Humanism Now | Secular Ethics, Curiosity and Compassionate Change

54. Nursing the Nation Hosts on Why Nurses Belong At The Centre Of Public Debate About Health, Policy and Human Dignity

• Humanise Live • Season 1 • Episode 54

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“Nursing is the most humanistic of professions — it operationalises the philosophical groundings of humanism.” — Jamie Bourgeois

 “Nurses have 24/7 eyes on the human experience — we see how policy shows up in real people’s lives.” — Melissa Anne DuBois

Jamie Bourgeois and Melissa Anne DuBois are the co-hosts of Nursing the Nation — a podcast giving nurses a national voice in debates that shape health, policy, and our daily lives. Together they explore how an ethic of evidence and empathy can challenge wellness hype, inform better policy, and centre human dignity in every decision that touches a patient’s life.

In this episode Melissa & Jamie discuss the historical erasure of women healers to today’s media blind spots — and what happens when they’re finally heard. They reveal how nursing science quietly powers trauma-informed practice, safer hospitals, and better education. 

Join us to hear how nurses bridge the gap between policy and people and why the world’s most trusted profession must lead public conversations.

Connect with Jamie Bourgeois & Melissa Anne Dubois

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Music: Blossom by Light Prism

Podcast transcripts are AI-generated and may contain errors or omissions. They are provided to make our content more accessible, but should not be considered a fully accurate record of the conversation.

James Hodgson:

Welcome to Humanism Now, the podcast where we explore how humanist values of reason, compassion, and dignity play out across all areas of life. I'm your host, James Hodgson. This week we're turning our focus to care. Not just as a profession, but as a philosophy. We're delighted to be joined by Jamie Bourgeois and Melissa Anne Dubois, both experienced nurses based in the United States and co-hosts of the podcast Nursing the Nation. Through their show, Jamie and Melissa bring the uniquely insightful nursing lens to today's headlines, exploring how empathy, advocacy, and evidence-based thinking can help us to understand the human element of national events. Together they bring more than 50 years of nursing experience and both are currently pursuing PhDs in nursing. Their work is deeply grounded in holism, nursing science, and the belief in the power of compassion, and their belief in the power of compassionate care. Today we'll be exploring how the ethos of nursing with the focus on humanity, dignity, and evidence aligns with and sometimes challenges the principles of humanism itself. Jamie, Melissa Ran, thank you so much for joining us on Humanism Now.

Jamie Bourgeois:

Thank you for having us. Yes, we're looking forward to this conversation.

James Hodgson:

So am I, and I have had the opportunity of catching up on the Nursing the Nation podcast. So congratulations on launching, getting started, and it is really quite fascinating. So I'd love to know why you decide to start podcasting.

Jamie Bourgeois:

So the podcast actually came about through a class that Melissa Ann and I took last spring. We were in a health policy class in our nursing PhD program. And one of the themes that just kept coming up was that nurses very rarely have a national voice or a voice that's heard on important platforms when the discussion around health policy and other intersecting topics in our in the United States, like we're absent from the conversation, essentially. And of course, that really stuck with me. And so Melissa Ann and I just because the two of us made fast friends when we met in the program a little over a year ago, we just got talking. I like everybody else and their mother wanted to always do a podcast. So this seems like the natural direction to go with a podcast and get a nursing perspective and analysis to all of the things that have been going on in the United States. So yeah, that's how we got here.

James Hodgson:

You mentioned that there hasn't been enough that nurses aren't consulting enough in this national conversation. What do you as nurses bring, or could other members of the nursing profession bring, as a unique perspective to public debates, policy, discussions?

Melissa Anne DuBois:

So I think the gap is really a holistic on-the-ground perspective. So the media often gives us a what and a why of the headlines from a political or economic standpoint, but they rarely ask how does this impact the health and well-being of the average American family? And so nursing science is really focused on social determinants of health and patient advocacy. And we felt like the nursing voice was uniquely positioned to fill that void in the national conversation.

James Hodgson:

And why do you think nurses have been underrepresented previously in healthcare policy media coverage?

