54 - Corey Clark Pt 1: Nursing Fight Club

Join nurse and San Antonio, Texas native Honored Guest Corey Clark as she elaborates on Honored Guest husband’s first date story, and discusses being a pro-girls kind of girl, going to a private nursing school, how being “really smart” didn’t help in nursing school, her road to becoming a pediatric ER nurse, her “it’s not if, but when” philosophy regarding nursing mistakes, how nursing is harder today than it was even 20 years ago, and more!

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Transcript

0:01

Hello and welcome to this episode of the Feeding Our Young podcast. This morning I am with someone who really doesn't need an introduction as we've already learned a little bit about her. But I will emphasize the words little bit because we are just sitting with her for the first couple minutes here, prepping for this episode. I'm about to introduce to you fighter, a fighter in life, a fighter in her personal life, a fighter in her professional life, and I am so excited to hear, to have her share her passion of what she wants to share with you. We'll get it out of the way right up front, although it's the lesser part of the story, no offense. Garret, ladies and gentlemen, I want to introduce to you Corey Clark, amazing wife of Garret Clark, who you just heard in previous episodes. Corey, how are you? Hi, Eric. I'm good. Thank you for having me on your podcast. I really appreciate it. my gosh, I'm so glad that you're here. And we'll talk about Garret just a little bit, but we already know this isn't his episode, this is your episode. So we're gonna talk about what Corey wants to talk about. So with that, let's just get the one question we have to get out of the way first. And that is that Garret might've shared his perspective on your first dates, plural, how he met you, and then your guys' kind of a first official unofficial date. Would you mind sharing your perspective on that? We'd love to hear. I'll phrase it generically, as if we've not heard from him. Corey, how did you meet your husband? Well, I was in my second to last semester of nursing school. I was having to do 120 volunteer hours for my public health rotation. And so on top of all of the second to last semester, the advanced med search kind of classes, doing all the volunteer work. And I had just finished volunteering from like 6 o'clock in the morning to nine or 10 o'clock in the morning and I needed to get to my class at noon. And so I, I really quickly drove by this Mexican restaurant in Simi Valley campus. And it's my favorite, my favorite breakfast Frito place. And when I walked in, I saw a friend of a friend of a friend eating a breakfast Frito with this other guy. And I kind of just, you know, said hi, but I'm a busy nursing student. So I didn't think much of it. And, went on my way, I went to class and I was eating my burrito in class and I got a Facebook message from Garret, my now husband, who is like, hey, my mutual friend told me that you were in nursing school and I'm kind of interested in it and I'd like to meet up with you. And in hindsight, he's probably asking me on a date, but I was in my last semester of nursing school and to be quite honest, I saw two guys eating lunch at But on a lunch, what I assumed was a lunch date. And so I didn't think that he was particularly interested in me. So anyway, I was like, well, yeah, I can pencil you in like three weeks. I'll meet you at Starbucks. And so then he kind of checked in with me, like texting, know, like asking me the nursing school questions. Hey, how are you? But again, at this point, I'm just a little bit out of it. You're dialed in. You're dialed in on your education and everything you still have on your plate to get done. Yeah, and so I show up to Starbucks. Side note, I don't drink coffee. Neither does he. I don't know why we picked Starbucks. I'd been there for about two hours before he got there just studying. I had not showered in three days. My hair was greasy. I was wearing no makeup and some sweatpants and I don't even think I had a bra on. And he shows up and he's like, you know, let me, what do you want? And I'm just like, I don't drink coffee. don't. want anything I'm here to talk to you about nursing school." And he was like, no, I really need to buy you a drink or else like this isn't a date. And I was like, what? This is a date? And so anyway, we were talking and we talked for like two or three hours and Garret and I have a good sense of humor. And so he told maybe like a slightly off color joke, or maybe I told a slightly off color joke and He like didn't even laugh at it. He just stood up, like pushed his hair back, stood up and said, I have to go and like turned and walked away. Didn't text, nothing. Didn't hear from him for two hours. It turns out after a couple hours, he texted me and he was like, I'm so sorry. I lost track of time. I was supposed to be teaching a CPR class and I was 30 minutes late, but I realized it. So he was like, I'd like to take you on like an official date. And so we schedule for like, half in the week. And on the day of the date, he calls me and he goes, it's a