Sterilization Station: A Sterile Processing Empowerment Podcast
Welcome to "Sterile Processing Empowerment Podcast, the podcast dedicated to elevating the field of sterile processing and surgical services! In an industry where precision and care intersect, we believe that knowledge is power. Our mission is to empower, encourage, and motivate every professional engaged in the transformative world of healthcare.
Join us each week as we delve into enlightening discussions that shine a light on best practices, emerging innovations, and the critical role sterile processing plays in patient safety. Whether you're a seasoned expert or just starting your journey, our panels and expert guests will provide invaluable insights through engaging conversations and real-world stories.
From the nuances of instrument handling to the latest in sterilization techniques, we cover it all. Expect thought-provoking interviews, educational segments, and motivating content designed to inspire you to elevate your craft. Together, let’s foster a community that champions excellence in surgical services and celebrates the unsung heroes of healthcare.
Tune in to where expertise meets passion, and every episode empowers you to make a difference in the operating room and beyond.
Sterilization Station: A Sterile Processing Empowerment Podcast
From the Operating Room to Art Studio: A Surgical Technologist's Creative Journey
Candice Plasan navigates the precision-driven worlds of surgical technology and tattoo artistry, bringing passion and creativity to both realms while drawing surprising connections between them.
• Candice's path to surgical technology was inspired by her mother's brain aneurysm during her high school years
• After technical school, she fulfilled her goal of working in the same hospital that saved her mother's life
• The high-pressure environment of surgery requires quick adaptation, precision, and emotional resilience
• Hospital culture creates "uniform chaos" where teams align instantly during emergencies despite hierarchical tensions
• Her current role as Guardian Service Specialist at Richard Wolf Medical Instruments allows her to build meaningful relationships across hospital departments
• Apprenticing in tattoo artistry fulfilled her lifelong artistic passion that she had kept private for years
• Her husband, also a tattoo artist, has been instrumental in encouraging her creative development
• Surgical experience enhances her understanding of anatomy, improving her artistic abilities
• Medical knowledge of sterilization and safety protocols transfers directly to professional tattoo practices
• Recently launched Family Tradition Tattoos as a creative lifestyle brand with her husband
• Recognized as GSS of the Year, validating her passion and expertise in medical equipment servicing
• Planning to bring creative approaches to medical environments through future projects
If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe, leave a review, and share with someone who might need encouragement to blend their own diverse passions.
Welcome to the Sterilization Station, where we dive into the stories that connect seemingly different worlds and reveal the extraordinary people who live at those crossroads. Today's guest is a remarkable individual who bridges two intense, precision-driven realms medicine and art. From the high-stakes environment of trauma and neurosurgery operating rooms to the intricate lines of tattoo art and illustration, candice Plasson navigates both with skill, passion and creativity. How does one balance the life or death focus of surgery with the freedom and expression of art? What lessons cross over between these disciplines? Stay tuned as we explore Candice's journey from scalpel to sketch, uncovering insights about resilience, precision and the power of following your dual passions. And so we're so excited to have Candice with us today.
Speaker 2:And Candice, how are you doing today? I'm good, thank you. That was quite the introduction, and I'm surprised you said my last name right. A lot of people don't.
Speaker 1:Oh wow, I was worried I wasn't going to get it right, so that's always a bonus.
Speaker 1:That's really cool. That's really cool. Once again, I'm just really happy. I know I reached out to you on LinkedIn. I met you, you responded, we're able to have a phone conversation, get to know each other professionally and a little personally there as well, and just hearing about your journey and your passions and just really glad that you were willing to come on to the sterilization station today and kind of let us look into your path and some of the things that you really enjoy, and so I really am excited about today's episode. So I was wondering maybe you could start off by telling us a bit about who you are and how you found yourself balancing both surgery and art.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm definitely an art girly. I have been my whole life, but I somehow found myself in the medical field one day a little later on in life and it's been a ride, it's been a journey, but overall I haven't been disappointed. I never thought that I would be someone that ended up in the medical field. A lot of the people in my town where I grew up mostly became nurses and I was just kind of like I don't know if I really want to do that. So I dabbled a little in everything and then when I found myself there, it was like something happened, you know, and I think medicine can do that to people.
