👉 ER Nurse Gary: What Social Media Doesn’t Show About Emergency Nursing

In this episode of Hold My Stethoscope, we sit down with Gary—better known as Gary The ER Nurse—to explore his unconventional journey from broadcast journalism to emergency nursing.

Gary shares powerful insights from the frontlines, including the realities of working through COVID-19, the mental health toll on healthcare workers, and the systemic challenges nurses face every day.

We also dive into the growing influence of social media in nursing, how authenticity builds trust, and why many nurses are turning to content creation and education as a way to make a bigger impact.

This episode is a must-listen for nurses, students, and anyone curious about what really happens behind the scenes in emergency care.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

This is Hold My Stethoscope.

SPEAKER_03 0:06

On. Hi everyone. Welcome back to Hold My Stethoscope. I'm Brittany. Felicia is here. And if you have guys, if you guys have worked even one shift in the ER, you know there are things that happen that no one prepares you for. So tonight we're joined by someone who has turned those exact moments into viral content. We have Gary, the ER nurse. Yay! Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 0:30

I'm glad to be here.

SPEAKER_03 0:31

Oh, welcome to the podcast. We're super happy that you were able to join us. It's uh it's honestly just an honor to have you. You have gotten a lot of um, you know, following and and definitely uh social media presence just by like the things that you're seeing and doing and posting about. So like I'm so excited to talk to you and see how you've gotten into everything. Let's see. I obviously did a little bit of homework here. So I know you started off as an EMT um and kind of transitioned out of healthcare, then came back into healthcare. So kind of walk us through like your journey into healthcare. How did you get started in this crazy world?

SPEAKER_00 1:11

So I actually uh did not start my career as a as an adult in healthcare. I got my start in radio actually in 1991 and did that while I was in high school. And I still keep in touch with my teacher uh from back then. She's retired and living her best life in Florida. I went to college, studied broadcast journalism, and that's what I did for a number of years. I was a television news anchor, reporter, did sports, and then I got back into radio, and then I also went into newspaper as a columnist and sports writer. And then along the way, I met my first wife, and she was an EMT and she was like, you should try this. This is a lot of fun. And I tried it, and it was a lot of fun. I really liked helping people, and then I became a firefighter as well, and that was a lot of fun. Wow. Transitioned out of brought out of uh journalism and I transitioned into corporate communications, a lot more money. And then I got into higher education, just okay money. Um then about when I was about 38, so this is like 2013, my wife uh ended up getting sick. Um and she's fine now, but at the time she was sick and she needed, I needed to take care of her. And while I was taking care of her, she kind of joked, she goes, You'd make a really good nurse. And I said, Well, I love you. I would take care of you. I don't know if I want to take care of everybody else. But she's a CPA, she's very numbers driven. She had already run the numbers. You can afford to leave your job, go to school full time. We can survive on one salary. It'll be tight, but we can do it. And I was like, Oh, you've really thought this through. She goes, You've got a background in nerd, you've got a background in EMES. You are looking for something different. And I thought this might be a good decision for you. So I said, Well, I'll tell you what, I'll take some prereqs, we'll see how it goes. They went well. I applied, got into a four-year university as a junior, did two years, graduated in 2016. I've been a nurse for almost 10 years now.

SPEAKER_02 3:04

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 3:05

That is a crazy journey. Wow. Well, it's quite a funny journey. Saying that because your wife was at EMT too, and she also took a completely different route, right? She's still in.

SPEAKER_00 3:16

Yes. That was my that was my first wife, and unfortunately that did not work out. So just my the wife that that got me into nursing, we have been together if we've been married for 15 years and together for 17 years. So, but she was she's the one that I ended up, you know, going to nursing school because of of of her efforts and her training.

SPEAKER_03 3:35

Wow. Yeah, I like like she had it all planned out. I was like, man, I wish somebody would take control of my life and tell me what to do.

SPEAKER_00 3:43

Just you know, just let her take the wheel and steer in the right direction. She hasn't led me astray yet.

SPEAKER_01 3:49

Smart enough. Are you still working as an ER nurse?

SPEAKER_00 3:52

I still worked as an ER nurse. I started my career as an ICU nurse, and I ended up running a code where the hospital I was at, whenever there was a code blue, one ER nurse, one ICU nurse had to go. And it was my to be that nurse. Ran a code with a nurse from the ER. It was, you know, a code blue. We did the best we could, but it ran really well. And afterwards, during the debrief, the nurse was like, Have you ever thought about the ER? And I said, I have actually. And she goes, You should come work with us. So I applied and then I I switched from the ICU to the ER. And I've been in since.

SPEAKER_01 4:24

How long were you in the ICU before you made this transition?

