The Conversing Nurse podcast
Are you a nurse curious about the experiences of other nurses? For 36 years, I have only known the Peds/NICU realm but I am intrigued by the roles of nurse researchers, educators, and entrepreneurs. Through conversations with nurses from various specialties, I aim to bring you valuable insights into their lives. At the end of each episode we play the five-minute snippet, just five minutes of fun as we peek into the 'off-duty' lives of my guests! Listen as we explore the nursing profession, one conversation at a time.
The Conversing Nurse podcast
Founder of Brainstorm Soft Skills Solutions, Wendy Dixon-Jewitt
Wendy Dixon-Jewitt is on a mission. As the founder and CEO of Brainstorm Soft Skill Solutions, she strongly advocates for creating safer and more sustainable nursing workplaces, and her passion is unmistakable.
Early in her career, Wendy encountered a toxic nursing culture, which she described as "100% responsibility with zero authority to get the necessary tasks done." It’s alarming to think about how many nurses have left the profession due to such circumstances. But Wendy did not walk away; instead, she pivoted her focus toward developing her soft skills.
Wendy describes soft skills as “everything that happens in the space between people.” She believes one-on-one interactions are where we will transform healthcare. It’s about nurses showing up. And it’s not easy to show up, to speak up. After all, nurses are as she believes, “dealing with hierarchies, power infrastructures, and oppression and they are taking a risk every time they open their mouth.” Wendy knows some of her views are controversial but maybe that's what the nursing profession needs; a little controversy to shake things up. Through her leadership and training, she is determined to help us find our voice.
Wendy developed Universal Precautions for Emotional Dysregulation—a proactive, skills-based framework for reducing the risk of verbal abuse, emotional harm, and professional burnout. Brilliant. We’re talking de-escalation, boundary-setting, and building team resilience. And unlike myself, Wendy doesn't believe resilience is a four-letter word and I might be coming around to her point of view.
In the five-minute snippet: sounds like her hometown is straight out of X-files. For Wendy's bio, visit my website. Visit my CE library to earn CE's by listening to select episodes! New episodes added regularly!
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Thanks for listening!
[00:00] Michelle: Wendy Dixon-Jewitt is on a mission as the founder and CEO of Brainstorm Soft Skill Solutions.
[00:08] She strongly advocates for creating safer and more sustainable nursing workplaces.
[00:14] And her passion is unmistakable.
[00:17] Early in her career, Wendy encountered a toxic nursing culture which she described as 100% responsibility with zero authority to get the necessary tasks done.
[00:31] It's alarming to think about how many nurses have left the profession due to such circumstances.
[00:38] But Wendy did not walk away.
[00:40] Instead, she pivoted her focus toward developing her soft skills.
[00:46] Wendy describes soft skills as everything that happens in the space between people.
[00:52] She believes one-on-one interactions are where we will transform healthcare.
[00:57] It's about nurses showing up and it's not easy to show up, to speak up.
[01:03] After all, nurses are, as she believes,
[01:07] dealing with hierarchies, power infrastructures and oppression. And they are taking a risk every time they open their mouth.
[01:15] Wendy knows some of her views are controversial,
[01:19] but maybe that's what the nursing profession needs,
[01:22] a little controversy to shake things up.
[01:25] Through her leadership and training,
[01:28] she is determined to help us find our voice.
[01:31] Wendy developed Universal Precautions for Emotional Dysregulation,
[01:36] a proactive skills-based framework for reducing the risk of verbal abuse,
[01:42] emotional harm and professional burnout.
[01:45] Brilliant.
[01:46] We're talking de-escalation, boundary setting and building team resilience.
[01:53] And unlike myself,
[01:55] Wendy doesn't believe resilience is a four letter word.
[01:59] And I might be coming around to her point of view. In the five minute snippet:
[02:05] Sounds like her hometown is straight out of X-files.
[02:09] Here is Wendy Dixon Jewitt.
[02:26] Well, good morning Wendy. Welcome to the podcast.
[02:29] Wendy: Good morning Michelle. Excited to be here. Thank you for your service to nurses.
[02:34] Michelle: Oh my gosh, thank you.
[02:36] I'm excited to talk to you, Wendy. So we met on LinkedIn, which is a wonderful platform for meeting all kinds of people. And so many of my great guests have come from LinkedIn.
[02:47] So I'm excited to talk to you and learn from you and we're going to talk about what you do today as far as helping nurses stay safer and saner by turning their soft skills into superpowers.
[03:06] So let's just get started with some background of yours. Tell us how you got to where you are today.
[03:13] Wendy: Well, I think I got to where I was today as far as the specialization and my purpose and what I'm doing for my legacy work is the fact that where we all start is something I was really bad at, I didn't understand.
[03:27] And it chased me out of nursing within the first two years after graduation.
[03:32] And I just decided, I gotta figure this thing out. Like,
[03:36] I landed in a really toxic culture with an abusive charge or director and,
[03:43] you know, ego-impaired, arrogant physicians. And my nursing colleagues were great. There was no horizontal on horizontal, but it was just like, there's so many things you have to navigate as a new nurse and a new grad,
[03:57] including grief, including despair. And I was a person with tremendous empathy. So I was not walking alongside someone else's journey. I was in everyone's journey,
[04:09] so I had to figure that out. But the main thing was the culture. It's just like it was a hundred percent responsibility,
[04:18] zero percent authority to do the things that needed to get done.
[04:22] And yeah, the director of nursing was just really mean and abusive to me. And when I asked another colleague about it,
[04:31] she said, oh, she's like that with all the new nurses, like, she'll move on, you know? And I thought,
[04:37] this is messed up, man.
[04:39] So I just, I was really rethinking the profession entirely.
[04:43] I walked away for a few months and I worked at a fine dining restaurant. And I was just trying to figure out what do I really want to do with my life, because I don't think that's culture.
[04:52] And I walked away from bedside nursing. And honestly, I didn't go back to bedside nursing for over a decade.
[05:00] So,
[05:02] yeah, it's a real problem. And then I just decided,
[05:05] everywhere you go, there you are.
[05:07] So it doesn't matter. The badly-behaved follow you everywhere. And it's like, okay. Because my nursing instructor did tell me in my clinical rotations that I needed to grow a thicker skin.
[05:19] So I was spent decades academically, experientially learning how to grow a thicker skin because nurses did grow thicker skins. And I'm just like, well, how do you grow your skin?
[05:31] Like, what's that all about? So I just was really, really curious because there was really good nurses that were just good at it.
[05:38] They were just good at skating around emotional intensity, behavioral problems, and just didn't seem to bother them at all. And they had the skill to deal with it, and it wasn't emotionally draining their energy every day.
[05:50] So I was just like, I want that. Whatever that is, I want that.
[05:54] So I spent a lifetime trying to figure that out.
[05:58] Michelle: Wow, that is quite a story. And thank you for sharing that.
[06:03] And I just,
[06:04] every time I hear stories like this, I cringe because I think, you know, how many nurses left the profession and never came back and went to something else because they were unable to,
[06:18] you know, air quotes,
[06:20] grow a thick skin.
[06:22] And I think part of our superpower is that we don't have a thick skin.
[06:31] We are compassionate, and we feel things deeply.
[06:38] We have great empathy,
[06:41] and those things don't always come with a thick skin.
[06:47] So thank you for sharing that.
[06:50] And let's get into some soft skills. So on one of your YouTube videos, I love how you described it, you said, soft skills are everything that happens in the space between people.
[07:03] And I was like, wow, that is really big.
[07:07] So, Wendy, can you kind of expound on that?
[07:13] Wendy: Yeah. Like, we're energetic beings, and there's so much we don't know about energy.
[07:18] When I did my research on providing quality, respectful care to verbally abusive patients, what I did was I. I recruited nurses that believed they were really good at it.