Speaker 1:That's really cool. That's interesting how you never really know where your journey is going to take you. But you know when you find something that you're passionate about and a lot of times it's like a little discovery road. Right, you go here, you try this, it leads you here and all of a sudden you find yourself, you know, like in an environment that you never would have anticipated. And now you're, you're exposed to an opportunity that kind of changes the trajectory of your career path or your life. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I never would have guessed that this would be my life, but I'm not disappointed. Like I said it's, it was a pleasant surprise, definitely.
Speaker 1:That's cool, that's really cool. Yeah, what drew you to surgical technology and specifically trauma and neurosurgery?
Speaker 2:So when I was in high school, my mom had a brain aneurysm and she was sent to a hospital in the city that was about 45 minutes away and she suffered like many strokes while she was there but I mean, she's still with us, thankfully. But after that she had to go and live in like a rehab facility for a while to relearn how to walk and talk and gain her strength back and honestly I don't have a lot of full memories from that time. I think it was like so traumatic for me being young and that was my mom. But later on, I think, when I started processing it, when I was in my twenties, that's when I applied to school.
Speaker 2:Originally I wanted to maybe be a surgeon or a doctor, but I was like, let me ease into this, cause that sounds like a lot, you know. So I went to tech school and I told myself, if I can do this and graduate, I'm going to go work at that hospital. I want to be on the neuro team, so I can kind of like give back to the place that saved my mom's life. So that's, that's what I did.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's interesting. I'll say it this way I have a friend. She wants, she wants to be like a hemodialysis nurse and she worked at a hemodialysis center because she had a relative who was on hemodialysis, right. So it's so interesting. I had a coworker when I worked at Steris. She was a diabetic and she always wanted to work in the health care industry because she wanted to basically be able to service people that were dealing with the same conditions as she was. So it's so interesting how you know, like how many people went to get their x-ray and then all of a sudden they're like I want to be an x-ray tech, right, because they're getting a cast put on, and they're like this seems like such a great, fun job. So it's interesting how situations happen in life, like instantaneously, like a pathway is uh, created for you.
Speaker 2:So that's really cool yeah, um, I think it was kind of funny and maybe played out in the best way possible too, because when I finally went to work at that hospital after I graduated, the doctor that did the procedure for my mom like just left there and went somewhere else. So I never got got to officially meet him. But I'm still just so thankful. And it's crazy because when you don't work in a hospital, or especially in an OR, it can be very eye-opening the things that you see in there. So when I got to firsthand see the procedure that was done that saved my mom, it's like just how intricate and detailed and high stress it can be. But that's what makes it amazing, you know, like that is where the art is in it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's, that's phenomenal. I mean just, you know me going through, you know being in the sterile processing for 20 years and then doing my training in surgical technology, but only scrubbing like a few cases technology, but only scrubbing like a few cases. When I'm speaking to students I'll always say you may go to get your cup of coffee on your break and you don't know their relative in line could have been. Their relative is the person whose trays you sterilized or turned over for that procedure, and so you never really know who you're actually servicing in the hospital. And to know that you have a direct impact on the I call them positive patient outcomes, right, it's so important.
Speaker 2:I would also find myself thinking that a lot was having a bad day, or if I was stressed out or tired or overwhelmed. Sometimes that's small, just reminder of a lot of the people that come to the hospital as patients or family of patients are not having the best day of their life, right? I mean sometimes if someone's having a baby or something amazing like that, but so it's. You have so much responsibility that you probably don't even recognize like little things like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's true. I mean, because in surgery you know there's so many responsibilities or so much, so many things you're accountable for and even, like high stress, right, there's a lot of high stress in the surgical suites. And that leads me to ask the question how did you manage that mentally and emotionally when you're in that setting? Surgery can be so serious. You got turns right. I mean, a turn can happen in a case and now all of a sudden the setup's different. We need this, we need that. Like, how do you manage yourself in that environment when you know it's so serious?