SPEAKER_00 4:28

Did one year, one full year before I transitioned to ER.

SPEAKER_01 4:31

Get a little critical care in there before you hopped on over to the real side.

SPEAKER_03 4:39

Did you always want critical care? Like how, I mean, you said how you've transitioned to ER, but was that always a plan with kind of having that EMT background, or were you just kind of stumbled upon it?

SPEAKER_00 4:50

Well, so initially, when I graduated, I had applied at that hospital for an ER position. I had just finished a year-long residency at a VA hospital. They had a program at the time called the Valor Program, the Veterans of Paris Learning Opportunity Residency. It's a paid externship.

SPEAKER_01 5:08

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 5:10

Typically, they tend to hire almost all of their externs.

SPEAKER_02 5:14

Right.

SPEAKER_00 5:14

This was a particularly difficult time for the VA system. There was a hiring freeze. So I had said no to that ER job offer because I was waiting for the VA to come through. And the VA, I had a friend who worked at the VA who was a few years ahead of me and said, called me one day, was like, hey, if you're waiting around for us, it's gonna be a while. You might want to find something else in the meantime. So I went back to that hospital and said, Hey, is that ER job still available? They said, No, but we do have an ICU job. If you would like it, it's yours. And I said, I'll take it. So critical care was always where I wanted to be, ER, ICU. I did my practicum in an ICU. So I was very comfortable there. Coming from the EMS world though, that chaos and always never knowing what's going to come through that door. That appeals to me. And that's what I love about it.

SPEAKER_01 5:58

Me too. I can I can relate am an ER, I'm an ICU educator as well as ER ICU educator. And I'm not an ICU nurse. And I'm like, it's nothing like the adrenaline of the emergency room. Being in there and these patients coming in, you don't know what you're getting. Like it's just I thrive off of it. Not everybody likes that kind of world.

SPEAKER_00 6:20

So and that's what is amazing about our profession is that if you if that's not where you fit in, there are so many other paths.

SPEAKER_01 6:27

Oh my God, there are. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 6:31

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 6:32

Wow, you've had quite the journey.

SPEAKER_00 6:34

It's been a journey.

SPEAKER_01 6:35

I'm loving this. I'm loving it. I mean, just the whole broadcast journalism side of it in itself. So you're able to bring the two together.

SPEAKER_00 6:43

And that's why I started the podcast. I I love the radio aspect. I loved interviewing people. And now I can kind of take the best of those professions, you know, talk about healthcare and share the stories, educate, and then use that broadcast journalism background to kind of, you know, bring those stories to the to the forefront.

SPEAKER_03 7:03

Yeah, I think that's awesome. So do you want to tell people about your podcast? Because honestly, I didn't really know about it, like just following you from social media until I like did a little bit more investigation. So so so plug away. What's what's your podcast all about?

SPEAKER_00 7:18

So my podcast is called Beyond the Call Light, and you can find it wherever you find your podcast. I think I'm pretty much on any platform that you can get it. And I chose Beyond the Call Light because we all hear the stories that are in the press. The stories of, you know, ERs doing amazing things, ICUs, nurses doing amazing things. I wanted to kind of take a step back and tell the stories that don't often get told.

SPEAKER_02 7:40

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 7:41

And so that's why I call it Beyond the Call Light. We all know about the call light. It's ubiquitous. Every hospital you go to, there's a call light going off, call bells going off. And so I settled on that name and I decided I just wanted to, I wanted to get other people on to share their stories and to dig a little deeper more for the healthcare professionals. I think it it has application to the layperson who is not working in healthcare. I think they can still get something out of that, but it's more geared towards people that work in healthcare, work in EMS, and deal with this on a daily basis. And I hope that's I hope that's what I'm I'm I'm trying to get across and get some really interesting people looking for. I'm not trying to get Nurse John. I'm not trying to get Jen Hamilton show. I'm getting the ones that real the Not that they're not amazing people. No, they're they are.

SPEAKER_01 8:30

They make it funny.

SPEAKER_00 8:31

They've got their own platform. They share their stories every day. I want to share the stories of people that don't have that platform.

SPEAKER_03 8:39

When you say like you go beyond it, are you talking about like the everyday nurse stories? Or are you talking about the person behind the nurse? Like, where what kind of angled are you going at with your podcast?