[07:27] You know, I'm just good at it. Yeah, I'll be in. So I did focus groups to try to figure out,
[07:32] well, what are you good at? But the thing is, these skills are just learned by the seat of our pants, through our family of origin, through our life experiences. So the
[07:43] research participants really, really had a difficult time even articulating what that was. But we all know when we walk in the room, it's in our language. Ooh, there's a bad vibe in here.
[07:55] Don't like the energy in that room.
[07:57] Like, we, you know, it starts there. We know where that's at, and we do touch on it in the nursing curriculum. We talk about transcendence,
[08:05] we talk about presence. And those things are really moving into that space where they're starting to talk about moving into the energy in the room, where you're moving more into that sacred container you're creating for people.
[08:19] And they also talk about it in leadership, like fundamental states of leadership in leadership training, because you're not always in a fundamental state of leadership. You couldn't be, because you'd be exhausted.
[08:31] But there is a gear in humanity we all have, like, we're energetic beings, where you can be really purposeful about what you're bringing into the room, and that requires you to have an awareness of it,
[08:43] to have an awareness if you should be in the room at all.
[08:46] Now,
[08:47] I've been doing this my whole life, and there's probably two decades where it would have been really difficult to dysregulate me in a professional setting or an emergency,
[08:57] intense setting. But now, as I'm getting older, I'm finding that not to be true. So it's not a one and done.
[09:02] Like, these things that we're learning about our energy and what we're bringing into the room, you know, if internally you're chaotic,
[09:09] like, your kids will be chaotic, your animals would be chaotic. Like, there is something that we don't quite know how to measure yet, but it's in our language.
[09:20] And the Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker is an amazing book. And he's talking about our gut, our supercognition, our intuition,
[09:29] like it's real, and ignore it at your own peril,
[09:33] you know,
[09:34] and clinical intuition with nurses. Like,
[09:37] when you're nursing and you're nursing long enough, you can walk into a room and before you have any information, you're like,
[09:43] this person's going south. We're going to need to put some eyes on this person. Well, what do you mean, Wendy? I said to a doctor one day, I said,
[09:50] I'm not quite there yet, but something's going on. And he said, well,
[09:54] never ignore your intuition. And I was so thankful for that because so many people just discount the energy in the room, what they're feeling.
[10:03] But you have to control your own central nervous system. You have to control your own energy.
[10:09] And I teach about resilience, and nobody wants to hear about resilience because we're just. It's just a word that's overused.
[10:16] But the reality of resilience is,
[10:19] is if your battery is drained,
[10:21] it doesn't matter how many software programs you have.
[10:26] You know, think about your iPhone.
[10:28] It's like, if there's no battery, it doesn't matter how amazing the stuff is. You can't turn it on. You know, you can't get it to work. So I think of resilience not as this.
[10:40] It can. It's not a skill. But
[10:44] You can recharge it. You can purposefully recharge it.
[10:47] But first of all, you have to kind of know when the battery's totally dead. And certainly when I left my faculty of nursing position,
[10:54] I was in full burnout. So first and foremost, if you don't have the energy to do the job.
[11:00] And we're talking about burnout, we're talking about burnout, but I'm just saying your battery's dead.
[11:05] Your battery's dead because the ask has been too much.
[11:09] You can make landline calls forever, and it'll last hours and hours, but if you've got your FaceTime on in the hospital settings right now, FaceTime's on all the time,
[11:18] right you come in, you think you're gonna have a great shift, and by the second hour, it's just like the Ask is too much.
[11:25] It's too much for a human organism.
[11:27] I call it the anatomy of a setup in a lot of situations. Because the Ask is beyond your ability as a human to,
[11:36] to do what's being asked of you. And then you're still being held to high account by a regulatory body that has not made adjustments to systemic collapse that we're in the middle of,
[11:47] as you were talking about in the spaces. But it really is
[11:52] our energy and our energy stores and the things that happen between people, if you can get the spaces between people. And a lot of it is relational. And I bring it right down to the interaction.
[12:04] One-on-one interaction is where we're going to transform healthcare. It's not someone sitting in a glass tower in a room far removed from our reality.
[12:12] It's in the moment when you have to speak. A nurse has to speak and these nurses have to show up. And they're dealing with hierarchies, they're dealing with power infrastructure, they're dealing with oppression,
[12:22] they're taking a risk every time they open their mouth. You have to find the ability to speak.
[12:27] And I'm really trying to get nurses to find the ability to speak.
[12:32] And so I'm starting with emotional and behavioral. Because if you can walk into intense situations, chaotic situations where behaviors are out of control and you can master that,
[12:45] everything else just gets easier.
[12:47] Having hard conversations gets easier.
[12:50] Everything gets easier.
[12:51] Once you have the experience, once you have the skills, once you have the strategy.
[12:56] And really, it also goes into your entire life. Parenting gets easier, dealing with your husband gets easier. And that's where I actually learned most of my skills, was raising children with emotional and behavioral disorders.
[13:08] That's when I ran into social scientists and behavioral scientists.
[13:12] And when I saw what they were teaching, this was like probably 10 years after I graduated from my RN program, I'm like, oh my God.
[13:20] Like, nurses need to know this. This is what nurses need to know.
[13:24] So that's where it really started to take off.
[13:27] And I got really serious about intervening with people that were having problems with emotional and behavioral dysregulation. I was mentored by amazing scientists Dean Fixon and Karen Blase,
[13:39] and they were founders of the Teaching Family model, which is across North America right now and has been for decades.
[13:45] But I just took a piece of it. It's just like this piece is gold.
[13:49] Like one-on-one piece, like this is a skill that can be learned and taught.
[13:53] You know, it's not, it's not. Hairy fairy, high level communication theory. Like,
[13:59] let's make an I statement.
[14:00] I'm really upset by you calling me a total bitch. Well, I don't, you know, like. Like they don't care
[14:08] my feelings are really hurt. Like they don't care. Like,
[14:12] are you kidding me? They're out of control.
[14:15] But now, after years of study, I understand what I'm trying to do in the first step, first of all is control my own amygdala, my own limbic system, my own emotional flooding.
[14:25] Where am I? I need to take my own emotional temperature.
[14:28] Because if they're ringing my bell, and we all know this, oh, my kids push my buttons, right?
[14:35] But now we know the neuroscience behind the language, and that's what we're learning.
[14:39] Our science is keeping up to the language we've always known.
[14:43] And it's going to be the same with energy you bring into a room. Yeah, you can't see that. Your energy and your heart, you're chaotic and incoherent. But someday we're going to be able to see that we're totally chaotic and incoherent.
[14:55] Just like before, we couldn't. We didn't have MRIs, we didn't have PET scans. We're going to have energetic scans where we can walk through and say, Wendy, you're a hot mess, man.
[15:03] You know, or, wow, Michelle, you've really, you're really coherent. And I mean, Joe Dispenza, the neuroscientist, is doing a lot of that work.
[15:11] So we are learning all this neuroscience. So now it's really exciting because I'm getting the neuroscience behind what the behaviorists have been teaching. So I'm, I'm tying the social behavioral scientists in with neurology and neuroscience now.
[15:28] And it's like, oh.
[15:29] Because healthcare workers get neuroscience. They get it.
[15:33] You know, like before I used to call it setting the stage. Like you're trying to set the stage. But now I know exactly what we're trying to do.
[15:42] We're trying to get the person out of their amygdala, which. The alarm bell, right? The fight flight freeze.
[15:49] The alarms are ringing, right? They're going, going, going. This is an ancient response. It's flooding the limbic system. The limbic system's flooding. You know, your emotions are high. You're not reasonable, you're not rational, you're reactive.
[16:01] You know, and we could also call that ego, baby.
[16:05] And it's there for a reason.