Sunday or something. Because you're not going to believe this. I was just getting gas. And I went to go put my card in the machine and my debit card broke in half. And I'm not going to take you on a date where you have to pay. It's the only card I have. So I guess I need to cancel. And like at this point, I was kind of like 50-50 of like, OK, well, he just doesn't like me because like he left the first. our first unofficial date early and now he's canceling on our second first unofficial day. don't know. You're getting some like passive aggressive signals like what is this guy really like for real? What's he doing? Right. So then I'm just like, right, well, I'll see if he wants to come over. My mom's home. And so I was like, well, I can cook us some fish tacos. My mom's here. I'll just tell her to go in back of the house if you want to come over and like eat fish tacos with me. And he said yes. And so he came over and my mom was kind of like in a room in the back of the house, but she came out and she had some fish tacos too at some point. And so like first official date was eating fish tacos that I made on my couch. at the house. So yeah. And so those that have not listened to Garret's episode, this is a nice little segue into that. You can go back and hear his side of the story because there's some details I think that he left out, if my memory serves correctly. I sat with him some time ago. So this is all a nice little refresher. I just love hearing how people meet. That's one of the favorite things I love to ask people, like when I meet them. as patients and stuff like that. Well, my gosh, how did you guys meet? So thank you for sharing that story. now we've been together for 13 years and married for eight. So with four kids, it's crazy. so briefly, if you wanna talk about your family, obviously it's been wedded bliss ever since, right? guys have now four children, as you said. Share as much or as little about you guys as you wanna share. Yeah, we have a five year old spunky little thing going to rule the world one day. I always say she's either going to be a CEO of a company or run a girl gang in prison. Like those are her two outcomes in life. She will not be stopped. And then we have our second oldest, which she's three. She's a little bit more reserved, kind, sweet, soft. She's also got some chronic medical issues that we've been dealing with, which has been kind of a fight to get her to diagnosis, but now she's doing really well on her regimen. She's got a type of primary immunodeficiency. hard couple of years to her start of life going through COVID and having an immunodeficiency and being sick all the time. And then we have two-year-old twin boys. as anyone can imagine, that is fun, exciting, stressful. the world of having two two year olds that are both boys that are just, you know, go go go all the time and fun. And even though they're twins, they are just completely different human beings. Like the only thing that makes them similar is that they were born on the same day around the same time. They look differently, they act differently, have different personalities. And then, you know, people will say like, Oh, you had so many kids and we had a lot of trouble having kids. And so we worked really hard to get this many kids and we've had a couple of losses and some late term losses getting here, which are, you know, impactful on me as a human being and our journey to becoming parents. So yeah, that's my little, we also have a golden doodle and two cats. my goodness, dog and cat lovers. This is amazing. Yes, Garret will tell you he does not like cats. However, we would only have one cat had Garret not really been a cat lover. The secret's out, Garret We now know. We now know. That's okay, I have five cats. that's, we are the crazy cat people, that's all there is to it. I usually tell people we have five cats and then I tell them we live in a 500 square foot apartment. And just let that sink for a minute. then anyway, we do live in a home. It's okay everybody. We're crazy, but we're not that crazy. No, we really are. What am I saying? Anyway. No, and I love that you kind of touch on that fact and Garret did open up a bit about your guys' personal story and which, you know, I appreciate that for sure. just that that informs the background that who we're talking with today is a fighter. You guys are fighters. You you talk about your daughter, you know, being either running a girl gang in prison or being a CEO. And I think I know which of the two of you maybe she gets that from. So we'll learn a little bit more as we move along. Before we get too far, I ask everybody, are three words that you would use to describe nursing school? Definitely for me challenging. It's the hardest couple of years of my life. Given everything that I've gone through, I still classify it as the hardest couple of years of my life. Motivating and exciting. Awesome, awesome. We'll unpack those at the end of the episode. And then our new favorite question that I love to ask, three of your favorite songs in life right now. Okay, well my favorite favorite song is I really like the man by Taylor Swift. I'm