Speaker 2:That is a hard question because I think that's different for everybody. The way that someone responds to pressure can look different, but for me specifically, I think I had to take the criticism hard at first because this is a complicated subject matter, sometimes because I know the way that one can be treated at times in a hospital isn't that great. Unfortunately, that can be the environment sometimes. But then you also have to realize what you are doing and why. Is potentially one of the most important things in the world, like you're trying to save someone's life? More than likely that's probably what you are doing. So you have to know what you're doing and you have to be aware of what's going on. And if you're not fast enough, you learn how to be fast enough because you have to Right, right, right, and that comes with experience, right.
Speaker 1:I love what you're saying about pressure, because people deal with pressure differently. I mean, some people do really well, some people have to learn how to survive in that environment and thankfully we have this beautiful term right Externship, right. It's like hundreds of hours of practicing different cases, types of cases, and it's not just a checkbox of I did you know 100 hours of general, but it's even those that certain procedures can just bring a higher stress, and so being able to be trained.
Speaker 1:Trained in that environment is that's what I'm thankful for. Externships, because they're so vital to preparing technicians. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Yes, I agree. I mean, you never want something to be your first time when it's very crucial. At the same time, I think it's important to state none of those jobs are easy.
Speaker 2:You know whether you're an SPD or a tech in the OR, just the amount of information you not only are expected to know but you have to know. It's a lot and I think those programs are very important and I think I'm very thankful it seems like there's a lot more evolving in the realms of chapters and factions and organizations for the hospital to really display how important these jobs are and how everyone needs a voice and everyone needs safety and for all you know, I don't know, I just think I remember when I was working in a hospital how much I loved it, because it seems like a family sometimes. But then there's that like chain of command. Have you ever seen the? It was like going around on Facebook or something, but it's a meme where maybe the husband's yelling at the wife, so the wife is yelling at the kid.
Speaker 2:Sometimes it can be like that, right, but when it came down to it, though, every time a patient came in the room and there was a trauma or it was like life or death get into gear everyone's on the same page, and that's what's weirdly beautiful, too, about the hospital. You know it's chaos, but it's uniform chaos, I guess.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's, I think, beautifully weird, is perfectly expressed, right, just like you just said.
Speaker 1:I mean it's, it is, it's organized chaos, for sure. It's like you think about the old TVs when you, when you like, when you take out the old, old like connector and it would be the black and white dots, the ants as people called it. That's organized chaos, right, it looks like so. It seems like everything is where it needs to be but not supposed to be, and nothing's working, but yet it looks so organized. But I think it's true, I mean, and it's understanding, the culture is what we do like consistently, what we allow and what we celebrate, and so when we're learning about the culture of the hospitals and how things are, and understanding even how to kind of map out your day because I know, as surgical technologists, it's all about you're coming early to create a good day, right? So you're setting up stuff early, you're making sure everything has a flow to it, and then there are responsibilities and there is a chain of command, and understanding, I guess, determines the hierarchy of the operating room, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I don't think I meant to put it that way. If it came across that way, I know it can be. Unfortunately, it's like at the end of the day, it's like anywhere. Excuse me that you could work Maybe little clicks or something.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I think a lot of the stressors come from just a lot of the day-to-day hospital problems that every hospital face everywhere and every SPD and every OR and every cafeteria. And it's just because I have the job I have now I can confirm that when I go to all these different places and I see, wow, it's like everybody has the same problems, like what can we do about it? And I think that's why I appreciate my job now, because I can now go back to my company and be like, hey, I'm noticing this as a problem, what can we do about it? And I work somewhere now that they actually listen, and I feel like that was a game changer, just working for a company that listens to me. That's so important. And now I feel like I get to help advocate for all these people and all these different departments in the hospital when I can, if they feel like they can't or they need extra help or something, so that's kind of cool to be able to do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's great. So what is your current role at Richard Wolff Medical Instruments and how is it different from your work in the OR?
Speaker 2:So I am a guardian service specialist, which is I basically deal with repairs, but it's kind of like a rep associate I guess. But I get to deal with the OR and SPD and biomed purchasing. I get to like kind of dabble with everyone. And that's what I love is going to the different hospitals and making friends in the different departments and being excited to come back and see them or hear about their day, because I get to make real relationships with these people and that's nice, you know. It's nice because when you work in a hospital patients come and go. You never see them again but I get to come back and greet everybody.
