130 - Chris Sloan (Last Name) Pt 2: We Can Be Warm and Still Hold the Line

Continue with Gonzaga University’s Director of Undergraduate Programming and Development and San Diego, California native Honored Guest Chris Sloan as she waxes eloquent about her passion for nursing students and educators, once upon a time having a lot of responsibility without a lot of power, mentoring faculty, her advice for those students who say “I’m just a number,” her thoughts on “weeding out,” reassuring students they don’t have to have it all figured out, her love of going to Africa, her horrifying experience on her last trip there, what healthcare looks like outside of the United States, and more!

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Transcript

0:01

Welcome back to the part two, the flip side, the B side of the Dr. Chris Thone experience, also known as the last name side. If you don't know what that means, go back and listen to the first episode. But well, I mean, guess actually now that they've heard the second intro, they know exactly what we're talking about. Oh, I just love it. And it's a tradition. It's what we do. You have something funny on the second one and you just happen to provide it. It was great. It's perfect. uh entertain. Yeah. On that note, on that note, so we left off the first episode talking about your passion as an educator specifically, both of students and of educators really, you know, kind of having the role that you have. So, and happy to entertain. You know what I mean? That's the other thing. You do your job. You instill wisdom. You instill. You impart parts of yourself, as you said. You know, I kind of want to piggyback off that because ah I've commonly said on the podcast that I genuinely believe that's what makes nursing so beautiful. We're a mosaic of one another. Everybody kind of picks up something from each other. You're taking that. And I'm like, I'm taking from those that precepted me in Peds Oncology in postpartum. And I'm trying to, and I refer to them often. like, here's, know, I just literally, Chris, I just literally, one of my new hires that I was precepting, she kind of came to days. I had worked with her before when she, right before she went to nights. So I had a couple shifts with her on days. We're down in the cafeteria walking past and we walk past my former preceptor on postpartum. And she knows, an Honored Guest, Nikki Hike. And so Nikki's walking by and I said the thing that I always say, I'd like you to meet your grand preceptor. She always gives me a punch in the arm with that one. But the point is, I'm carrying what she taught me. And hopefully then, those that were precepting are making it better. And then they'll eventually impart that to others and so on and so forth. It's the science of replication, right? Not addition. So enough of my blathering. Your passion, you get the mic and you just tell us about whatever you want to share about your role, um academia, and more specifically, and most importantly, why you're passionate about nursing students and educators. Oh, wow. That's like it's just a great leading question there. Tell us about your whole career. Yeah. You know, it's funny when I left my past teaching position in San Diego, I had made it to an associate dean level and and I found that I had a lot of responsibility and very little power. And that was very frustrating. um And I, I happened to work with a number of educators in this place that were not always, some were amazing, just incredible, but some weren't. And um I was amazed that those people stayed and continued to teach. And I taught at the junior level and our program actually in San Diego started at the sophomore level. And so I would get these sophomores who, you know, for all intents and purposes, they were kind of traumatized. And I felt like I sort of had to be like the soft place they could land to say, hey, there's a different way to do this. You know, nursing can be, yeah, it can be fun. can be, you know, it can be more rewarding. Yeah. uh So that was one thing that really stayed with me. And I actually had a lot of, I would say actually like moral distress kind of over that because I felt like, you know, as nursing professors, should be, we should definitely hold our students accountable. I'm not saying that you should be like a big squishy, floppy, whatever. I don't believe in that either. But at the same time, I feel like we can be kind. And we can be generous and we can be warm and we can still hold the line, right? We can still keep um our rigor high, but our support high. And so then when this job came open at Gonzaga, uh I thought, wow, this is really interesting. And there's another long sub story to this, but I didn't start in the BSN program. I started as the associate dean of academic affairs for the department of nursing. And I worked with both undergrad and grad. And I did that for two years and it was really challenging for a number of reasons. A lot of things that again, don't wanna get into here, but well, just leadership changes. uh unit culture, just a lot of that kind of stuff. So I actually considered leaving Gonzaga after the first two years and I interviewed around town. But I just kept telling my husband, we went to Glacier for a few days and I said, I am called to be a nurse educator. Like I know that to my absolute core and being, and I cannot bear the thought of walking away from