Jamie Bourgeois:

How much time do you have, Jay? Yeah, that's James. That's a little question that both Melissa and I could spend probably hours discussing and dissecting with you. But essentially, if you look at who is the majority of nurses, mostly women, who in a capitalist patriarchal society is marginalized? And I think that is a big piece of why the nurse's voice has not historically been listened to or found to be important, even though I think nursing, like Melissa was saying, has this kind of holistic on-the-ground lens of what's going on and how policy impacts people and their life in a very personal way. And nursing, I think, is one of the most like humanistic professions that could provide that perspective. I think that Melissa Ann and I also would say that we very much take nursing's code of ethics very seriously. And that means that we need to uplift the dignity of all people. And when we see things that are decisions that are being made in our country that affect these people and their families, and they have long-term, broad-reaching negative impacts at times, we have uh something to say about it. We give that real voice to it. And you know, it's just uh unfortunate that it normally is not the voice that is heard.

James Hodgson:

That's fascinating. And yeah, I can totally understand. You're on the front line, you you're experiencing everyday living, the end results of policy. So it is very peculiar that the nurses wouldn't be consulted in these areas.

Melissa Anne DuBois:

Historically, nursing has been seen as a helping profession, not a leadership one.

James Hodgson:

That's very interesting.

Melissa Anne DuBois:

Right. There's a really interesting book that your readers might be interested in if they like history. It's called Witches, Midwives, and Nurses by Barbara Enreich. I think I'm saying her name right. But it's a really famous book, and it was published in the 70s, and it talks about women healers as far back as like the 1300s and how essentially the medical establishment has been trying to disenfranchise, suffocate, eliminate the voices of women healers since the beginning of time. I mean, if you think about Halloween just happened here in the United States, and we've got this social idea of the witch, but really the first witches were women, right? But they were healers. They had the power to end a pregnancy. They had the power to cure the sick, they had the power to deliver babies, right? And that was seen as really problematic for patriarchal society, right? And so who were burned, it wasn't witches, it was women, right? It was nurses, it was midwives. And that unfortunately still occurs today. It's a dangerous, outdated misunderstanding that nurses are handmaidens and not leaders. And the other part of it is that nurses are often the heads of their household, the breadwinners of the family, or at least working in a two-adult household that requires two incomes exactly. And so they don't always have the time to balance national leadership or speaking out publicly with all of the other demands they have in their life, you know.

James Hodgson:

And you're taking some steps to making sure those voices are heard with the podcast already. But I just wonder what are some of the other steps that you'd like to be seen taken so that those voices are heard with from within the profession and also policymakers outside the profession.

Jamie Bourgeois:

I'll start by saying that I hope to engage more bedside or clinical nursing into this discussion of health policy and get them more active in bringing their voice and the power of the stories that they have to their like local representatives, their federal representatives. There is a place for that. They can take steps even individually. They don't even necessarily have to be like nurses that get involved in a big organization in order to be heard. They can quite literally just make a phone call, a letter to their representatives. And those things do make a difference. There also is a strength in numbers. And so I'm hoping that more nurses will see the value in having our voices heard and telling the stories of the impacts of the different healthcare policy and changes that are going on and get more people to listen and understand.

James Hodgson:

And have you heard directly from nurses or those outside the profession? What's the feedback been to the podcast so far?

Melissa Anne DuBois:

I think the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. Jamie and I had this really excellent opportunity this summer to be at a conference with international editors of nursing journals all over the world. And I think it was a little mind-blowing. Oh no, I had no shame. I was intimidated. I had no shame.