Speaker 2:So that's one of the biggest differences just having relationships with different people and just kind of seeing, like I said, all the similarities between the hospitals. It kind of it makes me chuckle a little bit. But in the OR that was very, sometimes it was very fun and exciting and sometimes it was very traumatic. You know I had to learn to get desensitized a little bit very quickly. A lot of the stuff you can see is very sad in there, I think, and I think people don't realize it kind of hardens them a little bit at work, which is another reason why I think there's some like rough and scruff sometimes. Overall it can just be a hard place, I think, to work, because it's so important, even people's lives, and I don't think that gets talked about enough.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's very true. I mean, I've never really thought about it from that perspective. A lot of times you just you're an SPD. You hear a doctor that's really, you know, aggressive or negative, or maybe using language that's, you know, not professional in the environment, and maybe you see him throw an instrument at a scrub tech or whatever in frustration or lots of complaining but not understanding the dynamics of how serious what everything is. And then, like you said, said, you know, when you're seeing something over and over again, it's really hard to not become callous to it. Just out of curiosity, kind of random. But so are you focusing on, like urology instruments, gyn instruments, laparoscopic instruments, like, do you do all of that or are you within one specific service line for Richard Wolff?
Speaker 2:Well, so technically it's all of it, but it's mostly what the territory needs, and there's a big urology and gynecology base in my territory, so I mostly focus on that.
Speaker 1:Okay, and then how do you see the technology changing the way surgical teams operate in the next five to ten years?
Speaker 2:That is a hard question as well, because I think a lot of things are changing. I think there's a lot of conversation about AI being introduced and a lot of people have mixed feelings about that. Even at HSPA is seeing, you know, robots packaging trays together and that's crazy.
Speaker 2:It's insane, disposable instruments, things like that. I personally me speaking for me, my opinion, I don't know how I feel about those. I haven't, I don't know just environmentally I guess. But at the same time I think everyone's just trying to better the field and it's all at once all consuming a lot of change all the time and it's hard to keep up with some time. So I don't really know where it's gonna go. But I can't wait to see.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure, and those are really good points you're making, because their technology is is really advancing at a very fast pace. It's allowing us to get more done less time. It's really allowing us to take the mind out of trying to figure things out. I mean, I'm not trying to get into AI in this episode. There's lots of good content from Beyond Claim and I think Kenneth Campbell on Time to Talk also. He talks a lot about AI and the impact of it. I mean, I do use AI on the podcast. It helps to streamline a lot of the processes, a lot, which is really beneficial. But I think that's really really good. I mean, you've hit on some really interesting you know topics within your answers and your responses and it's it's good to see someone who has. You know, you've been on kind of on all spectrums, right. You've been in sterile processing, you've been in the operating room, you're you're now a vendor.
Speaker 1:Now I coined this in my career a long time ago because I was a liaison, I was in the OR, which I did really, really good because I just love people, and so they gave me a phone, a little office upstairs, I was in the OR service in 22 hours and I was moving around and I was always in the room learning a lot, watching surgeries, asking doctors questions, putting out fires, and one thing I coined was that I remember watching a surgery one time and I was kind of fell into like a little trance or I was kind of zoning away and I was looking at the patient and the thought hit my mind like the patient doesn't really know I'm even here, right, they don't know sterile processing. Like I don't see a patient in my department, I don't see my patient in the operating room. Most of the time when I see a patient, I'm bringing a tray or a peel pack or something into the room to give to the surgical tech to assist them. Or maybe I'm servicing you, right, maybe you're coming into sterile processing and you're saying, hey, I'm the guardian rep for Richard Wolff and I'm here to help out. I wanted to see if our trays were ready for the case or if there's any issues. How is everything functioning? Like that, you know, or maybe I'm servicing, maybe I'm like an OR I was talking to doctors or working with charge nurses and maybe I'm meeting with service leads to, you know, create new trays.