that. So I went back and we started talking and somebody said, what if you only did the undergrads and somebody else does the grads? And I was like, huh, okay, well let's think about this. So The more I thought about it, the more I thought, okay, you've been preparing for this for your whole career, right? This is your opportunity to have the influence and the power, I mean, in a positive way. I don't mean that in a, you know, overlord kind of way. I will get to rule that school. ah do mean you mean the power to like you just said you have responsibility without power. It's the worst combination. You know, you still want the responsibility. You you need to have responsibility. But if you have the power to affect change, that makes that responsibility bearable. Yeah. It does, absolutely, 100%. You said it perfectly. um so I thought, okay, I'm going to see how this goes. em I was made this weird director of programming and development, you know, kind of role, but ultimately between myself and another person at Gonzaga, Susan Edwards, we ended up taking on the role of being the director. um and she has such incredible knowledge about the program and I brought just uh a little bit more experience in teaching and another perspective from another school. So we made a great pair um and still make a great pair. ah I kind of consider her my, she's like my work sister or something. I can't quite do the work wife thing, but. But anyway, so um here's what I've experienced is, you know, it's really a joy to mentor faculty, right? um It's been a joy to hear faculty and make sure that they feel heard and to create. We've really worked on creating a culture of positivity, teamwork. um and being, I don't want to say united, because I don't want to say like all the faculty are like little like, yes, whatever you say, Dr. Sloan. They aren't that way at all. They're very opinionated about things. But we tend to be of a similar mindset in terms of how we approach students and what we want to give students. And so that just makes my job like so fun. And then being able to mentor. New faculty has been really fun as well. I enjoy that as much as mentoring students. And so being able to say, yeah, what does that classroom look like? Oh, what happens if you add, you know, 24 quizzes during the semester? Oh, you have to grade all of those, you know? And then you can see them on their face. like, oh, yeah, no, that's not a good idea. So I really love being able to sort of walk them through the why of education more than the how. So why are we educating? What's what is our true ultimate goal at the end of this course? The students should be able to blah blah blah blah blah and I know that's like very like I don't know my mom calls it edgy speak you know kind of and all that but it's honestly what do want the student to be able to do at the end of this semester? You know you're at the end of your fundamentals semester you should be able to take vital science. You should be able to do a head-to-toe assessment. Does it have to be perfect? No! uh You should be able to, you know, document some normal findings. You should, right? So thinking about then what are the educational things that are going to get us there? And for so long we've just relied on lectures. Lecturing is easy. It's easy peasy, right? You just, you know, you create a compelling lecture. You you add a little hammer, you tell a few stories, done. They got what they needed. Students love it. of exactly. You you spoon feed them exactly what they need for the exam. But it's not how we learn, really. We learn when we grapple with things, when we struggle with things, we kind of have to wrestle the alligator to the ground. And I'm not saying that you should. have that with every single topic in nursing school because that would also become exhausting. But I do think that we have to ask our students to stretch a little bit in terms of, and that's why I have that word stretching. Yes, it would be so much easier uh to just give you all of just what you need for the four exams. And they'll ask for that on their evals. Could you just only limit the information to what's going to be on the exams and I'm like, oh sure, because you're not, you know, studying for a practice profession where you're going to need to know 200 questions I could ask you during the semester. But it's, also some of my job is just explaining just that, like hey, this is a practice profession. You are going to actually be out there dealing with patients. So I can't just teach you what's on. test and we got to learn about other stuff. So, but those, that kind of teaching where you're doing like case studies and other flipped classroom things, those take a lot more time and effort and energy. And, um, yeah, it can get overwhelming, but can, it can get to be a lot. So, uh, I have one faculty in particular, I will not mention this person, but if they listen to this podcast, they will know who they are. So everything up. and do it all new and make it all really great. And they put tons of time and effort into what they're doing. And then about a third of the way into the semester, I see them and they are just like deflated and tired and exhausted. And it's like, wow, bit off too much, right? And I get it. That used to be me. That totally used to be me. So being able to just uh talk to faculty, I also, this sounds really of bizarre, but I do really like talking