kind of like a pro-girls kind of girl and have strong personality. I don't know if you could tell. I think that in the world we're in today, women aren't always necessarily treated equal. That's not saying that in every instance that's true. But I definitely think that there are things that women have to do where they have to work harder or be stronger, where the expectation is a little bit higher than it is for men. And so I think that I really love that Taylor Swift has a song that kind of encompasses that. She has a lot of songs that encompass a lot of things, but that's one that's really spoken to me. And then I really like a... Espresso by Sabrina Carpenter. It's just poppy and cute. Reminds me of like Christina Aguilar. I can really like, you know, vibe to it while I'm cleaning. And then one song that I really like right now is Stick Season by Noah Kahn. it's a bit of a lesser known artist and I wouldn't actually know the song if it hadn't been for my husband. Fun fact about Garret, he loves music. He can pretty much listen to a song and basically play it on the piano or the guitar after listening to it one or two times. And he's got a beautiful voice. I don't have a beautiful voice and When I'm stressed out, I don't like loud sounds or music. And when Garret's stressed out, he really just needs to play songs really loudly and belt out music really loudly. And so he has started singing this song and now my five-year-old is, you know, she's really into music. So she started singing this song and I just think it's a really beautiful song to listen to. And it's really interesting to listen to them both put their little take on it. Well, and you've got that now, personal connection with it because of that, right? Like, yeah. I love it. Yeah, in fact, there's that kind of references that video clip that we shared by the time people hear this, where you reveal that you're pregnant again to him. And it's just, I asked him in his episodes, said, are you okay if we share this? Do you think your wife will be okay if we share this? Because that sounds like an amazing story. He's like, yeah, absolutely. And so... He finally sends me the clip. I'm like, okay, I'll just, know, quick little view, make sure that that came through okay. It's a minute long. And I'm like, I text him back, I'm like, dude, you got me crying. He's like, that's okay, I'm crying now too again. It's just, it's so. So beautiful. no, just, I love that about you guys and I love that you're willing to share that sort of thing. And, and you're right, he's got a dang good voice. Like, why should I had him sing on the podcast? That's okay. That's a, it's a missed opportunity. it's not that good, it is. It is. He's just too old for American Idol, okay? Are you ever too old for American Idol? Really? mean... was like 31 a couple of years ago. Like when you look, there's actually a cutoff. There's an age cutoff for whether or you can be successful. I guess they don't want us older people getting on there trying to make a name for ourselves. I don't know. I don't say us. We don't, America doesn't need that. I'm not saying nothing. I'm with you on that, Corey. Awesome. Thank you for sharing that. You guys live in Texas and where are you? Are you from Texas or where are you from originally? No, I was born and raised in California. When we started having like getting pregnant and having kids, and Garret was bunching into his nursing career, we kind of decided that, you know, California wasn't somewhere we saw raising our kids. You know, the traffic alone is very tough, but the cost of living is very high. And so my brother was here in Texas, my grandfather was here in Texas, my dad was here. So we just kind of picked a city in Texas and moved our whole life, packed it all up into a pods container. Actually kind of a funny story. Garret got a job, had to, had to come and move to Texas. And for three weeks, I will very pregnant with our first daughter packed up our house back in California into a slept on a mattress on the floor, got it all ready to sell and then packed myself and our, the time we had four cats ranging in age from, I think Boots was 14 and Joby was probably eight at the time. And my Great Dane into my tiny little Chevy like spark kind of car. And we drove from California to Texas over the course of two days with my best friend, my sister-in-law, my mom, my mom had her four dogs. And it was just wild. stayed in a hotel in Deming, New Mexico, and that was a wild experience with all those animals. yeah, Garret and I actually spent our second wedding anniversary apart during that time because it was like he had to be here and we had to be there. So it was a crazy experience getting to Texas. The Clark traveling zoo as it were My gosh that is amazing so so then nursing school for you Let's tie let's get let's get on the subject of nursing nursing school for you then was in California. Yes awesome a private nursing school in California. When I weighed, when I did my PowerPoint presentation to my mom on what school I wanted to go to and what the cost and benefit analysis was of going to a community college and getting on a wait