Jamie Bourgeois:

I was handing out our card. But we were in a room of like nursing giants. Like these were nurses with big names. And while the general public wouldn't know of them, Melissa, Ann, and I were just flabbergassed into to be in the presence of these nursing giants and to be welcomed. And for them to be so supportive of the fact that we were doing this, that we were starting to try and join the ranks, so to speak, in a scholarly way. But I think what our podcast in particular, our hope is there that we're reaching beyond our profession. Because we do want the general public too to see this through our lens as nurses. We've definitely had a huge positive response from the nursing profession that has been in touch with us. But for the general public, I will say actually, I'll tell this very brief little tiny story. So a couple of weeks ago, I don't know if you guys around the world have heard of No King's Day that we had back in October. I did go to my local No King's Day rally. And my protest signed was Nurses for Democracy. So it got a lot of attention because it was bright and it was colorful and it really it's a bald eagle with a nurse's cap. So it really captured all of the images of a United States and a nurse and et cetera. And they were people coming up to me and having conversations around me being there as a nurse. And I, if it was appropriate, I began to talk about the podcast. And hey, do you want to hear a nurse's perspective and consider some of these issues from this angle? And that was like, oh wow. People were very positive about that and really interested in wanting to hear it.

Melissa Anne DuBois:

Yeah, I have to say, the responses that I've gotten from like general public is at first confusion because they're like, what do you mean? A nurse is, you know, oh, on health podcast. And I'm like, it's not really a health podcast, it's like a current events political podcast. And then they're like confused, like, why would nurses be talking about that? I'm like, because health is a microcosm of all current affairs. Every political policy, economic policy, community policy, it affects your health. And nurses have 24-7 eyes on the human experience. And so, whether it's in the hospital, in the community, in schools, in courtrooms, we're everywhere. And so once I explain that, they're like, oh yeah, that makes sense. And the feedback I've gotten is that, oh, it seems like your podcast really is rooted in like common sense and compassion and like the practical reality of like my life. And I'm like, yeah, that's what we're going for.

James Hodgson:

And it's interesting, you know, as you were talking there, I'm reminded that one of the biggest areas that we see podcast growth is in wellness or this wellness influencer space, where so it's odd that people would be surprised that the healthcare professionals would want to communicate through the podcast medium when this is so popular. And I just wonder what's your views actually on the amount of content that's out there now in this wellness space that doesn't necessarily come from those who've worked in the healthcare industry.

Melissa Anne DuBois:

I have a lot of thoughts on this. I'm gonna let Jamie go.

Jamie Bourgeois:

I guess what I'll start with is wellness might not exactly align with healthcare per se. And wellness is such a broad generic term that I have a hard time making a lot of connection to it personally. And not because I don't think that it doesn't serve a purpose, because I do think that if this somebody comes across something on social media where a person is talking about like their wellness journey, and you know, it's something off the beaten path, but it is getting them to address health needs or something to just improve their overall well-being, then great. But I think that there's a fine line of is it wellness at the expense of public health? Is it wellness at the expense of your own personal long-term? Yeah.

Melissa Anne DuBois:

So I'll start with that. So my take on wellness is actually I'm frustrated and angry with our broken healthcare system here in the United States. We spend more money per person on healthcare and have worse outcomes compared to many other comparable nations where do not have universal healthcare. We do not consider healthcare a right in this country, which to me is fundamentally unethical. And so to me, the wellness industry, to me, naturally comes out of a broken system that isn't serving the people. So I understand that. And I actually applaud people taking their health into their own hands, trying to get second opinions, doing their own research. I have a friend who for a decade and a half was gaslit by our medical establishment here in the United States, telling him that he was making it all up in his head and just throwing opioids at him. Turns out he had stiff person syndrome, which now is getting national attention here because Celine Dion, who's a famous international singer from Canada, was diagnosed with it. But he researched that. He went down the rabbit holes and he was like, I think I have this. And for years, the doctors were like, that is so rare, you couldn't possibly have it, until finally he found a doctor that was like, all right, I'll test it, but just so you drop it. And it turns out that he had it. I hear stories like that all the time from people that like they have to go down their own rabbit holes, do their own research and try to figure out what's going on with them or their children or whatnot, because nobody's listening to them. So I applaud people who take their health into their own hands. Here's the problem when we have a bunch of people that are not serviced by our healthcare industry and having to do their own work, that leaves this void for a predatory wellness industry. And that's what is frustrating to me because people are desperate for answers and for health and wellness. They're desperate for our medical establishment to look at them holistically and not just as a diagnosis or throw pills at them. They're desperate for the medical establishment to not consider things like chiropractic care, craniosacral therapy, acupuncture as fringe, right? They're desperate for them to take them seriously because I know I wouldn't personally be walking today if it wasn't for chiropractic care. But what that leaves is the supplement industry that's highly unregulated, these wellness influencers on TikTok that are feeding people misinformation. So we have misinformation and disinformation coming from both sides now. And I feel like the predatory wellness industry is taking advantage of people. And that's not right either. I feel like that's one thing that I'm happy to be a nurse about. There's many things I'm happy to be a nurse about, but one is that we are in the United States one of the most trusted professions. And so I feel like as a nurse, using my voice to try to break through some of that noise and say, yes, you've been harmed by this healthcare industry, but also that wellness influencer is trying to sell you something and the truth is somewhere in the middle. And let's try to find that together is something that I'm really proud to be able to do for people.