[16:07] It's there to protect you. You feel under threat, and it's there to protect you. But what we're trying to do just in the first step of deescalation is, number one, keep ourselves out of that neurological pathway.
[16:20] Make sure we're in the prefrontal cortex, where reason,
[16:24] consequences,
[16:25] you know, impulse control.
[16:29] That's where that lives. So we're trying to keep ourselves firmly in our prefrontal cortex.
[16:35] So I call it our Zen state because it's our wiser self. I used to say when you walked into the room, the, you know, the ego self and the soul, it's like, okay, this is a soul situation because I'm having evil thoughts about this person.
[16:49] You know,
[16:51] I just really want to do something with this person. Okay, let's try to go to soul today. Let's ground out. Let's try to move into the soul brain. Let's be Zen.
[16:59] Let's rise above it. You know, let's go to our higher thinking levels, our higher self. But now we know that's the prefrontal cortex. So what you're trying to do,
[17:07] ground your central nervous system,
[17:09] you stay grounded in your prefrontal cortex,
[17:12] you stay energetically coherent because that will ground the room. And if you have someone that's really upset,
[17:20] even with permission, if you put your hand on their arm and you're grounded,
[17:26] it will energetically start to ground them. Just like you plugged a phone or you're hot spotting, like you can ground another person. And it's like, oh, well, maybe we don't have the evidence or the science.
[17:37] Well, it's anecdotal. Just try it. Like, you know, you've been in personal situations where you were in distress and a good nurse comes in and you just know,
[17:47] and they just like Wendy.
[17:49] And you're just like.
[17:51] All of a sudden, you can feel them grounding you because you're not grounded. You're chaotic.
[17:57] So once you know you're where you need to be,
[18:01] then all you're doing in the first step of de-escalation. I mean, you always have to do all the safety stuff, right? Like, you're scanning the environment,
[18:09] you're looking what can be used as a weapon. Like, depending where things are going, do you have a quick exit? How am I getting out of this room? Have I backed myself into a corner?
[18:19] Am I putting myself at risk? But these are all the things nurses are not being trained for.
[18:23] I worked in justice for five years. I worked with kids with emotional behavioral problems.
[18:27] I had all this specialized training that I am now transferring and trying to teach nurses because it's like,
[18:34] healthcare is a violent industry.
[18:36] You're at risk.
[18:37] Every single day you walk into work, you're at risk.
[18:39] And we're living in an increasingly uncivil society, so your risk is increasing.
[18:44] So we have to learn these skills for our own personal safety.
[18:48] So our first step is to get the person out of their amygdala and limbic system and into their prefrontal cortex.
[18:58] That's it. That's the first step in de-escalation. Well, how do you do that?
[19:03] You do the unexpected,
[19:04] right?
[19:05] The brain has a righting reflex.
[19:08] And because it has a righting reflex, if you can find it, even a millisecond space and time,
[19:14] where someone can sort of right themself, check themself 95% of the time, when you have these skills, they will check themselves.
[19:22] Like, I can give you tons of examples, but let's talk about the bitch one. That's always just an easy one.
[19:28] So I went into a room one morning, and this guy said,
[19:31] oh, my God, you like. I asked him to do something an ask. It's rehab. So you're always doing an ask.
[19:36] And if you're a good rehab nurse,
[19:39] they get irritated with you. So you have to have really good relational skills because you're pushing them. I mean, they have to push through pain. They have to get up, they have to go to rehab.
[19:47] You know, it's. It's not easy to rehab. It's hell.
[19:51] So this one day, this man.
[19:53] said to me, oh, my God, you are such a., the other nurse let me to. It's just like I said,
[19:59] my husband called me a bitch this morning, too.
[20:01] Like, what is it? What did I do or say that made you think I was. And the guy felt so bad for me because my husband called me a bitch.
[20:08] Well, my husband didn't call me a bitch, is called a fiblet. It's like he felt so bad for me. He became one of my best patients.
[20:16] You're married. Your husband called you, but again,
[20:22] he was able to check himself.
[20:24] He saved face. And he says, no, no, really, you're not. I just don't want to go. I'm just in a bad mood. I think my blood sugar is high, and I just really.
[20:33] I'm in so much pain right now. It's like, okay, well,
[20:36] let me see if you can have some pain stuff. Have you had anything, I don't remember, you know, but mostly people will check themselves and so that's the first step.
[20:44] So that immediately got him from, like he's building up for a fight, right?
[20:51] He wants me to say, I'm not going to tolerate that kind of language from you. I deserve, you know, whatever. However we,
[20:57] you know,
[20:58] our ego defends us but unfortunately our ego defending us in healthcare number one puts us more at risks and it wastes our time because then we end up in a long dialogue.
[21:11] I'm not responsible for this man's behavior. He's going to do rehab and he's going to go home to his family and friends. I'm not his mother, I'm not his best friend, I'm not his parent.
[21:20] I don't need to make him a better human being.
[21:22] I don't have to help improve him,
[21:24] help him improve his coping strategies. I just need to get through the day, get through the moment,
[21:29] get on with my shift because I've got ton of other people I have to look after and I really don't have time to fix, fix this person who's someone else's husband because I have enough trouble even trying to fix my own husband, you know what I mean?
[21:42] Like I have very little influence over him. So why am I going to try to fix this guy? But anyways, it's little tips and tricks like that,
[21:49] you know, and people say, well you shouldn't lie.
[21:52] I'm going to tell a fib if it's going to get me into the next moment and it's non-harmful,
[21:56] it's like it works.
[21:58] Michelle: Yeah, move on, we all do it. Yeah, it's, I think it's a good strategy and there was a lot there, Wendy. So I'm going to go back a little bit.
[22:07] And you were talking about energy and when you were talking about,
[22:11] you know, like somebody walks into the room and you can just feel it.
[22:16] I immediately thought about those nurses that are like what we would call the black clouds,
[22:22] you know, like everything,
[22:23] follows them, chaos follows them around.
[22:27] And you come on shift and one of them is working.
[22:30] And I tease my sister all the time about this. My sister Jennifer, longtime labor and delivery nurse, ICU nurse,
[22:38] flight nurse,
[22:40] and she knew it about herself. But anytime she came on it was like the worst things happened.
[22:47] And we've all worked with those people and that energy is real.
[22:51] That energy is real.
[22:54] And so I like how you gave some of those examples of, you know,
[22:58] checking yourself first.
[23:00] And then I want to talk about resilience for a second. Because you talked about resilience. And resilience for me is still like a four letter word.
[23:10] Because we heard that a lot during COVID right?
[23:13] Wendy: Oh, yeah. Just need to be more resilient.
[23:16] Michelle: Yeah. As we were not getting the supplies we needed, the staff that we needed, the support that we needed,
[23:23] but we were constantly being told by our administration,
[23:27] our institutions that we are so resilient.
[23:30] And you know, I'm going to have to do my own work to recover from that.
[23:37] But I think for many nurses, and I've talked to a lot of nurses now,
[23:42] they just kind of gave the middle finger and said, you know, screw your resilience, I'm out of here.
[23:49] Yeah, absolutely. You know, went into business for themselves.
[23:53] Wendy: So that's where we all are, right?
[23:56] Michelle: Yeah, yeah. Well, I want to talk about your business.
[24:00] So your business is Brainstorm Soft Skill Solutions.
[24:04] And I love your tagline,
[24:06] we provide soft skills for hard situations in the workplace.
[24:11] And in one of your recent Instagram posts, you said that nurses face overwhelming odds and impossible standards, which is 100% true.
[24:22] And you asked the question, how are we preparing them to navigate the front lines of this healthcare system effectively and safely?
[24:32] So how are we, Wendy?
[24:34] Wendy: Well,
[24:35] we are caught up in a very frustrating situation where we walk into a culture.