list and waiting and entering the workforce at a certain age based on a prediction of like, okay, the average time on a wait list is two years. versus going to a four year university like a UCLA or USC, also having a wait list and doing all the prereqs versus just going to a private for-profit school. I was able to do my cross-medicine analysis showing that like, yeah, if we could foot the bill to this private school, I could get in right away and I would have my nursing degree before I was 21 years old. And that was it. I got into the program at West Coast University. I stuck my head down. was... It's a lot of self-learning. It's a lot of self-paced learning. And I was able to graduate with my bachelor's degree in 2013. my goodness. then you then 2013, this is a few years ago now, do you like looking back on your nursing school experience, having gone that route, is that something that you would do all over again, going the private route because of those benefits that you had determined? Or would you maybe go, man, don't, you know, it would have been a wash one way or the other. I mean, for me, I had the support. I took out a lot of student loans and I had the support of my mom getting the Parent PLUS loan. I don't necessarily know that it's an opportunity for everybody. I can say that my first year out of school, I think my first full year out of school, I made like $80,000. And then my second year out of school, I was up over 100. And so by living, you know, kind of closer to my means, I was able to put a lot of money back into the loans that I had taken out. And, you know, it is however many years later, how many years later, 13 years later, I think I have like $1,800 left with my student loans and I'm going to pay them off now this month. So that'll be my final student loan payment. But yeah, I mean, is it, is it the right choice? I don't know. I was making money, a lot of money very early on. It allowed me to save up enough money to buy a house in California. After just a couple of years, we were able to transfer that wealth over here. We have two houses here in Texas. So, you know, I do think it set me up to make good choices, but I think your choices only matter if you're actually, you know, working towards paying off your loans at some point too, right? Like you have to balance your life and the way you're going to live with paying off the loans. So. But yeah, I graduated and I was the second person in my cohort to take the NCLEX and I passed on my first try. I was the third person in my cohort to get offered a job. I don't know if this is helpful for anyone struggling in nursing school. I'm really smart. I graduated cum laude. I failed advanced med search the first time around. I got a 70, I had a 75.8 and my teacher would not round it up to a 76 and it sucked and I had to retake it. But I'm a better person because I had it. had to. So, I think that that, you know, falls into my like, just keep fighting to, you know, take the situation in front of you and adapt it into what you need to achieve for you and yourself to make your life what you want it to be. so, and then I, I've really had a desire to be an ER nurse and, my, nurse that I precepted with in the ER, Anika. she's this older nurse, really like tiny little ER I was in. And back when I went to nursing school, preceptorship was like, you actually worked full 12 hour shifts. And I think we did seven 12 hour shifts for like our final term of nursing school. so you like, we're actually working and by the end of it, she did a really good job of making sure that I can take a full load of patients by myself while she was just kind of like looking over. So really preparing me for the real world. And then she, you know, I said, I want to go to the ER. And she said, please not saying that you can't go to, you're not saying that we can, shouldn't have new grads in the ER. I'm saying that I want you to go to a floor and learn what it is to be a floor nurse, watch people die, watch people to compensate. It will make you a better nurse when you become an ER nurse. And so I applied to one of the hospitals in like mission Hills. type area, level two trauma center. And I became an oncology telemetry nurse there. And I did 18 months of night shift. God, it was like the death of me. 18 months of night shift. And I learned a lot. I have skills from my time as a floor nurse that other ER nurses don't have or don't develop. can support with my eyes closed. I'm really, really good at IVs. And I credit that all to that time and learning my skills and really developing my skills, patients to compensate, watching patients pass, you know, on oncology floors, you get to watch those kind of stages sometimes, unfortunately. And I've been in ER since 2015, I think, and adult mixed population. And then now I'm, you know, the last five years I've been just pediatric ER and not saying I'm a fantastic nurse, but I feel like I'm a pretty good nurse. And I feel like I have a lot of good skills that have allowed me to provide really great care to patients and maybe change the course of some really sick kids visits. Wow. And I, my hats off to you. That