James Hodgson:

Thank you for for for laying that out. I can certainly see how it comes from we can be empathetic with people and we can understand the concerns that they have, but it's trying to avoid them falling into these exploitative relationships with the influencers. And I love that you return again to the point about nursing being the most trusted profession. I know you mentioned that in the introduction to the podcast and this idea that you return to of treating the whole person and treating people holistically. And just in your experience, how does treating people as whole human beings, not just as patients, change their outcomes overall?

Jamie Bourgeois:

I will start with saying that I think it changes everything. I think that when we as nurses approach somebody within the full context of their life, for instance, taking into consideration the things around what we call social determinants of health, understanding that maybe somebody wasn't quote compliant and not having the best outcomes because of situations in which they live and work and raise their family that make it much more difficult. It's not that they don't want to do all of the right and the best things that, you know, for their health or for their family. But then I think what nursing can do, although it's hard to fix all of those social determinants. One is I think what we bring to that and treating them as whole humans is acknowledging that. Acknowledging that, hey, I see that you have these barriers, and let's work together in trying to move forward in a reasonable way, in a way that's going to work for you and for your family. That means, you know, sometimes getting creative. And I think nursing is very one of probably one of another very creative like industry in itself, it's not something that I think um many people would think of as a creative industry, but we do have to get creative in how to meet people where they are and help them move forward in positive ways. I would say generally that if we're acknowledging them as whole human beings that they are a person with worse that deserves to be recognized and help them be the best they can in whatever situation is really a huge difference. Because you may not even, I mean, I can think of situations where just the act of acknowledgement made a tremendous difference because when a person is interacting with our healthcare system and not feeling heard in some way or acknowledged in the way that they need to, nothing's gonna go well. But when you do those things, even if you're not doing anything grand, but you're at least making that acknowledgement, I think it does, it changes a lot in a positive way.

James Hodgson:

Yeah, for sure. It was nice to hear mentioned earlier that you view nursing as the most humanistic of professions. Certainly on the right podcast here today. In your experience, what are the elements and values of humanism that you think are most essential to good nursing practice?

Melissa Anne DuBois:

So I feel like nursing practice aligns perfectly with humanism because humanism at its core emphasizes human dignity, potential, ethical reasoning, compassion. And empathy is the ability to see a patient as complex, as a vulnerable human, as someone that is influenced by many factors, many social determinants of health. And a huge part of why I'm a nurse and a huge part of the nursing profession is advocacy. Our number one commitment is to the patient in the nursing code of ethics. And so advocacy is the act of defending a person's dignity and autonomy within the system, right? So both of these are fundamentally humanistic actions and they affirm the intrinsic worth of every person, regardless of their background, their culture, their ability to pay, right? Their age. And so that's why I think that nursing is an incredibly humanistic profession.

Jamie Bourgeois:

I would just add to that, like I feel like nursing operationalizes the philosophical groundings of humanism.

Melissa Anne DuBois:

And nurses, like Jamie mentioned, are creative. We have radical curiosity and humility. And I think that is also something that really is in line with humanistic principles because good nursing practice requires nurses to be curious about your full story, right? Your fears, your community, your goals. And it's a commitment to personhood, to humanity. I'm very honored to be a nurse, honestly, because I feel like it aligns with so much of my own ethical code.