through and dealing with the issues that come up in nursing school. You know, we have a lot of students that have lots of things going on in their lives outside of, and I hear it on your podcast, right? All the things that are going on at home are going on. um you know, just with their health or their family's health or whatever. Uh, and so I'm very cognizant of that. And, and yet this is where I say we still have the high rigor, right? But we're going to support and we're going to help you get there. And if, you need a few extra days or you need, you need something, we can do that. So just helping. faculty navigate that and try to figure out like what that looks like and what's fair and what's kind and what's you know yeah what's the right thing to do and it's it's not easy and um i've definitely been challenged in this job with a few things that i didn't um i'd never had happen before and i'm sure i'll be challenged with them with more before I'm done, ah we found out that students were using the Be Real app uh in clinical and they weren't taking, we'd heard that there were some pictures of a serious nature, would be like HIPAA violations. yeah, yeah. Those may have happened. I never saw them. But I did see zillions of pictures of people in the bathroom and people doing all kinds of stuff. And so that was a really, that was a big eye-opener because we asked for the one person who was taking the inappropriate pictures to come forward and 61 students came forward saying that they had used the app. And it's just such a part of their life and such a part of their. their day-to-day functioning. They didn't even think about it. It's like, I wasn't taking pictures of a patient or whatever. So it's just a great learning opportunity really for all of us. So that's been really awesome. And I don't know, I could blather on and on. don't know if there's specific things that you want to ask, but. I love about what you say is, there's, again, the downside to not being a video podcast, but that's a whole different subject in and of itself, is that you're holding your hand up here, like there's the rigor, and then here's these life challenges, and we're trying to support life challenges. And what I love about that is that, and we've talked about it before, but I'll say it again, life is gonna life. Life keeps lifeing. sure, can an institution, whether it's Gonzaga, any of our local institutions, any one of your local institutions, could anybody make that progress easier? Teach toward the exam, help you pass the NCLEX, and could you graduate and become a nurse? Yes. But what do you miss along the way? You miss the character building, you miss the ability to, you miss the two key ingredients that are absolutely necessary to succeed in this field, and that is resilience and grit. And those are two things that can only be taught by maintaining that rigor. Now then you have issues of course if your institution maintains the rigor and doesn't give a rat's rear about you. ah Then that's a different story. So when you've got I'm going to maintain the standard but man you've got something going on we want to come alongside you and support you and lift you up. That is the best combo right there. So I have my question and my only other real question regarding this whole topic with you uh Chris is that. uh... what would you say to students and i've heard it before you may have heard it on the podcast before what would you and and and doesn't matter what institution they came from who they were talking about indifferent and this is throughout the marches the annals of time as it were i don't care where you are as a student i don't care if nursing is your field but there are there are nursing students will say man sometimes i feel like i'm just a number i'm just you know i mean i'm They want my dollars, they want my tuition, they want my whatever, and you know what I mean, I want my tuition dollars to matter, I wanna get the best I can out of experience. That's great, that's fantastic. What would you say to those that would say, you know what, I feel like just a number, doesn't everybody just wanna weed us out? Yeah, yeah, that weeding out thing. that always hurts when I hear that. Yeah, guess what I here's what I would say is, you know, I love to read my students and I do read my students the book, The Runaway Bunny at the beginning of the semester. And I what I say is you're going to take care of someone's little bunny, whether that's somebody's grandma or somebody's sister or somebody's brother or nephew or uncle or best friend or fill in the blank child right um The rigor is high for a reason. You came to Gonzaga because you wanted to be a Zag nurse. And with that comes this high bar. But we are there. We are absolutely there. What happens though, Erica, is so many students don't use us. So they suffer in silence. They don't come and talk to us. They don't come. A lot do, but there are several that don't. I can't help if I don't know what's going on. And so that's our job is to be there. And yes, yes, we'd like you to know how to put in a Foley and, you know, listen to lung sounds. But what we really want you to do is be able to communicate and to be able to talk to people and to be able to share with us at least enough information that we can help you because we wouldn't let you in if we didn't think you could do it. And so I would just say, we don't want you to be