SPEAKER_00 8:50

So one of the questions I get asked a lot is working in EMS is I am an EMT basic. I got my basic in 2003. I've never gone for my paramedic. So people often ask me, is that frustrating for you when you're in the back of an ambulance? I am not qualified in an ambulance to start an IV. I've started thousands of IVs in my career. But in an ambulance, I can't do that. And so I get that question a lot. Is that frustrating? So one of my very first guests was a gentleman named John Smith, who's a paramedic, spent 13 years as a paramedic, recently became an RN. So he got onto the show and really talked about the differences because there's always this blurred line like, well, paramedics are basically RNs in the field. It's not really true. No. Paramedics are trained for emergency medicine, life-saving interventions. They don't, when they're trained, and he he talked about this, like he didn't realize how much more holistic nursing is. Like we look at discharge. What happens when that patient goes home? Do they have the resources they need? Those are things that nurses do that paramedics are not trained to do. Absolutely. They're not trained to think that way. So it's a very different pathways. I wanted to like that's an example of going beyond what most people understand about those two professions.

SPEAKER_01 9:59

I can relate. I too am an EMT. So I could relate to that basic. So I all the means of IVs I've done, I wouldn't be able to do in the back of the truck as well because that would not be my role in that setting. So I can relate to that.

SPEAKER_03 10:14

Yeah, and it's so different because you probably sort of know this, but being an ER nurse, I feel like we're almost siloed in a way to the ER. Like our brains have are just ER-based, and it can be sometimes hard to see a more global perspective from other people. So we've been trying ourselves this kind of season to really broaden that horizon. We talked a lot in our first season about specific ER and being very ER-based, but we really want to take like this own podcast too to a to a different level. We really want to get to know people and really share throughout the nursing spectrum because we aren't just siloed in the ER. There's so many interconnected pieces within nursing and that we're a big community and not just siloed into the professions or that thing. So I I love it. I can't wait to kind of check it, check out some more of your episodes. I did see that you had the Blakery content on.

SPEAKER_00 11:09

Yeah, Christopher Blake. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:11

So I'm excited because he's actually coming on our podcast too. So I'm really excited. And I've been doing a lot. Um, I also oversee the pediatric ER. So like I've been doing a lot of pediatric education things. So I'm just really excited to like be having these like conversations and these connections. It's so cool what we have in nursing and how social media has now connected us to these different people. Like, I mean, if I didn't go on TikTok, I would have never found you, or like or any of these other people who are just doing really good things for the nursing community, really spreading education and really this community status. So I think we're taking a huge step forward in what we're doing. And that was really that was boxed. All right. Um, let's kind of so we kind of developed into your ER. How did you kind of start this path of that social media and kind of that aspect of your career?

SPEAKER_00 12:06

So for um what before I became a nurse, I worked with a buddy of mine who has a company where they do websites and he's been, I mean, they've been around for like 20-some years. And so he brought me on one of the things that I did for my employers when I was work for a government contractor and I worked for a university is social media and you know, search engine optimization. When that first came out, I went to conferences all the time and I would work with clients to do that. So I had some basic understanding of how that worked, like how to optimize your content so that it would appear in search engines. So when I decided to get into social media, I've been on, you know, I'm 51. I've been around since the dawn of social media, you know, like that was in my 30s when that kind of evolved. So I've been around. I was one of the first people on Tumblr. I had one of the very beta editions of Gmail. So I've been around a while and I've watched it grow. I've watched all these platforms come and go. You know, they did great, then they failed. I think what I've learned about social media is you have to be, it sounds cliche, but you have to be true to yourself. If you try to be something that you are not, people are gonna see right through that. Absolutely. So one of the things that I've really try to focus on is like, I'm me. What you see is what you get. What you see on my platform, the things that I post, the people that work with me are gonna go, yep, that's I mean, that's how he is. That's how, that's what he's like in real life. I try not to put on this, I try not to put on a persona that is not authentic.

SPEAKER_02 13:29

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 13:30

When people meet me or, and I've had that happen where people, I there's a nurse I work that works at my hospital, did not know that I worked at that hospital. I take a patient up and she does this like, oh my gosh, you're Gary the ER nurse. I was like, Yeah, yeah, I that's that's me. And she goes, I didn't know you worked here. And I was like, Surprise, I work here. But that interaction, like, I wanted her to walk away from that going, yeah, that's that's literally the same guy. Like he's just down to earth. That's what you see is what you get. And so I think audiences are smart. They're gonna see through that. And if you are anything but authentic, they're not gonna trust your content. So my advice to anybody wanting to build a channel, be yourself. Stay in your lane, stay what you know, talk about the things that you're good at. Nobody expects us to be good at everything. I'm an ER nurse. Somebody starts asking me questions about oncology. I'm like, that's not my wheelhouse. We need to get an oncology nurse on here and they can talk about it because that's what they specialize in.

