, there was a Nexus event.
I just got pushed to the point where I had to do something and
I made an appointment with the vice, president of the corporate
human resources, and I took in my data and I have to say this
is an organization that I believe has extreme courage
because he took me by the hand and said Joe Neal.
Nobody needs to work under these conditions.
I don't know what's going to happen.
Here's my card. Call me if you need me and 10
days later that CEO was walked out of the building.
Wow. So don't say it can't happen now
because of your documentation. I was like the Catalyst they
interviewed 40 other people. In the midst of this time.
But I was the one who presented it in such a way that they could
see how this was impacting the organization.
And so people say well you can't do anything about HR and you
can't do anything about your manager, organizations have to
have courage to say we don't want you here and they have to
have the documentation to do that.
And I've been at organizations where they were in the farthest
nor this part and they had one orthopedic surgeon who was a
complete total turd and was sending people elsewhere.
And the organization said we can't we can't fire him.
Him. He's our only orthopedic surgeon
and 150 miles. And I've been at other hospitals
that had the same situation and said, we don't need your kind of
Texas city in our organization will find another orthopedic
surgeon. So organizational courage is a
piece of this as well. It's some point you look back in
history to write, like Hitler was a bully, right?
And the whole world look it until eventually, we said no
more with the bully, you gotta go, bro, right?
It just takes that courage, and I think it was there's A really
famous quote that's like something flourishes.
When good men do nothing? The only thing for evil to
succeed is for good. Men to do nothing.
That's it. That's the thing.
It's what like keeps coming to my mind when you describe that
whole process of the hugest standing there, I'm not going to
just let evil continue. Like if we'd say nothing, if we
do nothing, it will continue. We've got to stand.
You've got to make a stand and I think we have a voice.
I think nursing has a voice. If we can just stop picking on
each. Other I'm staying together.
And that is what keeps you week is that you don't stand
arm-in-arm. I tend to just want to fight
with the people and I suppose it's like if we actually stood
arm in arm, we would be pretty much able to stop anything that
was evil going on. Well, like brene, brown talks
about that, she does look what happened.
When that, Senator said we played cards on our break.
Look at those things, we have the power, we have the
opportunity to do some of these things, but it's always like
who's going to be first. I don't care whose first as long
as we get there, the back of the bus gets there too, just as well
as a front of them. I agree incredible.
This is such incredible examples and did you you were going to
start out kind of blue to it any mentors along the way to anybody
like come alongside you and you gotta help you through this
process. Your spin so many I can't really
pick up like my Advisory Board colleagues were some of the most
amazing people I worked with and they were from all over the
country. They were nurses from all over
and they encouraged me. The one day that I was going to
jump off the Washington Monument because I couldn't get my
doctoral dissertation done. They were the group that held me
and said don't jump don't jump but But I have always been an
avid learner. And I believe, when the student
is ready, the teacher will appear people have come into my
life at the right. Exact moment for me to
synthesize what happened last and I think you have to be open
to that like the meat. I'll tell you the story but the
meanest matrixing, you can believe it or not, believe it
but my husband and I were driving in his little
convertible in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
The top was down the sun was beating on my head and all of a
sudden the meanest Matrix came to me and I'm like jotting it on
the back of a Rapper or kind of a thing and I just believe that
that was like it. Okay.
Daniel you come to this place. Here you go.
Here's your next step. And if you're open to that it
will come. I like that.
You build it, it will come. I like that.
And, what advice would you give to a nooner starting off?
I believe you've given so much nuggets along this whole
interview, but what would be kind of your whole psyche,
summarized like wham-bam statement of like this is what I
want you to take home for the cute trap.
I would say, take care of you. You because you're no good to
everybody else. If you're not in a good place,
that's what I would say. I think that self-care is not a
matter of like, getting a manicure.
Can I say Amen to that? Amen.
I feel like such a simple thing, I feel self care is spend time
with yourself like because nursing is so emotionally heavy
spending time in therapy or just spending time, like meditating
and reflecting on things. I just kept going, I was just,
like, just keep going to school it, just keep working.
And then I was like, oh, I might be really messed up.
One of the first times that I noticed that was with my
students. Well, Sandra like spend a second
here because you are not caring for yourself and you haven't for
years, you've just been so busy about your issues are starting
to come through. There is a book, and I'm looking
for it on my bookshelf here about the wounded healer,
because it's a really poignant. And I think just growing into
yourself. I think we want to be done
before we're done or not done, you think?
Okay, I got the diploma. I'm done.
No, are you not done? I got that school.
No, I you're not done. Be open and be willing therapy.
And coaching are the two things that have made a difference in
my life in terms of processing this because some of the stuff
is so heavy. You just don't know how to do it
on your own, and you hold it in the minute.
You hold it inside. It starts to become an
infection. And that's when you get what I
call, it is Bully itís. When you get bully itís, then it
affects you and you've got to like, I need to have some
antibiotics. Okay, let me go see a therapist
or let me get a coat. This isn't something you should
do on your own gonna debride the wound.
You got to open it up. Yeah.
In their advice and the last part of our interview is the
rapid fire questions. Okay.
Questions was so, the first question is, what is your
favorite word? It's probably a swear word and I
can't say it enough and sometimes it just feels so good
to say. So what it can't do that, it's
probably Jeepers. What is, what are your favorite
books? Oh gosh, Man's Search for
meaning by Viktor Frankl. We did pretty much every year at
some point and when I would gone through That thing with the CEO,
I got that right off my right off my bookshelf.
It's worn. It's torn.
It's written in, but it has so much to say his messages is.
You can change. The circumstances can do all
sorts of things. This is the gentleman that was
in the concentration camp. He was a physician in a Nazi
concentration camp and he said, you can take everything away
from me, but my attitude and that is I think.
One of the best lessons we can learn, okay?
And I feel like you're this kind of girl, what is the first
concert you ever attended? So old you're gonna it's like
it's going to tell you. Although I am John Denver, who's
John Denver, there you go, there you go.
It's like this folk singer guy. I was probably like 12 sort of a
thing and in Flint. Michigan.
They were see. I am a sports arena and he came
and he sounds like he's saying zany song, Country Roads.
Almost Heaven West Virginia. John Denver.
It's like this lady goes. Well, thank you so much for
coming onto the podcast today and chatting so happy to have
you and Your whole conversation is just littered with such sweet
little pieces of knowledge. There's just awesome little
morsels for our souls, so thank you.
Thank you for asking me. It's like I said, it is my
mission to get this message out to nurses and to other people.
And I think at the time is right after what we've been through in
the last couple years and all of that as a nation as a
profession, as a world, we need to see some of this, love it.
Thank you. You're welcome.
We are at the end of our time together.
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