[24:42] And Malcolm Gladwell talked about this. He was talking about physicians or cardiologists in Canada that moved down to Buffalo or vice versa, and how immediately it's not even,
[24:52] you know, taught or it's not say, you're going to do things like us. We immediately start doing things like the culture, like, and these are highly intelligent people, nurses are highly intelligent.
[25:01] But even new students,
[25:03] they're taught this and then they walk into a culture and all of a sudden they're in the culture.
[25:08] And all my life I've been frustrated by it. We've been co-opted by biomedical reductionism. Nursing is no longer a sovereign nursing profession.
[25:19] We're creating,
[25:22] you know, task driven autobots who have no authority and are supposed to stay in line. And if you don't stay in line, professionalism is weaponized.
[25:30] You know, like, oh, that's not professional because that's not respectful because you said something I don't like. And so then because of oppression and us fighting with each other and infighting, instead of pushing back against the power infrastructure,
[25:42] having these kinds of important conversations, what we do is, you know, like little kids, right? When I'm raising children with behavioral problems, there's two things.
[25:51] There's tattling and there's reporting.
[25:55] Reporting is because you're genuinely concerned about the safety and security of someone else. And so you're telling a person in a position of authority or tattling is because you want to get them in trouble.
[26:06] And we're seeing all kinds of trends in nursing, like nurses reporting on nurses, not because they're concerned about this, that. But because I'm going to get you. I'm going to report you to the regulatory body, even though it's not that nurse's responsibility to do that.
[26:20] They're not in a position of leadership. Their license isn't in jeopardy. They just want to get you because they don't like you. And that's all part of oppression, right? So we're going after each other,
[26:29] but it's all because we're not standing in our power and pushing back. I pushed back individually many, many times. And I can tell you,
[26:39] over the decades of the many times I stood in my integrity and spoke truth to power.
[26:45] This is the two responses I would get. One, Wendy, you can't say those things. You're going to get fired.
[26:50] Right?
[26:51] Or nobody says anything in the room.
[26:53] And I go out of the room and people say, Wendy, you are the voice of nurses. It's just like,
[26:58] why did somebody, someone just say, out of the 40 nurses in this room, why didn't someone. You know what, I agree with Wendy. But they're so oppressed. And at the end of the day, what is it?
[27:08] What is it? We need our jobs. At the end of the day, this is where I have to go. This is what I have to do to get my paycheck because I have to look after my kids.
[27:16] And that's not an indictment. That's a real risk. I mean, whistleblowers do not have an easy time,
[27:22] right? Like jail just there.
[27:25] Like, you have to go into every decision you make with your eyes wide open, and you don't have to solve all the problems of healthcare.
[27:31] If you took on every problem today in healthcare, you know you, like, you couldn't do, it'd be impossible.
[27:38] But every once in a while, if there's a courageous nurse who's speaking truth to power and pushing back,
[27:45] just come alongside them and say, I agree.
[27:48] You know,
[27:49] if one person,
[27:51] they can cut from the herd and they can annihilate you, they'll find a way to shut you down. They'll find a way to fire you, go to your regulatory body, shut you up,
[28:00] but they can't shut down. Like, even if two of you, three,
[28:04] It's a small group of people. So for me, it's like, nurses need to learn to find their voice. They need to find their power, but they need to do it in extremely professional ways with a nervous system that's well regulated,
[28:17] where you can speak truth to power. Bottom line is individual nurses need to find their voice in the moment, in the interaction, because no one's coming to save us.
[28:26] And if we don't start to get our act together,
[28:29] like, everyone's just walking away, there won't even be a nursing profession. Oh, that's not true. That's not.
[28:34] It is true. Why would you want to walk into this? If someone said, what would you tell your daughter if she wanted to go into nursing? Oh, I did tell her, absolutely not.
[28:42] You are not going to be a nurse.
[28:44] So she's a nurse in intensive care.
[28:51] That's how much influence I have over my children.
[28:55] The whole thing is if you have these level skills and you know how to navigate. But I was fully burnt out and I had more strategy skills, mindset. I mean, it doesn't matter.
[29:06] There is a point where the only thing that's going to get you back to yourself. And I'm not back to myself yet at all from the pandemic, from the pivots, from I'm not back to myself is walking away.
[29:19] And Kathleen Bartholomew, years ago, a few years ago, said 60% of RNs, and she cited some research. I said, that can't be right.
[29:29] So I went to the research. Oh, geez. Like they say, 60% of new RNs were leaving nursing their jobs within the first two years.
[29:38] I said, well, some have to come back. Some. So,
[29:41] I mean, they didn't track where people were coming back in, but people do probably come back in somewhere else. Like, I came back into Justice. I worked five years in the Justice Department.
[29:51] So again,
[29:52] learning some really good skills in a different correctional setting from nurses, honestly, who really were my mentors. And there was nothing the same about their personalities at all.
[30:03] But they had all figured out how to grow this thick skin that my nursing instructor had talked about. So I learned a lot from them. And they also were badass nurses.
[30:13] Like, they created a lot of change. They took stands, they took risks,
[30:18] and I had a tremendous amount of respect for them. And some of them were just really fun. Like one of my nurses, she was so humorous and so funny. She could get around every difficult situation with mischief.
[30:30] She just got around it with mischief. And I'm like, I learned so much from her, how fun and mischief and humor.
[30:37] And one of the things that's helped me, which seems kind of counterintuitive, is one of my mentors is Margaret Wheatley. She has been around in organizational leadership forever. I think she's in her late 70s now.
[30:50] And so in her mentorship with me, it was like, Wendy, you're not going to save it all,
[30:55] but we can create islands of sanity.
[30:59] So where are you going to create an island of sanity in what you're bringing to the world? You know, because you know, rage, despair,
[31:08] anger, frustration. The other thing
[31:10] she said, which I thought was really good. Again talking about the energy and spaces and open dialogue with psychosis recovery does this too. Psychosis doesn't happen with the person, it happens within the space in between people.
[31:22] And she did the same thing. So if you're enraged or furious or in despair, you don't say I'm angry, I'm enraged. You just say there is rage here.
[31:34] And it really helps,
[31:36] you know, pushing out,
[31:38] not embodying it by pushing it out. And that's another part of our training, which is the mindset and psychological self protection. How do we psychologically self protect while consciousness raising?
[31:48] You have to know your enemies, you have to know what's around you,
[31:52] what can trip you up. But it's also protecting that identity boundary. We every organism, every cell has its own identity boundary.
[32:00] And you cannot allow other people to dictate your identity. You have to take control of it.
[32:07] So you can either do it with scenario,
[32:09] you're doing scenarios and lab-based learning, or if you don't have that opportunity, you can also do it through visualization. And there is a science behind that. This is how you can protect yourself.
[32:20] You do guided visualizations with increasing intensity of situations coming at you. And then you can do the visualization of you walking through them. With the methodology that I teach,
[32:31] handling them and walking through the scenario, going back and forth,
[32:36] it's kind of an active process.
[32:38] It's like you can't talk about healthy eating and never really move into healthy eating without getting an outcome. You actually have to do it.
[32:46] So there's a theoretical piece, but then there's also the application. You have to start doing it like anything, it needs to be done.
[32:52] But we can psychologically protect ourselves and there is mindset infrastructures, beliefs,
[33:00] philosophies and beliefs and we've bought mainstream, dominant narratives that are harming us.
[33:08] And we need to take back and assign a different meaning to whatever is going on in the room.
[33:15] You can say, do not personalize, but you really have to learn how not to personalize.
[33:20] And you get there through conversations, because most things aren't rational.
[33:23] Like, this is a total stranger you just met.
[33:27] So why would you think anything they said about you or any conclusion they came to about you is even valid? And why would you even contemplate it? But because of negativity bias.
[33:37] Again, more research here. Negativity bias. The human organism is taught to hold onto that threat and be vigilant with that threat because it's a threat,
[33:48] but you have to unpack it. Is it really a threat?