is, I love we've talked about on this podcast before, different strokes, different folks, you kind of find your niche and you get into it. You know what I mean? And you just, once you find your passion, it drives you. And for me, I knew straight away that the ER was not where I belonged. And I think that has benefited many of my future patients by not trying to go that route. So no, I just love you guys. I love the, Thank that you bring to nursing and the fact that you guys are able to handle that and that you were able to handle that with just aplomb really it's just fantastic. So you mentioned preceptorship and you mentioned your preceptorship experience but now doing the math you've been a nurse long enough at this point I imagine that you are now that role for the future nurses current you know nurses coming through and coming up. Are there various things various anecdotes that you like to share? with your precepties as it were. yes, I precept people every so often, nursing students or even new grad nurses in the ER that I'm in and even in the ERs that I've been in in the past. And I think something that's really important for nurses to know is that it's not if you'll make a mistake in nursing, but when. We are all human. We are all fallible. We are put in situations where it makes it impossible for us to always do the right thing the right way. And so you have to just always be willing to learn from your mistakes and adapt to make yourself better. And I try to just hold my own self to a high standard and always try to shoot to improve my own standard versus meeting somebody else's, right? And then that way I can always, I can always get to choose where the goal posts are. That's a little bit easier to meet those goals. It's a Tuesday. So that goal post needs to be a little bit closer. So I think that it's just, it's really important to know that like, you're not a bad nurse. If you make a mistake, you're not a bad person. If you make a mistake, I can imagine that none of us get into this profession to go out there and hurt people, you know, accidentally or on purpose. We all, we all go out there to try to, you know, either fill our own need to like care for others or to just like try to put goodness back into the world. And so I really just want people to understand that it's, you are going to make mistakes. They're going to happen. They're inevitable. in my career as a nurse 13 years, I've probably made a lot of mistakes. I can talk about two of them if you're interested that really kind of shaped the way. No, we are very interested in it. This is something that we've talked about. There was one honored guest that I spoke with before So please, yes, open up that door for anyone willing to listen to. how we human beings make mistakes. Yeah, so I was working in a busy level two trauma center, um, for-profit hospital makes a difference guys really does, whether you're working for a nonprofit or for-profit. Um, and it was in California, we had ratios, uh, unfortunately that's not always taken into account. And at the time I was still pretty new in my nursing career. Um, and so, so I didn't necessarily know how to advocate. for myself in the right manner. And I was really overwhelmed. I had a lot of very high acuity patients and I had a patient that I think was having a respiratory issue. And so there was some magnesium ordered. She also had fluids that needed to be given. in the ER, you don't have to run your IV fluids on a pump. I also worked in an ER that didn't, we did scan meds. We actually did scan meds. We scan meds, but anyway, the fluids didn't have to go on a pump and the magnesium did have to go on a pump. So I think I scanned all my meds and I, you know, got my fluids running and I've got my, my fluids. Hanging and I've got my magnesium up and you know, pumps are few and far between in the either probably on the floors too. Again, for-profit versus nonprofit, you know, supplies being re-bought and used. And, I hooked up my lines and I'm running what I think is the mag on very slow. on the pump and luckily I took that extra minute, you know, open up my, what I believe to be my fluid wide open, cause it's just going to flow right in. And I took that extra minute to kind of just talk to the patient and say like, Hey, you know, here's the call light. you know, we're giving the normal saline, we're giving them magnesium, just so you know, let me know if you start to, you know, feel like you're kind of getting sluggish or having trouble breathing. Cause magnesium side effect, you know, to decrease deep, tough reflexes, some numbness and tinkling. And within about 90 seconds, like I'm just about to turn to walk out of the room and she goes, man, my legs are, are tingly. I go, all right. So I walked back over and I stopped everything and I traced my lines and sure enough, I had hooked my normal saline to the pump and my magnesium was running wide open, just bolusing its way into that patient. and so I stopped everything. I checked on her. I took her vital signs and. notified the doctor, did a little, you know, e-Raf, whatever it was, to title on myself because self-reporting is