James Hodgson:

Yeah, that's wonderful to hear from everything you've outlined there. It absolutely does sound like the epitome of humanism in action, in applying that mix of the cutting-edge science with the empathy, the curiosity, and the dignity of treating humans holistically and respecting everything about them. So that's wonderful to hear. Perhaps we can come on to beliefs as well. We spoke a bit about obviously some of the wellness influences that are out there. But I just wonder when you're dealing with a broad range of the public and different belief systems, whether that's religious beliefs, cultural or political beliefs, how do you find that shapes their relationship with healthcare and how do you kind of navigate those different perspectives that sometimes can be challenging to perhaps the care that you want to provide them?

Melissa Anne DuBois:

This is actually part of what my dissertation research is on. So my dissertation research is on something called unmoral distress in labor and delivery nursing specifically. Moral distress is something that's been studied extensively in other nursing populations or specialties, especially critical care specialties, but has not really been studied in labor and delivery, although labor and delivery, I would argue, is a critical care type specialty. But what is moral distress? Moral distress is when you know the right thing to do and you're prevented from doing it based on institutional constraints or whatnot. You feel powerless to stop things that you believe are unethical. So a moral distress is not the same thing as an ethical dilemma. An ethical dilemma is the old story of you've got a train coming down the tracks, and you know, which way do you make the train go? Do you kill your mom or five other people? It's like there's no right answer, right? We can debate that. That's an ethical dilemma. A moral distress is you know the right thing to do. It's clear what the right thing to do is, the right care, the best person-centered trauma-informed care to give. And you can't do it, right? Based on a variety of factors. So, how do we navigate that tension between knowing the right thing to do? It's honestly, it's some of us aren't navigating it very well. We're burning out, we're leaving the profession. Okay. And that's why I study this because it's a huge problem all over the world, but in the United States for sure. Nurses are hemorrhaging from the profession faster than we put them back in. And that is a problem when you are burning out and pushing out the most ethical, compassionate people in the profession. That is problematic, right? But so what do we do when we stay? For I've been in this for 20 years. What have I done? First, I find creative ways to bend the rules ethically. I have to work the system. And that is exhausting. I have fierce, targeted advocacy, often at my own expense. Every job I've ever had, someone has tried to fire me. And not for anything that I did wrong, not for any poor patient outcome. It's always because I upset somebody in power that doesn't want to change the status quo and they complain and they want me silenced. And that's hard to do when you're a newer nurse, when you're the one that's the breadwinner for the family. It was easier for me to do when my husband was now well established in his career and I knew with my experience and with his paycheck, I could afford to lose my job and get a new one easily. But it's harder for newer nurses or, you know, nurses that are the head of their household to do that. So that's why I think another reason why Jamie and I are doing this podcast is we're just trying to bring to light to the general public in the United States, like the ways in which our healthcare system is failing us and that we need something different. And the way that our economic policies are failing us, and the way that our community setups are failing us, when lack of transportation and all of these things are failing us living a fulfilling life. Because nurses care about all of that, and we see the impacts of all of that. How do we navigate it? It's tough. Yeah, it's tough.

James Hodgson:

And I assume it means that there it can't be a case of just following a simple set of rules when dealing with care. There has to be that space, as you mentioned a few times, to be creative, to uh think through the problems and find the best solution and navigate each individual case. Thinking about, you know, thinking creatively, thinking through each of the issues. So, how do you navigate those situations of moral distress where you are navigating the line between the constraints that you're put under or perhaps against someone's very strongly held beliefs versus what you know to be the right thing to do, not only for the individual, but also for public health, knowing full well each situation is very different. But do you have some guidelines and ways of approaching these issues that you can share with the listeners?