a number. You're not a number. I have students come up to me all the time out in public and they'll be like, Dr. Sloan, I don't know if you remember me. And then I'll usually say their full name and they'll be like, oh my gosh, I can't believe you're. And it's like, we don't forget. We were with you for a couple of years. We you're very important to us. And if we wanted to work, you know, in a weeding out place. This isn't the place. I don't think anywhere in Spokane is the place. um I think all the schools here in town are excellent and excellent quality. They're all different in different ways, but all of the, I know all of the directors in town and I know that they all want to put out amazing human beings. And that means not just your skills and not just your knowledge, but who you are as a person. And we can help with that. Like, I talk to seniors all the time who are like in my office crying because they're so overwhelmed by the job process and the whatever. And when I finally just say to them like, you don't have to have this all figured out. It's fine. You're doing good. I didn't have it all figured out. You could just see them like, relax. Like, oh. So I would say to students, lean on us. That's what we're here for. Are we therapists? No, I am not a therapist. No, but I can definitely listen to your situation and I can be compassionate and I can guide you where you need to go to get the right kinds of help. And you can always pop by my office and get a Hershey's Kiss out of my jar and borrow one of my kids books off my shelves and do whatever or just you know, come say hi and let me know how life's going. You know, we are in the journey together. It's a journey. Nursing school is a journey. It's a process. And boy, if you don't come out of it different than you went in, we didn't do our jobs right. So, I don't know. I think that's really just, you know, our job is to be there with you, not to you out. Now, if you can't do it and you can't cut it, and you're not willing to put in the work, that's usually the issue. People aren't willing to put in the work, then yeah, it's gonna be a problem. So. ah Because we do have a responsibility to the consumers and to the people who you are going to be caring for and to your coworkers and to your institutions, right? That you come out and you are an amazing nurse who contributes to the profession. Not somebody that we all go, oh, so and so is on today. don't like. Exactly what I'm talking about. Yeah, we all have that so. oh That's not who we want to put out at Gonzaga. I feel like, and I feel like the best way, so there's your takeaway. All students who are listening from anywhere, your takeaway here is yes, know, modern day we're like, it's about our rights. I have the right to do this. I have the right to do that. I have the right to this. Yes, you do. 100%. I have a bunch of rights as an American citizen. We have rights for this. We have rights for that. But alongside those rights come responsibilities. And the responsibility, that's where it's like you've got to do your part. Whether that means putting in the work, like you said. Yeah. You've got to do that part, otherwise you're going to get called out on it, hopefully, uh if you're in the right place. um And or doing your part in sharing, you know what I mean? Don't suffer in silence. I talked with another amazing, incredible uh chair educator from a different institution, another previous Honored Guest. She told us a story one time. I don't think it was on air. I don't remember now. This seems silly, since we just recorded it last year. But. She told us a story about a student who literally was dealing with siblings being kidnapped in a foreign country. In back home in Africa, they are struggling with this and of course that student at least, you know what I mean, is like, hey, I've got problems. I need to talk to somebody. And then, you know what I mean, now this is an extreme example, but the point is even if it's just as something as quote unquote trivial as I broke up with my significant other, that's devastating. Yeah, absolutely. And it's going to impact your academic performance. So ergo, don't just suffer in silence because then as an educator, as as anyone, whatever role we fill, we're looking at the situation going, man, OK, I know something's wrong. Something's off with the student. They're not their normal self. Something's going on. They're not sharing anything. You don't have to give all the details. But on the same token, how can we help you? don't know. We don't know how to help you. We don't know how to help you. We don't know what we don't know. You don't know what you don't know. So let's communicate. Let's over communicate. and I will frequently just, if I see those students just say, hey, why don't you come to my office and let's chat for a little bit or can we just go grab a cup of coffee or, you know, just tell me more about you. And then I usually start to get at what's underneath all that. And yeah, I just want, I want students to know they have an ally. They have, and it's not just one, there's many of us. And if you don't click with everybody, fine, but. There's somebody, there's somebody. There's you, Eric, who's teaching for us and doing an amazing job, you know, adjuncting for us. So we... I love it. I love it and that's the thing. Like you said, we are a team. You're never gonna jive with everybody and that's okay. Just like you will with coworkers. But if you, there will be, I can guarantee every institution is large enough, even the smaller ones have enough faculty, you'll find somebody that can be your person. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, Alex Giffin herself in her episode, she talks about that. There you go. If you haven't listened to Alex Giffin's episode, go and listen to her episode because she talks about that as well. Find your person. There is someone there who will quote unquote speak your language, who will be simpatico, who is someone you're like, okay, I vibe with this person. I get that. Okay, so with that, I... oh Hahaha! a ham-fisted segue from one topic to another. I talked about this student who's from another country. went, how convenient is that? Because the other quote unquote question I wanted to ask you, you talked about it briefly in the first episode, your love of going to Africa specifically. So you just tell us all about like, what is that about? And then as you're telling that story, You, course, maybe faced some challenges of your own in the last year on your last trip, and you share as much or a little as you want about that, but it also opens the door to what does healthcare look like outside of our United States. Yeah, yeah. Well, I started going to Africa, let me think, in 2015. Through my old school in San Diego, there was a study abroad program and I became friends with Dr. Senyo Agibolo. So try to say that 10 times. I can't say it once, I'm gonna let you do that. He's from Ghana and was teaching at our school, but um really felt like as a PhD prepared uh man from Ghana that he needed to go back and he needed to um help bring up the next generation. know, Africa em is really plagued by a lot of problems. And one of the problems there is um just uh fraud and um all kinds of corruption. And so that gets taught really early, right? You see your parents do it. And so he thought, okay, if I build this school, perhaps I can teach these kids some values so that they can be the next leaders of Africa. And that's a really big task. But in doing that, he said, I'd like you to bring some nurses and let's see what we can do in this village. So I started going the first year I went. had seven nurses that I took nursing students and we worked in a small clinic. It was really cool actually. uh Long lines to get into this clinic. The very first thing that you've you rule out in Africa, I don't care where you are, is malaria or not malaria. And then you go from there. So our students got to do a lot of things. They got to work kind of in the pharmacy area. They got to work in the lab and see malaria under the microscope. And then just talking with patients and families and the staff and just really loved it. So the beauty of this particular program is that a couple of alumni from this same school had gone on. She became a nurse practitioner and he became a physician and they decided to go back to this same village. Of course, they had been associated with Senyo, the professor, and they started a nonprofit to train community health workers. So to train women to be community health workers, which is a very common model in Africa. So you get women from the community, you train them about health and health related things, and then they can kind of be like the, kind of like the intermediary uh provider or at least advice giver to their village. And then there is actual nationalized, national healthcare in Africa. It's not very good, but it's there. So. We ended up working with this group of women called the Kakeli women. That means bright in A-way, which is the language. And our students got to know these women really well. We did some training the first year we were there. um Second year we went, we brought blood pressure cuffs and trained them how to use them. And then the third year we went, we came and we rechecked their... um their technique, but we also got to hear all these amazing stories about how they had been able to intervene in the lives of the people in their village. I was also able to work with a student to do a study of these women because, you know, most of the studies on community healthcare workers is whether they're good for the community or not. And I thought this must be really great for the woman herself. Women in Africa are second class citizens. They are the They do a lot of the work. They raise the kids. um Sometimes they're one of several wives, depends on the area. um so what did it mean to be a Kakeli woman who had her own blood pressure cuff and her own bicycle who can go out in the community and do these things? And it was really cool what we found out. So that was just sort of some research that I did with a student, a senior student, and we were able to publish on that. um put some work out there. I had two other students that wanted to teach a curriculum that's through the American Association of Pediatric, uh the American Academy of Pediatrics, called Helping Babies Breathe. so um again, we saw a number of deliveries that were quite terrifying and resuscitation measures that you would never see in the United States, lots of thumping and flicking and trying to use uh mouth to mouth with gauze in a brand new tiny baby and a nurse blowing as hard as she could. So we said, okay, let's go back the next year and we brought the appropriate size ambu bags and did training. And then