[33:51] No, probably not. It's not a threat. Right.
[33:54] But it's built into our biology, so we have to say, oh, I'm experiencing negativity bias. My husband and I were just talking about this.
[34:02] You know, you get 4,000 great comments about something, one negative, and then you perseverate on the negative and it's derailing you. And it's just like, is this person even trained in that to give you that kind of feedback?
[34:13] And why are you paying attention to it? It's like, no, it's not at all. It's just not rational. One of my nursing instructors, when someone was being mean to me and I thought, no one should be mean to me.
[34:25] I'm so nice. Like, why don't you like me? I'm such a nice person. Blah, blah. Anyway, my nurse instructor said, Wendy, it is not rational to think everyone's going to like you.
[34:35] You're just gonna have to forget that notion. I'm like, yeah, it's not rational. You're right. Like, why? What? Of course not. There's billions of people in the world. That's ridiculous.
[34:44] But we have beliefs and about ourselves and about the world that we don't unpack.
[34:49] So really soft skills is really about unpacking a lot of those philosophies, a lot of those beliefs, a lot of those things we just didn't question. And honestly, I'm getting along in the tooth.
[35:00] You know, I got lots of gray hairs and sometimes I'm just shocked about things I didn't know. Especially something will come along and they'll show me a new way to do it.
[35:08] It's just like, why didn't someone teach me that? It's so simple. But I never. I never saw it. You don't see it till you see it. So.
[35:15] Oh, that makes total sense, you know?
[35:17] Yeah.
[35:18] Michelle: Sometimes wisdom,
[35:20] you know, with age it comes. Wisdom. We hope. Right.
[35:24] And there's so many things that I'm learning right now as a retired nurse that I was like, wow, this would have been really useful to me while I was working and, you know, three decades ago.
[35:40] Wendy: And Malcolm Gladwell, again, I love that guy. He talks about this like, you have to get a certain critical mass of people in a room.
[35:46] Nursing voice,
[35:47] nursing knowledge and nursing understanding is really not even being measured because we're just seen as the task.
[35:56] We're just enacting physician's orders. But good nurses are not doing that, probably.
[36:01] You know, I think one nurse said in the pandemic, you say, oh, the doctors, the doctors, the doctors. This.
[36:06] Well, actually, the 23 hours and 55 minutes that the nurses are keeping you alive. Like, maybe think about that. Instead of the maybe two minutes the nurse, the physician actually shows up.
[36:17] And if you are being kept alive, it's because the nurse is a really good nurse having really important conversations,
[36:23] driving care,
[36:24] you know,
[36:25] so it's a societal issue.
[36:28] Like, so much transformation has to happen. But again, I believe nurses are silent. Like, I led teams and it was so frustrating. I was leading a rehab team, so I was the leader of everyone.
[36:39] I had 120 staff,
[36:41] speech language physiotherapists, rec therapists, RNs, LPNs, you know,
[36:48] nurse practitioners, physicians, specialists.
[36:52] One day I walk out of my office and I'm sort of looking at the desk and I'm seeing a physician interacting with a physiotherapist.
[36:59] And then again, that energetic change. I see him switch around and talk to one of my seasoned experienced nurses.
[37:06] And I just see this total switch, even between the two of them, and not even necessarily the physician's fault, but the nurse. The deference, the subservience, the not. I'm an autonomous professional.
[37:18] I was just like,
[37:19] where does this come from? Where does this start?
[37:22] It's so destructive.
[37:25] You know, nurses have to find a way to come into their own again,
[37:29] to become a sovereign profession.
[37:32] And I mean, there's certainly lots of nurses in academia putting forth lots of different theories, but it's simply not on the front line.
[37:40] It's really hard to find really high functioning teams where nurses are at par with all the other members of the team. It's a societal thing, and it has nothing to do with the skill or the intelligence or the brilliance of the nurses on the floor.
[37:52] I know brilliant nurses everywhere.
[37:55] I know brilliant nurses who aren't speaking. Like, why aren't you speaking? You're the smartest person in this room.
[38:01] Oh, you know, it's not my place?
[38:03] No, it really is your place. It needs to be your place.
[38:06] So if I can teach nurses to deal with really intense, difficult emotions, really difficult behaviors, and they can up level their soft skills where they can engage in micro acts of resistance extremely professionally.
[38:21] But showing up because you are pushing against that power, you are pushing through,
[38:26] you know, you know the doctor come into the unit, that's really difficult. And you're going to have to have a difficult conversation with them. If you don't, your patient might die.
[38:33] So it's not even about you, it's about protecting your patients and about having the skills to show up for them.
[38:39] Michelle: Who are your clients, Wendy? Are you in nursing schools? Do you work with institutions? Who are you teaching these skills to?
[38:50] Wendy: Well, I've been teaching them under a variety of umbrellas.
[38:54] So I used to call it Bedside Manners 101 because the life you save could be your own.
[38:59] And that was to all healthcare professionals because it is very, very, very universal skills.
[39:06] I have taught individual nurses who have signed up to my courses.
[39:09] But the problem even with them, and they're very motivated and wonderful human beings is they're exhausted.
[39:16] And so doing trying to integrate one more thing, one more thing.
[39:20] It's like we do CPR.
[39:22] So I'm really trying to get into systems and switch thinking around and at the end of the day I might just be leaving my information for someone else. And maybe in 50, 60, 100 years they'll say, oh, this Wendy Dixon-Jewitt had some interesting ideas over here.
[39:38] Let's look at this because it's such a tough landscape right now, but I think what will probably happen, like I'm on LinkedIn and so I think what will happen is I will eventually trip across an organization who's real, that's really in pursuit of excellence,
[39:54] that's prepared to really integrate something different because they're trying to teach nurses how to have difficult conversations.
[40:01] It's not like everyone out there is evil. They're not evil, they're just, everyone's in over their head. Everyone's trying to survive. In the States, they're trying to survive. All the insurance stuff, this, you know, it's, it's so difficult.
[40:12] In Canada, we're just trying to survive. We don't have any nurses,
[40:16] we don't have any money. You know,
[40:18] these are not evil people. Like, we really have to find a way. Nurses need to show up. So I think if it's going to be a Magnet center, probably I'm thinking it's going to be a center that says, you know what,
[40:29] let's try this thing. Like, really, let's do some research and see if this thing really helps.
[40:35] Like, helps keep people safer. Because the pieces and the components all have individual research saying this decreases incidence of aggression.
[40:43] This really, you know, impacts confidence and competence in moving into these situations. But let's just take it and look at it as a pilot project through a research lens. We picked up that slogan zero tolerance, and it's destroyed us.
[40:56] Like, it's not helpful. It's rhetoric. And we can't have zero tolerance. I mean,
[41:02] like, if we're gonna have zero tolerance, let's start with nurse on nurse aggression, and let's start with physician on nurse aggression. These are highly regulated professions that are paid and contracted.
[41:10] Like, we should eradicate that. Absolutely. But we're never gonna eradicate zero tolerance in healthcare.
[41:16] How many illnesses like.
[41:19] And problems like health conditions impact emotions and behaviors, like, just off the top of our head, like traumatic brain injury, stroke, Parkinson's disease, like, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's disease, Huntington epilepsy, migraine, brain tumors, encephalitis, meningitis, not to mention electrolytes, hormones.
[41:36] It all impacts emotional and behavioral issues. So we need to be detectives. We can't be saying zero tolerance like, so we're saying all these people, sorry, you don't fit our box.
[41:45] You're not allowed in the house. We don't say that with blood.
[41:48] Blood's dangerous. Blood has Hep B. Blood has all kinds of dangerous things that could kill us, viruses.
[41:55] We don't just say, you're not allowed in the door. We prepare for it. We plan for it. We have strategies for it. Well, we need to do the same thing with emotional and behavioral symptomatology.