Jamie Bourgeois:

I will say that when I was a younger nurse, newer to the field, I struggled with that. I don't know with that sort of moral distress. I think it was learning how to gain that creativity in meeting the needs of your patients and baby steps over time because now I've been a nurse for almost 30 years. Now I'm gonna do what needs to be done, and then I'll deal with the consequences later. And I feel much more confident about that. So unfortunately, I don't necessarily feel like there's some magical pathway to navigate this. I think for me, it was a matter of testing it, like dipping your toes in the water of that creativity and meeting the needs of people that might have to be bending the rules or be rule ambiguous as a way of putting it. And now that I am been around the block for a while, I feel much more confident in taking bigger steps of that might raise some eyebrows by the powers that be or organizations that run the show or have the power. And I will say that as long as I would say for nursing, as long as you can always justify the action that it was for the best interest of people, even if it created some minor upset somewhere, as long as that minor upset is not harmful, I think, as you just have to push forward that way.

James Hodgson:

Now, another subject you draw on frequently in the podcast is nursing science. And I suspect this is an area of science which is not quite as well known. How would you describe nursing science and what are some of the major questions that are currently being addressed?

Melissa Anne DuBois:

Sure. What people don't realize is I know elsewhere, but in the United States, our healthcare system, the backbone is nurses. When you are in the hospital, if you know you you are sick, you're having surgery, and you need to stay overnight in the hospital, it's because you need nursing care, not doctor care, not any other care. You can get all those things as an outpatient. If you didn't need nursing care, you would be sent home, like same-day surgery, right? The doctor did his surgery and you don't need nursing care, so you get sent home, right? So nursing care, for example, in the hospital is exactly why you're there, because you need the nurse's expertise to monitor you, assess you, think about the plan of care, administer treatments, therapies, whatnot. So a lot of nursing science is bedside care science, right? It is what is the best way to dress this wound, or what's the best way to get someone to not get pneumonia or a blood clot after surgery, or what's the best way to rehab this injury, or whatnot, right? A lot of hospital science is nursing science. That's an easy way to describe it. Nurses also care very much about, as we've said, the patient experience, right? So a lot of nurses do qualitative research where they are. So, for example, I can think of one of our professors in our program. Her work was on interviewing the parents of children who were diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, and what was it like to be in their shoes? And the fear of the kid getting a low blood sugar in the middle of the night and, you know, having a bad outcome, or and the constant worry and anxiety of having to count every single carb and make sure their the insulin's right. And that work helped the education and the care that we give to families affected by diabetes for the last 30 years, right? How we teach the parents, how we teach the kids, how we have adapted and made new therapies, artificial pancreases and continuous glucose monitors, and all of these things came from that work of figuring out what is the hardest parts of be of living with or having a child living with diabetes. Nurses were asking those questions. The scientists were developing, we call the bench scientists, right? The chemists and the pharmacologists, not that they were developing like the artificial pancreas, but how to live with that, right, is nursing research. How to manage. That day-to-day is nursing research. A lot of the research done during the HIV AIDS epidemic in the 80s and 90s came from nurses interviewing people who had received this diagnosis and trying to live their life, trying to care for someone with the uncertainty and the stigma. The way that we interview and the way that we understand how, for example, like serial killers act, how they profile victims, right? No, you didn't expect that, right? How they profile victims, right? And the victim experience of being raped or a victim of a horrible crime actually is from nursing research, right? Dr. Ann Burgess, victims of violent crime and people who perpetrate violent crime came from the work of a nurse in Boston City Hospital, right? Nurses also do what we say, quote bench science. Like the way the reasons why we know like what's in breast milk, for example, and how they affect infant health, maternal health, how babies communicate with the mother via a suckling relationship and like the chemical signals that are passed between baby and mother to enrich the milk to better serve that baby comes from nursing research. So nursing research is literally everywhere. And it's it people don't realize how much it touches.