really important. It's just culture. Having a non-punitive culture in self-reporting is really important. It helps us learn how we got to that mistake and hopefully prevents others from making it. And, you know, we talk about tracing our lines. Tracing lines is good practice. And this day, I think I was just too busy, too lazy. I don't know what it was. But let me tell you, there has not been a day since that day where I have not traced a line all the way through down to the patient since I hung a medication because that, if I had not taken that extra moment, she may not have pushed the call light. She might have justified, she was a totally alert and oriented lady. She might've justified that, it's just tingling. It's just this, it's just that. The next person might've come in and the ER is very busy. They might not have addressed, no, it's just. you you're having asthma and that's, you know, you're tingly because you're, you're hyperventilating kind of a thing. and so that was a really, big mistake that I made that luckily didn't have a poor outcome. And then I have my second one, which is a bigger mistake, but also turned out not to be too bad of a long-term issue, which is that I was again, level two trauma, for-profit hospital had a patient come in just for, simple trip and fall. And I was on the trauma rooms that day in California. When you're in the trauma rooms, you should have a two to one ratio. I did not. I had four full patients, pretty standard at this for-profit facility. And again, young nurse didn't know how to advocate for myself. And so we end up, this guy's totally fine, just a simple trip and fall, but he needs a social admit because he's fallen a whole bunch of times and we got to find him somewhere safe to live. And he's just the sweetest little guy. He's still pleasantly confused. He keeps taking his stickers off. He's pulled out his IV three times because he just doesn't need to be there. He wants to go find his wife who doesn't exist. she's, she had died a couple of years earlier and he just kept getting out of bed and telling me he was going to find his wife and trying to walk out the ambulance, big doors. And so the daughter was there very sweet. I'm very busy with everybody else and she's like, I'm just going to go, you know, he's finally asleep. He's finally asleep. I'm just going to go get some lunch. So he's asleep on there. You can see him on the monitor. And I go into, think, reception, other ambulance. And by the time I come back out, it's probably 45 minutes later and we're all busy. So no one, no one is watching my patients, right? Except for me. And, um, you know, the monitors at the nursing station, they're blinging, they're blinging. They're always blinging in the ear. You don't even really look at them a lot of the time. And the daughter comes out and she goes, Hey, uh, when you get a chance, can you just come in? So I'm like, yeah, no problem. Let me just. You know, is it, is it urgent? And she's like, no, no, it's not urgent. So I say, okay, let me just chart this, you know, ambulance in and get that to go. And so I sit down, I chart, maybe it takes me 20 or so minutes to get that charted. I walk in the room. freaking alarm when I walk in the room is just blaring, blaring. I still, I cross the entire room. don't even look at the monitor. I didn't even flip the light on and I silenced the monitor. turn and I look at the daughter and I go, Hey, what's, what's going on? And she goes, thinking my dad's dead. I look at the monitor and sure enough there's asystole I run over I turn on the lights the guys a full code. He is blue from the nipples up just fully blue side go i'm going to hit the code blue button like put him down and I she goes well hold on a second. They broke a to let him go and so i'm checking his policy has no pulse and I said are you are you sure and she he goes. He's been talking about my mom for like a whole week. He keeps telling me to go see her. She died a couple of years ago and like the whole time he was there, like pleasantly confused. By this point, he's like, he's admitted. He has a bed. They just haven't come to get him. Like I've given report. Like he, he was supposed to be heading to the floor. And so I have to call the admitting doctor. I have to call the ER doctor. I don't like she's saying she wants a new code and we go back and we look at the monitor and He had been in asystole for probably 45 minutes at that point. And I don't know how many times somebody had silenced that monitor. How many times? I don't know if I even silenced it. And so it was just a good lesson that no matter what the monitor is doing, no matter how alarm fatigued you are, always look at the monitor. It doesn't matter if it's your patient. It doesn't matter if it's someone else's. And if the monitor looks wonky, go in the room and look at the patient because the patient's going to be a determining factor. And, you know, we'll never know really. He was blue. I assume he threw a P E, you know, and so there probably wasn't much we could have done for him anyway. He was like I said, older. The family was good to let him go, but that could have been