Speaker 1:And so I coined this phrase or this motto, which is like my patient is not the patient, my patient is you right, it's the surgical tech, it's the vendors, it's the reps, it's the sterile processors are also my patient. And so the reason why I coined that was because when I think about a patient as a customer and the opportunity for me to demonstrate the wrong attitude with a customer, if the patient is my customer, I can't do that because they're never going to respond right. But you can respond right If I'm not treating you right, or if I'm saying you know, candice, find the tray yourself, right, I'm busy, right. Versus saying, oh, this is my customer, treating you like a customer. So I always love meeting people, being around vendors and just appreciating the value add that you all do to forward sterile processing, and so I think it's great to just learn more about yourself, your journey, as well as the service that your specific role provides for surgical services.
Speaker 2:Yeah, again, I mean, I really appreciate that attitude that you give towards everybody and it's really nice because I find a majority of people are that way and that's lovely and I'm very thankful, you know. But that allows me to have that foundation to really build a true relationship with people, and that's what I love. I have these like ladies I go see all the time. That gets so excited when I come and it's just wonderful and I get to chat with them and hear all about their day, and then I might not see them for a couple of weeks, but it's. It's so nice to look forward to seeing people like that and it builds a true relationship because once they know me as a person, they're like okay, we can actually trust her. She's not just trying to come shark around here or something, and I like being depended on by them because I'm also here to serve and make your guys' life easier. That is also my job, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's awesome. I think that's awesome. And nothing like the feeling when you know like I've had favorite reps right. They come in and you're just like, oh hey, how's it going, I'm so glad to see you. Or you look at the schedule and you know like Candace is going to be here because we're using their system and that doctor likes her trays. So I've always enjoyed the relationships and just building those relationships and always took pride to really service and make sure that that stuff's ready. So when I see the schedule, I see you're coming. I always when you have that relationship it makes you strive a little bit harder to make sure that those trays are together. And you know, I know how the reps like certain things and so you know they're like oh, this peel pack always goes with this tray, so I'll put it next to it so it's easier for you when you get there if we're picking the cases. So you know picking the cases, so you know when people treat you well.
Speaker 2:You do have a tendency to give them a little bit better service. So I think, yeah, I agree, I agree this is really good though.
Speaker 1:So and I know that, um, I do want to transition into more of like the creative and your artistic side. So also, as well as being a extraordinaire of you know what you do as a vendor rep supporting the ORs You're also an artist. You're a tattoo. Now you've been doing it for how long? Or maybe you could share a little bit about your passion and how that started and even how that came about?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So, like I said earlier, I've always been interested in art. I just one of those things, and not just drawing, just anything artistic and creative. I've always loved dancing and music, movies, anything, theater but drawing and painting was something that I kept to myself, mostly for a very long time. I don't know if I subconsciously knew I maybe needed more practice, more time, more confidence. I'm not sure, but I would always kind of brush it off and kept it as a hobby until one day it just ate at me so much and I was like, why am I not doing this? I love it. Why am I not doing that?
Speaker 2:So I reached out to this guy who actually gave me one of my tattoos a very long time ago and I asked if he would be my mentor and he said yeah. So I worked for him in a shop for about a year and then my husband and I ended up moving, so the commute was a little too far, so unfortunately, I had to stop working there. I really appreciated everything that he taught me. That was such a blessing, honestly, because it's very hard to get a tattoo apprenticeship. It really is and I'm very thankful that he did that for me. Luckily, I ended up marrying a tattoo artist, so I kind of have that at home too.
Speaker 2:Um, and he's like my biggest cheerleader. He's actually gave me the confidence to push my art in a direction I never thought I would take it. I really appreciate that. Yeah, it's just, and then trying to blend the two, like I'm just very disciplined about it. I work, you know, all day for Richard Wolff Love what I do, very hyper focused on that. When I get home, my work is done, then I start on the art and I do that every single day, and on weekends I talk to and I just I have to stick to it because they're both my passions, it's what I love. So if I'm going to be working, I might as well be doing it and being like happy at the same time, you know wow, that's amazing.
Speaker 1:So do you actually do art and tattooing at the same time, like two different forms of art?