Jamie Bourgeois:

And it often gets nursing gets squashed on the credit, getting back to because I wanted to make sure we mentioned Ann Burgess, because she, wow, the the work that this woman has done. And she's still actually working full-time. She's 89 years old. She is still full professor, still does work in her field of like forensic science and forensic nursing. And the fact that it was a nurse who brought basically the foundations of trauma-informed care and how like the criminal justice system could do better by victims, but also have a better understanding of the human being of the perpetrator. It was nursing. And so the show Mindhunter, which was an excellent show, and it was only two seasons. What people don't realize is the character, I think it was Dr. Wendy Carr as the character. They portrayed her as a psychologist, but that's Ann Burgess. It's just that their test audiences could not believe a nurse would be the in that role and be doing that work and be making that impact. And so they changed, they took nursing completely out of it. And that's the other thing. Like, for instance, Clara Barton was the one to move forward the Geneva Convention. Uh so it it was nursing who was moving forward and making basically the world a better place through peace.

Melissa Anne DuBois:

Nightingale was the one to put the numbers in front of the important people during the Crimean War to show more people are more soldiers are dying from infection than bullet wounds, right? And so we need to we need to put more attention to that. Uh, that was a nurse that noticed that, right? Because nurses generate evidence-based practices to protect, promote, and optimize health, but they also focus on the human response to health and illness and enhancing quality of life. Any type of clinical expertise, biobehavioral, social science to improve health outcomes, it that's nursing science.

James Hodgson:

I'm glad you mentioned Florence Nightingale. That's the example that we like to use here in the UK most often. One of the first examples of data science. And it's fascinating, so many examples that you were able to go through there. I'm sure there's many more. So I wonder have you found in the profession that now there is more support internally from within the hospitals, the healthcare?

Melissa Anne DuBois:

So, first and foremost, in the United States, nurses with their PhD, which is a research degree, there's other ways to get a doctorate in nursing. You have a doctor of nursing practice, for example, but a PhD is a research degree. It makes you an expert in research and the scientific method. Less than 1% of nurses in the United States have a PhD. Enrollment in PhD programs in nursing is going down, whereas enrollment in other nursing programs, master's degrees, bachelor's degrees, even DNPs, doctors of nursing practices is rising in many areas. So that's problematic. There are some hospitals, they're called magnet hospitals. I know there are others, but that's the biggest is that magnet hospitals, one of one of the ways to get magnet status, which is basically says it's a center of nursing excellence. And you have to show that you're that you are a center of nursing excellence. And one way to do that is that to have nursing scientists on staff that are, you know, boots on the ground with the nurses at the bedside, asking them what are the problems you're facing, what are the questions you have, right? And then developing studies and carrying them out, publishing and disseminating that research. So some hospitals, like Magnum hospitals, have nurse scientists on staff, but most do not. So most nurses with their PhDs are working in academic centers. There are some that are administration and other, but many of them work in academic centers, and it all is about the money you can bring in, right? The grant funding. And so we have the National Institute of Nursing Research here in the United States. But one, the current administration is trying to get rid of that. And two, historically, more grants from the National Institutes of Nursing Research are going to non-nurse researchers than nurses. And so it's like we're being hit from every direction, but you can't have a discipline without a base of knowledge of that discipline. And so nursing science is very important. It's not just some foo foo stuff. It's important for care of everyday people in everyday situations. So yeah, it's in a tough spot right now.

James Hodgson:

Well, thank you for everything that you're doing. It that's been uh wonderful to hear about the great work that you're doing already. And I've loved catching up on the podcast, although it is still very new. Um for listeners who would like to get involved, best ways to follow you, and which podcast episode would you recommend they start with?

Jamie Bourgeois:

Well, I will Molseanne, you may have a different different thing to suggest, but I would say maybe the first soapbox Saturday is a good start because this is a brief episode where I talk about why nurses are political, why nurses have a why we have a voice and should be speaking it loudly, trying to make the case for why we are doing what we're doing, essentially, that we cannot nursing cannot be quiet around issues in in politics, basically. The other one I'd say is our the series, we call it Mocha, Make Our Children Healthy Again series, which we're actually rolling out a re-edit with a few updates on that right now. But those would be like the things I'd say we could start with.