the head nurse midwife there ended up taking that training and going out and doing training all across her region. So, and that was two students that did that. but I just developed a love for the people and I love that we went back every year and saw the same people. So we weren't, our being there didn't like boot somebody out of a clinic or, you know, and we also weren't just, I'm really concerned about doing what I call evangel tourism. And um so being really careful that we're not just there to go, you know, not that it's bad, but to go just, you know, love on everybody for Jesus, but that we're really going and we have a real purpose for being there. So I really loved that um experience and we would go for a month at a time. So I've done that. I've been to Uganda. I went there to evaluate a study abroad program. And then this last year, I was asked to go to Zambia with Dr. Josh Armstrong at Gonzaga and to take a group of students. So was a combination of kind of healthcare focused students, nursing students, some who want to go to med school, some business students, kind of a smattering of students. And um Josh teaches leadership and I said, I'll teach a class on global health. This will be great. So I haven't been to Zambia before, but beautiful country and um not as hot as Ghana. that was like, woohoo, it's going to be great. Yeah. So our trip was four weeks, but the first week is really spent just kind of in main part of Zambia and then down in a tourist area called Livingstone. um Dr. Livingstone, I presume that's where that comes from. And we were near Victoria Falls and some other beautiful areas. So first week is just getting the students kind of used to the fact that we're now in Africa, the food's gonna be a little different, you know, just kind of getting to know each other a little bit better. So. We get through that first week and we are staying in Livingstone and we had just come back from a two day safari in Botswana. That was unbelievable. mean, incredible. I mean, zebras walking right by your truck and elephants, you know, with their babies walking along and we saw lions and cubs. I mean, it was just really an amazing experience. And we slept one night out in the bush. We camped through the safari group, but that was really fun. So we get back and we're like dirty and tired and hot. And I want to take a shower. Everybody wants to take a shower. But my phone charger cord broke and I wanted to call my husband. So I thought, well, I am just going to, there were some stores across the street. So I thought I'm going to walk across the street and go get a, phone charger cord and I saw some other students and they said, Hey, we're going across the street. Do want to come with? And I'm like, perfect. That's where I'm going. So we went over, went to the store, did our thing, got our stuff, started walking back. It was starting to get dark. And as we were walking back across the street, the students, of course, you know, 20 something kind of all run the gauntlet across what was a pretty busy road. was kind of the main road going through Livingstone and Just a couple hundred feet away was uh a light, a crossing light, and a crosswalk. And I thought, okay, I'm gonna go there because I didn't want to get hit by a car. So we walked across the street and unfortunately where I walked over, there was also a long drainage ditch running along the street that was uncovered. I did not see it and I stepped into it three feet down. Mm. felt something in my left leg snap and I went down into this ditch. The ditch luckily didn't have anything in it. A lot times they have like raw sewage and other stuff in it. It did have like broken beer bottles and things like that. uh laying on the ground and bunch of people came to my rescue, wanted to pull me out of this ditch right away and I was like, don't touch me. I need to be moved a certain way. I knew that my leg was seriously injured and I uh couldn't tell. I thought maybe I had a compound fracture, but I didn't. but I could definitely tell that something was very, very wrong. And to make a very long story shorter for your podcast, I went to a local hospital. I was able to get an x-ray, but they were not able to do anything other than to put on a back slab, which is like a plaster cast, kind of half plaster cast on the bottom of my leg from thigh to toe. And then the top of it is wrapped with, you know, the whole thing's wrapped with gauze because I had loads and loads of swelling. my leg just hugely swelled up. Just to do that required Josh. my co-leader and a friend of his who's from Zambia, going out to pharmacy owners at 1130 at night to find out if they had the supplies needed to do this, because they don't have them in the hospital. Hospital also did not have a wheelchair and they did not have any pain medicine other than Tylenol. That's it. So if you live there and you have a terrible accident, you're getting Tylenol. That's it. em They did do some kind of a drug that's a injectable, like a toroidal kind of, you know, anti-inflammatory, but that doesn't really cut it. I have this great pre-med student sitting with me who kept me entertained the whole time. um and I would, you know, intermittently cry and then I would be okay and I just kept thinking, oh, I can't believe this is happening. Like I'm not going to be able to go on the rest of the trip and these students need somebody to, you know, oversee