Speaker 2:well, yeah, I guess you can say that. So recently my husband and I just we wanted to do a lifestyle brand online to kind of tag team with being artists and whatnot and just kind of sell just whatever we find core creative that we come up with. So we started in LLC not that long ago, family traditionition Tattoos and we launched a website not hard launched, we're still self-launching. We're in the process of buying a bunch of samples of stuff shirt material, embroidery versus silk screen, silk press, heat press, things like that and it's a lot because we want it to be perfect. So when we do find little gems we'll like slowly put things online, but we're still building for now. But yeah, trying to manage all of that can be very over. But again, it's that drive like you have to have a reason for why you're doing something.
Speaker 2:And I have that work and I have that after work yeah.
Speaker 1:That's good. I completely understand what you're saying Absolutely. Has your experience in healthcare influenced your art in unexpected ways?
Speaker 2:I'm sure it has. I'm sure it has. And I think that's another weird reason why my art developed too in a certain way, because I got to look at anatomy all day, you know. So I really got to just see the shadows and the highlights and the bends and you know, and it just starts ingraining in your mind when you see it for so long, and now I'm able to like show what I see in my brain.
Speaker 1:That's really cool. That's really cool. It's amazing when you have two different kind of worlds that kind of collide together and two different passions and they can really influence one another. Episode to discuss the similarities, yeah. So I thought it was pretty cool to to see the, the connection and how you can have things that you do as a profession but you can have, um, um, you can even have like hobbies that actually in interconnect together and work together.
Speaker 2:So I I totally see that the bridge yeah, well, they actually overlap, like they're so separate but they overlap each other because in tattooing which I mean, everyone kind of has their own idea around tattooing, whether it's like back in the day, like late 80s, early 90s tattooing, or tattooing now. But it's definitely evolved to. You know, shops need to get bloodborne pathogen tests and when they were still using coil machines and needed to autoclave their tubes, and you have to get spore testing done and know how to run autoclaves and you have to know how to disinfect and why you're wearing gloves and not. You know so. So there's a little bit of overlap there and I think my knowledge in the medical field that I learned definitely I can take with me tattooing because I think it's cleaned up quite a bit in the past, like you know, 15 years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I think that that's. That's just really cool to see. I love to see someone's passion and when they're able to share it in a way that you know can encourage and inspire others, and I think that's why I like to have these types of episodes occasionally is because it really helps us to see into some of the great professionals that you know that are really impacting patients' lives and to see the things that they enjoy. So, and I mean, you live in two different worlds, right, and so it makes me think, like, what does each side give you that the other doesn't, when you think about these two different worlds?
Speaker 2:They both give me similar things, so I have to be disciplined for both. I have to have a drive for each of them separately. It doesn't overlap because they're two different things but I have to go about them in the same way. So in that sense they're very similar but they're different, because in my role with Richard Wolff I get to be looked at as professional, educated, someone who's helping do the things that matter and I'm not saying art isn't that, because art is also that but I get to be more crazy, creative, human and that's okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure, for sure. No, for sure. What advice would you give someone feeling like they have to choose between a practical career and a creative passion?
Speaker 2:I used to be one of those people and I think that if you think you have to choose, then you're not ready to pursue it, whatever it may be, because if you want something bad enough, you're going to find a way, and that is your drive. And once you have it like, you can have a passion, but if you don't have the drive to go get it, then you're not going to pursue anything Right. So I think, understanding what you want and then figuring out, how can I reasonably get this without Right, right.
Speaker 1:No, that's true Was. Was there a moment in your career that that changed the way you see yourself?
Speaker 2:There's been a couple, weirdly, which if you would have asked me this years ago on another job, I would say well, maybe here or there, but not as often as in this role. Last year, at our national sales meeting, I was awarded a plaque for being GSS of the year and that was shocking to me. I was kind of amazed with myself because I didn't know how well I was doing and I always thought that I was good at this, like because it feels like it clicks, because when I say I care, it's not just I care, like no, I care, because I see every side SPD, the OR, now this and it's like I just have such a perspective that it gives me passion for it, like I care about what I do. So I won an award for it was just. That was really nice, that was really nice, and no doubt well deserved.