a really, really, really terrible outcome for any other patient. Right. And they're under any of those circumstances. And so that really like really early on in my career. shaped who I am. And I actually just told that story to a new nurse in the nursing station, probably two, three weeks ago. And when I came back, cause I'm PRN, also when I came back last week or maybe I told it a month ago and I came back two weeks ago and she goes, you're not going to believe this. You told me that story. And you know, the other day I looked up and I saw this patient and her, was in the two hundreds. And I just thought that's so weird because this, baby is a kid. shouldn't be in the two hundreds. And I went in and sure enough, that baby was an SVT. And we caught it early on. And you know, I don't think anyone else had been looking at that monitor. And so, when I hear stories like that, it makes me happy that maybe some, someone takes my piece of advice and you know, it shapes the way that they do their nursing practice. cause again, we can only try to do the best we can for ourselves and put you know, put forward the best that we that we are able to do and hold ourselves accountable to that standard. So. I thank you for being open with that because that's 100%. Anyone listening to this, course, for nursing students in particular, listening to this going, my gosh, you know what I mean? The takeaway is not you've gotten into the wrong profession. The takeaway is not, you know what I mean? You need to hightail it and run the other direction. The takeaway is exactly that. Being open, being transparent. We, tenured nurses, longer tenured nurses, try to, hopefully, leave our lives an open door so that you can learn from us. And you can hear these stories and that story right there. Maybe that just implanted into somebody's brain and they will never, ever, ever forget that story and don't have to make that mistake. to learn the lesson that came from that mistake because correct me if I'm wrong, If I recall correctly, based on what you're saying, you did not get into nursing to hurt people. Is that accurate? That is accurate. You know, and it's hard. At social media is so rampant these days, right? You just have, we have access to everything and everyone's opinion and everyone can be a keyboard warrior and everyone can write a Google review. And, you know, on top of the public nursing is hard. Let me just start there. Nursing is hard. Nursing is harder today than it was 20 years ago. The patients are sicker. The resources are less. the profits are more, we're being put in untenable conditions to try to do our job the same way that nurses 20 years ago did their job with less resources and less time and higher expectations. And it's not fair. And we have a community that doesn't understand the stress that nurses are put under, that doesn't understand how the day-to-day healthcare system works. And that's not their fault. It's very hard to understand. you know, what is happening when you go to a hospital. It's hard to even advocate for yourself as a as a patient. I've been the mother of a patient and it's been a frustrating process for me going through insurance and going to ERs, right? Just to get care, the right kind of care for my daughter. And so it's it's just. We I think here a lot of negativity from patients, right? Because their expectation is so high. because they have not been shown the veil because it's like fight club. Like we're not allowed to talk about it, right? Like we're not allowed to go in and say to a patient, you know, like, I am so sorry. I, I really wanted to get to your call light, but you got to understand I have three other patients and it's not that they're more important than you. It's that they're sicker, right? Like they're, they're this, I'm, I'm doing this with like a You know, my hands tied behind my back and half blindfold on. fighting for my life out here and don't tell that your patients, that's so weird. Yes, yes. The way I like to phrase that, the closest I ever come to saying that to my patients, and I've done this for years, and I'll come in and say, I'm so sorry, I'm not ignoring you. At the very least, I try and pop in, obviously depending on acuity and all the things, but I go in and I tell them, I'm like, first of all, I'm not ignoring you, you're next on my list. Now, hospital next means, you know, it could be a half hour, but I'm coming to you. Is there anything you need right now? But then what I like to share with them too is that I'll always tell them, like, if you see very little of me, which breaks my heart, it does mean good news for you, because it means you're the least, you know what mean, you're the least acute patient that I've got. That's the closest I've ever come to that. What we're gonna do here, I'm so excited, because this gets into Corey's passions, and we're gonna... We'll punt that off to episode two because I'm so excited to just give her the mic, shut my mouth, and let her run. So with that, Corey, we'll see you on the flip side. Let's do episode two. Sound good? All right, thank you everybody. You don't want to miss it. Hop into episode two.