all of this. So anyway, I finally was after two days of being in Livingstone with broken leg, I was air ambulanced to Johannesburg, South Africa. And ah I arrived 24 hours later, my husband arrived from the United States to be with me. This is why you all need a current passport, in my opinion. um And I had surgery in Johannesburg, South Africa, um four days after arriving there. I did not ever see an alcohol wipe the entire time I was there. um I did get a lot of things IV. I don't know what they were. At that point, I was too freaked out to ask, really. But I did have decent care. I was in a ward room myself and five other patients. um One of the ladies fell out of her bed in the middle of the night, broke her hip. That was exciting. But it was... really hard to be so far away from home and to just be in such a foreign place. And it was great to have my husband there, but I think I cried every single day that I was there. em I had no idea what it meant for the summer or for teaching. I fractured my left tibial plateau and had a pretty serious fracture there. So I have a big metal bar in there. They put in a big bar and 10 screws and somehow I got out of there without any post-op infection and my incision is actually quite beautiful the way it healed. I went home, let's see, I guess 10 days after being there, um my husband and I flew home commercial, first class. I had to. Yeah, you needed the space. Yep, mean, heck, if I could have been air ambulance, I would have skipped the whole Johannesburg thing. ah But the insurance, our travel insurance wouldn't do that. yeah, so we flew home, we flew uh Johannesburg to Paris, 10 hours, had a four hour layover and then Paris to Seattle, another 10 hours and then flew just, you know, Alaska or whatever we flew to Spokane. And so I have never been so happy in my life to get home. Yeah, I bet. 10 weeks non-white bearing for the whole rest of the summer. I, and let me ask you, let me ask you too. So, looking to the future, yes or no answer, you gonna go back? Heck yeah. There it is. I kind of figured I knew what you'd say, but I'm like, well, this will be interesting if she says no. We'll go a different direction. know what? um Life is too short to be afraid of anything. um you know, I wouldn't go if I weren't in good health. But I feel like there is, it's sort of like, I don't know how to describe this, but it's sort of like, you know, I know people who won't get a dog because the dog's gonna die. And it's like, you're trading years of joy and love and companionship for a short period of pain. And for me, I just can't ever envision myself not going back. And so will I be careful? Yes, I'll be really careful. But I am. Yeah, absolutely. I'll go back. I'll go back. and here's the takeaway too from this, you guys, like the two big things, big things pop into my mind. First of all, of course is the, you know, yes, our healthcare system is broken. There is so much, we're not even gonna spend an hour talking about that, but we've got it good. We've got it, we have resources, we have abilities to do things that I just, most of the world wishes they could do. That's number one. So don't, know, just, hear you saying like, there's no wheelchairs. Like the next time I wheel a mom out to her car, like I'm gonna look at that wheelchair in an entirely different way myself personally. And then number two, The second thing that I have from this that should not be lost in this is those patients that you care for, and you will care for them, I don't care where you're at, that are English as a second language or not a language at all, uh patients. I try to imagine, I can't imagine what it's like to be in their shoes, but there it is. There is the story of a person who's... Language, you know what mean, whatever their language is, is a second language. So now Chris Sloan is in a foreign place, tears streaming down her face, scared, not asking, you said not asking questions anymore because you're like, don't, like, you're just, it's scary enough to have to deal with that. Now imagine being the one not being able to speak English in our country, all the things, and having to deal with that. So please, when you have patients that are, and it is, it's a pain in the rear to take twice as long to do everything you have to do on your shift because you're working through the interpreter. So everything's being said twice. And so then brevity is key, but also you're listening, you're trying to, it's an exhausting thing. But as bad as it is for you and me, think about your patients. Absolutely. I it's really funny that you say that because they speak English in Johannesburg. They speak it with a very heavy Afrikaner accent and I could barely sometimes understand what they were saying and they would get frustrated with me and so then you know the longer I was there the more I engaged with the nurses and we did get to be friendly and so we'd say how do you say this? How do you say that? um And that was fun. I do have to tell you one story. I, they, are very formal there with, you know, their uniforms are very important. What epaulettes you have on your shoulders, say how senior you are, et cetera, et cetera. And I had this nurse one afternoon, she's a little short, kind of robust lady and, uh, these funny, this funny, like braid, two braid. braided buns on the side of her head. Kind of like, I don't know, kind of like, I don't know. I