[42:05] And it's going to take a lot of brains at the table to really figure out a really smart system. But I know I have an important piece of the puzzle.
[42:14] I'm going to bring it to the world.
[42:15] If no one wants to hear it or learn it or listen to it, well, that's fine. I'm still going to do it. It's just like,
[42:22] this is helpful. So bring me in the room. I'll teach it to you. I'll teach it in microbursts. You know, we can tease it apart so it's manageable, because, honestly, once you kind of get it in your head,
[42:32] it doesn't take a lot of time. It's simple, but it's not easy because mindset shifts aren't easy,
[42:38] you know, learning simple skills when you got to push through resistance, push through power, push through high. They're not easy,
[42:45] but they're doable. It's like experience distressors.
[42:48] The more you do it, you actually feel good about it. Like I got to a point in my career because they'd always come to me if someone was having a lot of behavioral issues.
[42:55] Wendy, will you look after this patient when you do this? And I saw it absolutely as a challenge. I'm just like, okay. And if I could, if I could solve it, if I could get done what I needed to get done, if I came up with something creative or something interesting,
[43:08] I'd walk out of the room and say, yes, I still got it,
[43:11] you know, and that's what we should be doing with any skill. We should want to be the best at whatever skills we're doing. But this is everywhere. It's in every conversation, it's on every shift.
[43:20] So instead of CPR every year,
[43:22] which I've done four times a year,
[43:24] let's start training, let's start scenario planning, let's start getting actors in and actually have an evaluative component where we have a properly structured system to move through that's upleveling our skills, not some high hairy fairy.
[43:40] Communication theory,
[43:41] systems analysis, situational assessment that nobody has time for. It's about getting through the moment, getting it under control, maintaining your therapeutic relationships and getting on to the next person.
[43:52] That's what it's all about. It's about being the most liked person on the unit. Even though you can deal with the hardest situations. It's about being effective in what you do as a nurse at the bedside and effective as a leader.
[44:05] You can't just skate away from the tough conversations. You have to be able to have the skill to engage in them and fully understand what you're trying to engage in and what the outcome is.
[44:14] The outcome is intact relationships. The outcome is solve the problem.
[44:19] The outcome is make the shift better for everyone else.
[44:23] And I know it's difficult to fit in there now because it seems like an adjunct add on, but it's the essence of everything.
[44:30] It's the essence of having an amazing career. Because once you learn how to deal with this stuff and you master it and it's, it is skill, strategy and self mastery,
[44:41] you will have so much easier time not only at work, but in your personal life,
[44:46] in everything, every career you decide to go into.
[44:50] And that honestly is a guarantee. Because it just happens.
[44:55] Michelle: Yeah. All those skills concerning emotional intelligence,
[45:01] soft skills, anything having to do with people,
[45:05] where you're working with people,
[45:07] they're essential. I mean,
[45:10] It's not arguable. Right.
[45:15] Well, I'll tell you what, let's pivot here, because before we close, I wanted to talk about one of your YouTube posts, and you discussed some really astounding stats about workplace violence.
[45:29] And one of the things that you talked about was that in 1990, and so this is 35 years ago,
[45:36] 50% of the compensation claims in Canada came from the healthcare sector.
[45:43] And this really shocked me.
[45:45] And I was thinking, yeah, this is 35 years ago. And I want to tell this story. I've told it before,
[45:52] but it bears repeating.
[45:54] So this was in a C-section delivery,
[45:59] and the surgeon asked me a question.
[46:04] How big is the baby? How much does the baby weigh?
[46:07] And I had not yet weighed the baby because we don't do that in the OR, we go to a separate room after the baby's stabilized, which the surgeon was aware of.
[46:18] And so, you know, I said, well, obviously I haven't weighed the baby yet, but I think this baby is probably about seven, seven and a half pounds.
[46:27] And she, you know, she started arguing with me. Oh, no, that baby is nine pounds. And I said,
[46:33] oh I don't think the baby's that big, but I'm going to weigh the baby in just a few minutes. The parents are there, there's a room full of people,
[46:42] nurses, respiratory therapists,
[46:45] you know,
[46:46] assistants, surgical techs, everything.
[46:49] And so I had the baby in my arms, and I said, I'm just going to go next door and I'll weigh the baby and I'll let you know how much the baby weighs.
[47:00] And so I took the dad with me,
[47:02] and as we're leaving the door, the surgeon turned around and threw surgical scissors at my back.
[47:09] And so I just pretended that this didn't happen and walked into the next room with the dad and proceeded to weigh the baby and called the surgeon,
[47:21] you know, later and said what the weight was
[47:25] And all of that.
[47:26] And so after this incident,
[47:29] I went to report it through our reporting system, which at that time was very similar to,
[47:36] I guess, MIDAS.
[47:37] MIDAS is what our institution uses now, but this was a different form of that.
[47:43] And talk to my higher ups about this incident, which I thought was really shocking and which was witnessed by everyone in the room, obviously.
[47:53] And they said to me,
[47:56] well, what could you have done differently?
[47:59] So, sort of like placing blame like this was my fault by,
[48:06] you know, doing what, what I did, which was saying I don't know how much the baby weighs. I don't think the baby does not look like the baby weighs 10 pounds.
[48:17] You know, I could definitely tell the difference between a seven pound baby and a nine pound baby.
[48:23] So, you know, talk about how are we gonna stop those, that's not even a microaggression
[48:31] Wendy: That's a physical violence. Physical assault. Yeah, that's physical violence. So, I mean, how many years ago was that, Michelle?
[48:39] Michelle: 20 years ago.
[48:40] Wendy: I will guarantee you that's continuing today because physicians are given executive protection in the most egregious situations.
[48:51] Their insurance is paid for by healthcare organizations in Canada.
[48:56] They're given senior level executive protection because we have this narrative that you can't live without physicians. Even if you look at regulatory infractions, you'll look at a nurse like in Saskatchewan who made a post as a granddaughter of someone who thought the care could be better in a care home,
[49:14] and other nurses reporting her saying she shouldn't have made that post. She should have, you know, as a personal post. Right?
[49:20] It went through some crazy regulatory thing. She ended up, they gave her like $30,000 fine and she should have went through property. This is a grieving granddaughter that just happened to be an RN.
[49:31] And this, all, this of course played out all the way through, you know, freedom of speech and it was finally overturned. But that, that nurse's life was ruined,
[49:40] you know, and then at a similar time, there was a physician who was criminally charged with sexual assault against his patients.
[49:49] And he was still practicing,
[49:51] you know, he hadn't gone to trial, so innocent until guilty. But come on, like,
[49:55] you know, the, the injustices are ridiculous.
[50:00] So when we have this kind of leadership, and that's why I say if you want to do zero tolerance, if you're really, really committed to it, start with nurse on nurse violence and physician on nurse violence.
[50:11] And that's non physical violence, which is verbal abuse or oppression. But you know, again, it takes skills to be able to do that.
[50:20] And like, those things, like, honestly is just shocking, right? It's just absolutely shocking. And you were a victim of that. You were absolutely a victim of that. But the truth is,
[50:32] once nurses wake up to their own power,
[50:35] without nurses, everything stops.
[50:37] Everything stops.
[50:38] And that's the bottom line. And so if we could just collectively just start standing up,
[50:45] like, it's really hard to fight back and it takes a tremendous amount of energy and it's not for everyone. And I'm not saying for everyone to do that.
[50:54] But even speaking with that physician yourself after the fact,
[50:59] you know,
[51:00] holding them personally accountable and having that difficult conversation,
[51:04] it will be shocking to them because they're so not used to being held accountable for anything.
[51:10] It will be absolutely shocking if you would have called up that physician because they're a human being and just had that conversation with them. I want to revisit what happened in that.