Melissa Anne DuBois:

I I think an episode that's great, we t touch so many topics. A lot of people were surprised. We have an episode on gun violence, we have an episode on the war in Gaza, we have an episode, like Jamie said, children's health, women's health. But I think one that is particularly pertinent now is the episode on correlation versus causation, and trying to break that down for people and how because there was a big situation here in the United States where our you know head of the health of health and human services made these claims about Tylenol causing autism and our cetaminophyll, I think you guys call it paracetamol in the UK. But and we try to break down different research designs. What questions can they answer? What questions can't they answer? Why is correlation different than causation? Because we have very low scientific literacy in the United States, which puts people at a disadvantage and makes them prone to being taken advantage of. And so nurses are inherently teachers and educators, and I think that's a great episode to start with. And as far as finding us, we're at nursingthenation.substack.com. Jamie's posting there all the time. You can read about our episodes. You can find us on all major podcast platforms, nursing the nation. Um, so that's the best way to get in touch with us.

James Hodgson:

And please do go and subscribe as soon as you've finished listening to this podcast. So, uh Minister and Jamie, thank you for being generous with your time. Before we go, I have our standard closing question. What's something which you've changed your mind on recently and what inspired that change?

Melissa Anne DuBois:

I guess it's not something I've changed your mind on recently, but it's something that I feel like my nursing background has helped me change my mind on. So that's the way I interpreted the question. And so, you know, growing up in Northeast United States, I definitely was raised in a family that absolutely believed the American dream's promise of like pure meritocracy, that we're all on this level playing field. Success was solely a matter of effort. I was a high-performing student, I was valedictorian of my nursing class, and I definitely believed in that. But in my work as a nurse, I've really changed my mind over the past 20 years to realize that this perspective of this pure meritocracy really ignores the reality of systemic inequality in privilege that people might not realize they have and intersectional identities and whatnot. So this shift was profoundly inspired by my work as a nurse, where, as Jamie and I mentioned, we witness the daily consequences of social determinants of health, like housing instability, economic status, things like that. Because of that, I now believe more than ever that government has a really crucial role to play in working for the people to help correct these imbalances and ensure a fairer society. Because in line with my own humanistic values, and I came to humanism as a uh expectant parent, actually. I was raised Catholic and and really believed in like the teachings of Jesus Christ, right? Compassion and kindness for all and help for the poor and disenfranchised. And as I get into my college years, I became very disillusioned with the politics and patriarchy and hypocrisy of the Catholic Church. And so just started identifying as an atheist or at least an agnostic. And but then I got pregnant and I was starting to think about like how I wanted to raise my own child and the traditions I wanted to raise my own children in, and searching for like atheist parenting ideas, basically, right? How to build tradition and moral compass and whatnot without religion, and basically found humanism and and decided to hire a humanist celebrant to to host a welcoming ceremony for my first son in lieu of a baptism and went from there. So I've tried to teach those principles to my children. We try to live them every day. I feel like nursing is a good vehicle for me to do that. And that's just where I'm kind of at right now.

Jamie Bourgeois:

I will say Melissa Ann said basically the same thing I was going to say, but I can give a very light answer, something completely, totally off, something that changed my mind and what inspired it. So very light. Please keep that in mind. I changed my mind on trying to eat a particular type of ethnic food, and it was inspired by my daughter. Our kids teach us every day, don't they? Yes. It was a local restaurant that was new here in my area. And uh I I went in the first time thinking, I don't know, I don't know, and then ended up choosing something I did not like, and it felt like it confirmed my dislike of of the food. And then of course my daughter loved it, and it was the one place she wanted to go to every time we would get something out to eat. And so for a couple of weeks, I was very stubborn. I'm like, no, I'm not going there. But then I don't know, she was just really pushed me to be like, no, just look again. Maybe there's something else that you know is different that you might like. And I was fine. And she was right. So I did end up finding something very different and kind of looked outside the box. I'm proud of you, Jamie.

James Hodgson:

Jamie Bourgeois, Minister Anne Dubois, the nurses of Nursing the Nation. Thank you so much for joining us on Humanism Now.

Humanise Live:

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James Hodgson

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Jamie Bourgeois

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Melissa Anne DuBois

Guest

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