can't think of a good analogy, but she um was just cheeriness and light. Good morning. Good morning, Mrs. Sloan. How are you? And one day I heard her at the nurse's station singing and she was singing the song, How Great Thou Art. And when she came into my room, She said to me, do you know this song? And I said, I do know this song. And she said, sing with me. And she sat down and held my hand and we sang the last verse to how great they are together. And of course I started crying. I leaned over and gave me a huge hug and she said, God has you in his hands. I know he does. And I just thought that is like, I just, I could feel myself heal in that moment. Like it was just amazing to me. So, you know, so many kindnesses, so many things that were foreign and weird and different, but I, I had some, I had this one night nurse who came in and it was just so funny with me. Every time she goes, I love coming in here and laughing with you. Those little things you do make such a big difference. Such a big difference. So when you feel like you've lost that kindness or you've lost that sense of compassion for your patients, like you've really lost it. You haven't seen it in a long time. You got to do something. You got to shake it up. yep, don't be afraid, change it up, change it up, and it's worth it. The lifestyle on the other, the life on the other side of that fear is worth it. That's a whole nother podcast in and of itself. Chris, let's wrap this up in our traditional manner. You chose three very fascinating words for, to describe nursing school. What were they and why did you pick? So one of them was fascinating. I know. I personally am still so in love with the nursing profession and the nursing topics. Like if you love to learn, this is your gig. I just, the human body is amazing. And so I hope I mean, when I teach pharmacology, I try to get people excited about the human body. um But I really hope that people can see it for the miraculous machine that it is and our ability to use treatments and drugs and other things to help take advantage of that. And yeah, that's really cool. My second word was stretching. And I think if you aren't stretched to nursing school, you probably didn't get out of it what you should have gotten out of it. You know, things that are hard and things that are are tough are usually worth doing. they're usually things that are going to help us grow. And growth isn't this la-di-da run through the daisies kind of experience. Growth comes from from mountain top experiences and being in the drainage ditch in Africa experiences. So, um, if you feel yourself being stretched and that hurts a little bit, you're in exactly the right place. And life altering was my third word. And, I just feel like nursing school is a gateway to something really incredible. And if you don't love the hospital or you don't love what you're doing, don't leave nursing, find another way to be involved. But I cannot imagine my life as a non-nurse and ah what a huge gift it has been to me. And I hope that I've helped some people along the way, but honestly, I'm the one who's been so blessed in all of it. yeah. It's been a tremendous profession and I'm not done yet. I'm still in. Yeah, so much left. So yeah, yeah. that's amazing. Thank you, Chris. so then, man, I don't know why people tuned out. You've got one thing for them to walk away with, and there's already been so much, but you've got one thing you want them to walk away with. What is your advice or that one piece of advice uh to nursing students in particular? Challenge yourself. Go outside your comfort zone. Study harder than you have in the past. Go to tutoring. Go talk to your scary professors who aren't scary. We're just people like you. We have all of our foibles. If you could see my kitchen counter right now that I'm looking at, you'd be like, a person who's a director of a program shouldn't have a counter that looks like that. But I do. uh Yeah, just don't sit in the status quo and while you're challenging yourself, try to see if you can enjoy the journey. Mmm, yes, I love it. And then very last thing, the added bonus because of who you are. What is the one piece of advice you'd give to nurse educators in particular? Oh man. You're like, only one? Only one? I would say that, gosh, this is so hard. Kindness and compassion matters. not saying that I want a kind and compassionate poor educator, but kindness and compassion matters and um you will have more impact on students. by using those two tools than you will ever have by berating people or calling people on the carpet or belittling folks. know, that nurses eat their young thing. We have to stop that and it has to stop in nursing school. we're not there yet. um Faculty even eat their baby faculty. So we have a really long way to go. Ugh, Chris, thank you so much. Sorry, thank you, Dr. First name, comma, last name. Actually, I've been saying it wrong the whole time. I'm surprised you didn't catch it I didn't catch it. I was like, wait a second, it wouldn't be first name, comma, last name. It'd be last name, comma, first name. Eh. Well, we're gonna go back to school now, you guys, and uh thank you, seriously though, thank you for joining us, and thank you, Chris, for just imparting wisdom and some incredible stories that are just super valuable to learn from. So thank you. Oh, thank you for having me. It's been a joy. Yeah. Thank you. You too.