[51:21] Or like,
[51:22] nurses need to start doing that. You know what I mean? Like, they're just people and they're the bullies in the playground. And if you're going to play like that,
[51:30] you're going to have to at least have a conversation with me.
[51:33] There's a researcher, Elizabeth Peters, who talks about ethical resistance and how important it is for nurses to engage in ethical resistance. And I thought, finally, someone's talking about this. This is exciting.
[51:46] So before COVID I a conversation with her, I was actually going to a conference. I was so excited to talk to people about this issue.
[51:52] And so I talked to her on the phone, and I said, well, what was the most surprising thing you found out about nurses engaging in resistance? And she said,
[52:01] how seldom they do it on any level.
[52:04] And I'm like, that's what I saw in my practice. They just don't engage. They just,
[52:09] oh, well, that's the way it is. And not even like,
[52:14] pushing back a little bit. Like, I always push back against physicians. And it was shocking to them, and it wasn't a big deal. It wasn't rude or anything. I would just simply not agree with them.
[52:23] And nurses just amaze me by all the risks they take to their own practice by not pushing back against bad practice.
[52:29] You know, they always think, oh, I'll be protected by the organization. You will not be protected by anyone. You will be hung out to dry.
[52:38] You will be hung out to dry. That's true. So you have to protect your license.
[52:43] Michelle: Yeah. Maggie Ortiz has proven that many times that the institution will not protect you. And I did, Wendy, I did go talk to this physician, and, you know, she had 10,000 excuses about why she did what she did.
[52:57] And I said, you know, that's fine. It was still unacceptable, and I'm going to be reporting you.
[53:02] And, you know, I did. And the then the institution obviously didn't back me up.
[53:10] And I could have civilly, you know, thinking about it now, I could have civilly,
[53:14] you know, pressed charges for assault and probably have gotten somewhere.
[53:20] But what is more disgusting, I think, than that behavior is the behavior of these institutions that practice, that say they have zero tolerance,
[53:31] but when it comes right down to it, they're going to protect that physician,
[53:37] because that physician brings patients into the institution and patients equal money.
[53:45] And this was basically what was told to me.
[53:48] So it was like, you need to get your skills,
[53:51] you need to sharpen up your skills so that this doesn't happen again.
[53:56] Wendy: But that's where I say we need to get organized. We need to get collectively organized and we have to go after to deal with the cultural issues, especially when it comes to violence and such a clear egregious breach.
[54:08] And you're not the first person I've heard where surgeons are throwing sharp instruments at nurses and dodging, dodging, dodging. But there is levers to pull to get them under control.
[54:19] And those levers won't be pulled until nurses start to organize. And we're seeing micro groups of nurses organizing to go after systems level and cultural level situations.
[54:32] And I have so much respect for them because this is a decision entered into. That's like you said,
[54:38] you could have tried to go after this physician,
[54:42] but for you, probably busy in your life raising children, needed your job,
[54:46] did also energy.
[54:48] How much energy do you have? Do you really want to spend, you know, four years in court because your career.
[54:53] What do I hope to accomplish really? Is consciousness rising? That's the first piece of empowerment, is raise the consciousness so people have to become aware of the problem. When you talk about the 90s thing, when I first read that research back in 2000,
[55:07] and you know, it had been around for a couple decades already, I'm like,
[55:10] oh my God, I had no idea the extent of the problem. I didn't know it was that big,
[55:15] 50%. And now they're saying that health care incidents of violence are five times greater than any other industry.
[55:24] So this isn't a problem we're going to be able to ignore forever.
[55:28] So I just hope in all the things I've ever tried to accomplish in my life, I've failed more times than I've succeeded. But when I've had success, it's done some really good work.
[55:38] So I just hope that, you know, before I die that I can at least make some inroads in this area.
[55:45] But I think the big thing, like you, I just joined LinkedIn not that many months ago,
[55:50] and I've already met the most incredible international people.
[55:54] Like, you know,
[55:55] there's an experiment, I don't know where it is, but if a mouse in a maze figures out that maze, say in Canada,
[56:02] then within milliseconds around the world,
[56:05] mice around the world figure out the same maze. And so I know we're all connected. So I know if I'm thinking like this, I've already met many other people who are thinking as I am and that eventually it will just tip and it'll be like smoking.
[56:18] It'll be like we smoked at the desk. I used to catch physician ashes. The thought of stopping smoking that way was preposterous. What? You're going to make us stop?
[56:28] You know, now we look back,
[56:29] what were we, what were we thinking? What a bunch of do heads. And we were fighting against that and that was so dumb. We weren't going to go smoke out.
[56:36] You know, it was just like,
[56:38] that's just wrongheaded and we're just moving through a lot of wrong headed things and. But raising the consciousness is what it's all about.
[56:47] And you don't have to lose your job, you don't have to push it to whistleblower level. All you have to do is have that one conversation and honestly having that conversation with that physician, even though you might not have seen the benefits of it, made an impact.
[57:00] The fact that you had the courage to go back and just have the conversation,
[57:04] like, what was that? That was unacceptable.
[57:07] Really important conversation. So thank you for having the courage so many years ago because so many people don't have the courage to step into their power because at the end of the day we're all just people,
[57:18] you know, we all come in with nothing, we're all leaving with nothing and everything else is just,
[57:24] you know, the meaning we assign to it. So thank you so much for doing that. I'm sure there's someone in the future that you prevented them from having a similar situation just by having the conversation.
[57:38] So thank you.
[57:39] Michelle: You're welcome. And you have certainly raised consciousness today, Wendy, with these important conversations. And there are so many layers to our conversation and it's certainly something that's going to need to be revisited in depth.
[57:56] And so I would love to have you on again and talk about some of these layers, really and drill down into some of them because I know you have put so much thought and so much work and effort into bringing this to the nursing community and it's so essential.
[58:19] So thank you for having all those important conversations.
[58:24] Wendy: Yeah, like we're having some really high level conversations today. But I think the thing to remember is what I'm teaching is really fun and it's easy to learn and it gives you pretty effective, quick results.
[58:38] And so even though we're having very serious discussions,
[58:41] I do believe that learning should be fun.
[58:43] And these are very quick wins that I teach. And as a nurse, we have so many levers to pull because we have so much knowledge, information, and things that patients need from us, especially patients,
[58:54] but also physicians. They need us, too.
[58:56] So, I mean, it's.
[58:58] They're fun skills to learn,
[59:00] and they're even better when you really navigate really intense situations and people just look to you for leadership because they're like, well, how did you do that? Oh, well, it's teachable.
[59:13] It's trainable. I can teach you. You know, give me a call.
[59:16] Michelle: Yeah. Yes. I love it. Well, for those that want to reach out, Wendy, where can we find you?
[59:22] Wendy: Well, I'm trying to just sort of stay on LinkedIn right now. So if you want to come over to LinkedIn or Wendy@Bainstormsoftskills.com and I just find the world.
[59:34] Yeah. When you're running your own business and running your own life and trying to do everything all at once, just like, okay, how can I make this sustainable? I don't want it to bog me down and eat me alive.
[59:44] So that's good. I'm trying to. I've decided I just kind of want to focus on LinkedIn, because that's where my people are primarily. Anyways.
[59:53] Michelle: I think that's great. You can't go wrong with LinkedIn. Well, Wendy, is there someone that you recommend as a guest on this podcast?
[01:00:02] Wendy: Mel Cortez is doing some interesting things down in the States. Do you know Mel?
[01:00:07] Michelle: So Mel and I met way back almost three years ago when I first started the podcast,
[01:00:13] and I was really green. Like,
[01:00:16] I totally dropped the ball on Mel. And I've seen her on LinkedIn many times. I follow her,
[01:00:21] and so I really would love to reach out to her again because I know she's doing some of the same work that you're doing.
[01:00:27] You guys are in the same space and.