Speaker 1:I mean I've I felt your passion when we first message, when we got on the phone today. I mean I know everyone is able to feel that passion as well. So I think that's that's really, really good, and passion is something that that's what I get a lot of like. People will say we feel your passion, like you're still growing, you're still learning, but there's a passion that we feel to want to inspire, to want to motivate, to want to encourage, to want to help people along their journey, and so passion brings passion, passion breeds passion, passion grooms passion, and so I think it's something that we need more of in the industry is people that are willing to impart that. I always use the analogy as the syringe right is a tool that extracts a substance with the intent to put it back, put it into something to give relief, to give comfort, to help, to aid, and so I think, with what you're doing is you've extracted that passion and now you're going around and you're introducing that into different systems health care systems or bodily systems and now people can get the nutrients that they need to continue to grow, you know, in whatever they're doing. So I'd say stay on fire.
Speaker 1:I did a mini series on passion. Stay on fire for passion. Stay lit up for SPD surgical services. And so where can people see your art or follow your journey?
Speaker 2:well, like I said, we just launched a website. It is family trad tradcom. Like I said, though, there's only a couple things up for now because we're still sampling items, but we're getting there. We're getting there and you can get to the Instagram from that website. And yeah, and I was teaching the students and I think it was there too that I realized like I want to share this knowledge I have and I want to grow on it and I just want to be fully immersed and I am weirdly trying very hard. I think I annoy my boss a lot. I'm just joking, but I always have these ideas because I actually am trying to overlap art and that world into the medical world. I actually spoke with him about an idea the other day, so we'll see how it goes. Maybe we'll have to do another episode if it works out.
Speaker 1:But that'd be cool, that'd be really cool.
Speaker 2:Always trying to be creative and like, bring a little bit of this to that, because I think they both have wonderful things to offer and I think, merging the two, I don't see why not, I don't see why we can't yeah no, I think yeah, maybe like a virtual art show or bringing your art into the hospital.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of patients that love art. Art can be therapeutic. It can really help out. If you can bring dogs to visit patients, why can't you bring art visit patients?
Speaker 2:oh yeah, art is. Oh yeah, it is fantastic. But also too. I mean, sometimes people get tattoos for cosmetic reasons OK, you want to cover a scar or something like that, but also when women have breast cancer and they want to, so I mean, there's room for it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure, I definitely see that. I know a lot of people use it to also express memories, emotions, major events in their life, major people in their life. So I think there's lots of ways that art can express various things. And then my final questions I wanted to ask you was what do you want the listeners today to take away from your story?
Speaker 2:If anything, honestly because, again, like I said, I found all of this pretty late in life, seemingly until you feel that passion, that drive, and until you feel what makes you happy and you're only going to know it once you feel it. But you can't stop looking for that because it's out there. And once you find it, that's when you excel, because you know where you're meant to be. I think, that's what I'm experiencing right now.
Speaker 1:That's really good. That's really good. I love when some of those questions that are they're so personal. It's not something I can answer, but it resonates, you know. It resonates with those who are listening and connecting with your story. And that's really what podcasting is about is really about connecting people. People are experiencing things in life and you're connecting them with the opportunity. So I really thank you a lot for today, you know, for coming and joining us with your fascinating journey, true example of how the worlds of science and art can be, you know, beautifully intersected.
Speaker 1:So, whether you're pursuing a practical career, nurturing a creative passion or balancing both, candice's story reminds us that it's possible to embrace the full spectrum of who we are. So be sure to check out her artwork, make sure we share the website in the podcast episode on YouTube and then follow her inspiring journey on that website. And if this episode resonated with you, please subscribe, leave a review and share it with someone who might need a little encouragement to blend their own diverse passions. Until next time, keep creating, keep healing, always remember to keep it sterile and we'll see you in the next episode. And once again, candice, we want to thank you for coming on today and helping us to inspire, encourage and empower those in surgical services.
Speaker 2:Yeah, of course. Thank you so much for having me. I had a good time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this was good. I'm glad you came and I'm sure hoping that you'll come back and maybe bring some education to us regarding some of these great sets and the services that you provide. So we'll definitely talk to you soon and I'll see you in the comments on LinkedIn and, once again, thanks for coming on. Thank you.