[01:00:30] Wendy: Well,
[01:00:31] like in the United States, like, her. Her thing is more around the guns and the gun violence and the. Really? Yeah, I like the fact that she's pushing that side of it.
[01:00:40] Like, the real extreme side of it. Like, I'm not thinking of gun violence because we. We don't have a ton of gun violence here,
[01:00:47] but we definitely have violence.
[01:00:51] She's been at it for a while, so she's put together a roster of experts in different areas.
[01:00:56] I'm just getting to know Mel as well.
[01:00:59] She's doing her work and she just wrote a book.
[01:01:03] Michelle: And as I said before, there are many layers to this and I think we need to drill down on a few of them.
[01:01:12] So I just want to thank you for being my guest and for everything that you've brought today.
[01:01:18] And you know,
[01:01:20] there's been a lot of heavy stuff that we've talked about.
[01:01:23] And so we've reached the end where at least during the last five minutes we're going to have some fun.
[01:01:31] So if you've heard some of my episodes, you know, at the end we do the five minute snippet. So are you ready to play, Wendy?
[01:01:40] Wendy: I'll do my best.
[01:01:43] Michelle: I believe, I believe you're gonna do great.
[01:01:46] Okay, so we'll just go.
[01:02:29] Convince me to live in Indian Head, Saskatchewan, Canada.
[01:02:37] Wendy: If you want to live in the vortex of the coolest people with the most amazing hidden skills in the world, land in Indian Head, Saskatchewan. It's truly a magical place where you will be shocked at all the people that are just hiding, living their life in Indian Head, Saskatchewan.
[01:02:55] I was, I'm about,
[01:02:57] I believe, consciousness. I'm talking about consciousness raising. And I was talking to someone,
[01:03:01] having a conversation about what I was trying to do and I said, I'm really just sort of diving into consciousness and how can we kind of change consciousness infrastructure from where we are?
[01:03:10] Oh, you need to talk to Scott. And I'm like, well, who's Scott? Oh, he lives upstairs in my apartment. I'm like, what are you talking about? Scott? He's upstairs. He's got a blog called the Chrysalis.
[01:03:19] Like, he is like, this is all he does. Like, he is into. I'm like, are you kidding me? Like, honestly, how many times that's happened to me in Indian Head is.
[01:03:27] It's crazy. Like really mystical crazy. So, yeah, Indian has super cool place, tons of trees. We've got thousands of trees because we had the tree farm, the experimental farm and brick houses.
[01:03:40] It's just, it's full of cool artists, creatives Intellects. Yeah. Come visit a scientist because there's science facility here.
[01:03:48] Yeah, super cool place, Southern Saskatchewan. Come on down. And plus where the,
[01:03:53] you know, Saskatchewan is the.
[01:03:55] starting place of medicare and socialized medicine in Canada. Tommy Douglas,
[01:04:01] he's an hour away. He's in my hometown, Weyburn. So I get it from him. You know, I am like, this is a problem we can solve. Let's solve it. A chicken in every pot kind of thing.
[01:04:10] We can do this. And yeah. So we're full of people that make crazy things happen.
[01:04:17] Michelle: So all of you brilliants out there are just flying under the radar in Indian Head, huh?
[01:04:23] Wendy: Yep, yep. Absolutely.
[01:04:26] Michelle: I love it. Okay. Do you have a favorite movie theater snack, Wendy?
[01:04:31] Wendy: Oh, popcorn. Buttered popcorn. You gotta do it. You just have to.
[01:04:35] Michelle: Okay. What's the first thing you do when you arrive at your travel destination?
[01:04:42] Wendy: Organize my clothes.
[01:04:45] Michelle: Man. I do that too. I gotta get em all out and.
[01:04:48] Wendy: Hang em up and I settle in, I settle in. I move in.
[01:04:53] Michelle: Yes. We all have our particulars, right? What has been your best purchase for under $100?
[01:05:04] Wendy: Best purchase for,
[01:05:06] Michelle: That's hard.
[01:05:07] Wendy: A can opener from Pampered Chef.
[01:05:10] It opens from the top and it doesn't leave any sharp edges. It has saved my hands so many times. It's like a miracle.
[01:05:19] And I tell everyone,
[01:05:20] if they've never seen it, it's like, what kind of Pampered Chef? And at the time I thought it was so expensive. It's like $60 Canadian. I'm like, this is the best money I've ever spent because I don't cut my hands on sharp.
[01:05:31] The rim of the lid or the rim of the can. Like, brilliant, brilliant stuff.
[01:05:36] Michelle: That's great.
[01:05:38] Okay, this we're talking about Wendy's billboard. If you could put one piece of advice on a billboard for the world to see,
[01:05:47] what would Wendy's billboard say?
[01:05:50] Wendy: Live as though everything you do and say will eventually be known. Because in truth, it will.
[01:05:58] Michelle: Wow. Can we just make that billboard right now? That's amazing.
[01:06:03] Wendy: Yeah, it's anchored me through many difficult situations.
[01:06:09] Michelle: Yes. Okay, well, I have one more question for you. And it could be controversial, Wendy, but will Canada become the 51st US state?
[01:06:22] Wendy: No.
[01:06:26] Michelle: Wendy, I thought you were going to say over my dead body.
[01:06:30] Wendy: No, like, I mean,
[01:06:34] it could happen, I guess, but the whole thing is we have very serious cultural differences.
[01:06:40] And it's not that we have a lot of commonalities too, but I think there are things that we're not going to be prepared to give up,
[01:06:47] We would never be prepared to give up socialized medicine.
[01:06:51] We believe that we need to look after ourselves and we need to look after our neighbor. Even my hard right oldest daughter, she's like, yeah, I don't know about healthcare.
[01:07:00] Like, even her, you know, and she's like, over the top.
[01:07:04] She's not prepared to give it up. So I'm thinking most people aren't prepared to give it up. And then the other thing is just the safety of not having a gun culture.
[01:07:12] Like, we can still die by gunfire, but most likely it's going to be a hunting rifle.
[01:07:17] Not everyone's packing,
[01:07:19] we're just not.
[01:07:22] So we're still in a position where it's not our primary problem. It's always. It's always going to be an issue, but it's not our primary problem. And I think for those two reasons, culturally,
[01:07:33] and we're a hockey culture. Like,
[01:07:37] the whole saying, like, elbows up, that's just like. I stopped watching hockey because as far as I was concerned, it was just legalized assault. You know, everyone's fighting on the ice and this and that.
[01:07:47] I'm just like, this is one crazy sport. But it really is indicative of our culture. Like, we'll play a really hard game, but when push comes to shove, we'll drop our gloves.
[01:07:56] We'll put our lives on the line. And I think that's what you would definitely see from Canadians.
[01:08:01] We're in the world. We're quietly in the world.
[01:08:04] We're quietly in the world, but we made big differences in a lot of places. Quietly going about our business.
[01:08:10] Michelle: Yeah. And personally,
[01:08:12] I hope Canada stays a sovereign nation,
[01:08:15] but I had to throw that in there, speaking with my Canadian friend. So I appreciate you putting your two cents worth in and I appreciate everything that you've brought to the conversation today, Wendy.
[01:08:26] And this is definitely going to be to be continued.
[01:08:30] So thank you so much, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.
[01:08:35] Wendy: Thank you.
[01:08:36] And again, thank you for your service. Thank you for doing this.
[01:08:40] I know a work of heart and legacy, and it's important to amplify the voice of nurses everywhere.
[01:08:46] I don't think anything's more important. I actually believe nurses can save the world. Not just healthcare, but save the world once we step into our power. And I think we're getting very close to doing that.
[01:08:57] Michelle: Amen. I believe so, too.
[01:08:59] Wendy: Amen.
[01:09:00] Michelle: Okay, take care.
[01:09:02] Wendy: Thanks, Michelle.