SPEAKER_03 14:23

So yeah, we were actually last episode, we were kind of talking about how, you know, nurses side hustles because I mean, it's this day and age. We all need a little extra that our nursing careers are just not covering. It's just, it's tough out there right now. Um, and we are talking kind of about social media and how people can kind of develop other side businesses. And one of the things we had said was, you know, you have to kind of be that subject matter expert in what you're saying because people have to believe what you're saying and have some context behind it and also being passionate about what you're talking about. Because there's a hundred, you know, nurse Joes just out there saying whatever, but that person needs to be credible so you buy their story, but also personable and passionate. So that was our advice last week. So I'm glad you kind of let it that too.

SPEAKER_00 15:16

And and, you know, come clean when you don't know something. I do lives, I go live almost every morning around 6:30 during the weekdays. And, you know, I've got kids, so it's all dependent on if anybody's sick or anything like that. But I try to go live and be consistent. And people ask me questions all the time. And I'm like, I've never heard of that. I don't know what that is. That is not something I see as an emergency nurse. If I worked like in another unit, I would probably deal with that on every on an everyday basis. But when you don't know something, tell people you don't, I'm getting ready to start a side hustle as a clinical instructor for my alma mater. So I'm gonna have a group of brand new nursing students going through fundamentals, and I'm gonna tell them, like, look, I'm not a med surge nurse. We're gonna be going out onto med surge. There's gonna be procedures that I haven't done since, you know, when I was an ICU unit and got floated to a med surge unit. We're gonna learn together. Okay. And that's what you have to tell people. Like, you have to understand, they have to understand, like, I'm not perfect. I don't know everything, but you know what? We're gonna learn this together. We're gonna muddle through this together.

SPEAKER_01 16:10

Gary, I'm the same way. I'm not an ICU nurse. I walk into a hospital and they say you're gonna be the educator for an ER and ICU. I'm like, um, I don't need an ICU experience. Um, I know we sent patients to the ICU. And of course I know that we would always stabilize and get them to the ICU, but I'm not an ICU nurse. And I walk into this world and I tell every ICU nurse and the manager, you know, I am not an ICU nurse. I need that to be clear. Okay. I am more than willing to work on learning their equipment with them. No shame in my game, but you need to know walking in here and what you're getting. You're getting a veteran ER nurse, and that's the world that I know. It's totally different for me, but I am open to learning whatever it is that you all are willing to teach me. That's what I told them. And they give me the utmost respect for that. So you're absolutely correct. Just being being yourself and being real, and people respect that more. They just I agree.

SPEAKER_03 17:13

Well, and kind of going on to that, so when your social media was kind of taking off and you kind of started to get into that viral type of thing, how did you kind of keep it? I don't know, men are better at this in general, but like from going to your head and not maybe just doing that full time because you still work at the bedside. So, like, how how have you managed to kind of do both things? And then again, pick up a side hustle, but I get that.

SPEAKER_00 17:39

So I think having worked in television and been a local, I mean, a local celebrity. When I worked in TV, I couldn't go anywhere in that town without people knowing who I was. I was on that was the only local TV station. So if anybody watched local, and this is before YouTube, this is before like the internet was real big. This is the late 90s. And so I ever everybody knew me. You had to be on your best behavior because you represented the TV station. Your contract was tied to your behavior. If you go out in public and start acting a fool and that gets back, they can terminate your contract. And now you're, you know, you're gonna have a hard time finding work. So you always had to be on your best behavior. You also had a thick skin because whenever you go to a game and you're representing people don't like the way you cover something, they're gonna let you know. If they don't like the way you are the anchor and how you deliver the news, they're gonna tell you. And you just gotta let it roll. Like, hey, I appreciate your feedback. I'm gonna try and do better. And they don't care that you want to do better. They just want to get under your skin. So I think that helped. Being older helps, I think, as well. Life experience helps. I've made a lot of mistakes. I understand mistakes are part of life. I've made mistakes on social media. The important thing about that is to come clean. When you make a mistake, own it and say, hey, I made a mistake when I said this or when I did this. Thank you to so and so for calling me out on that.

SPEAKER_01 18:57

Absolutely. We're gonna fix this.

SPEAKER_00 18:59

And if that ever happens again, please call me out. I try to make every effort to make sure the information is factual as best I can, but I will make mistakes. Call me out on it and we'll fix it. And I think that's probably what when I got into social media, I had to keep that in the back of my mind. Like, people are not gonna like you. Doesn't matter. It's just like real life. Not 100% of people are not gonna like you. Accept that, own it, move on with it, and keep doing your thing.

SPEAKER_01 19:24

That's right. You're absolutely right.

SPEAKER_03 19:28

That is nice. What's kind of kept you at the bedside? Because obviously you said you're, you know, a little bit older here, and that gets, I mean, wearying. You know, if you've been in a nurse or any kind of nurse for a long time, like the bedside is hard. So, like, how have you managed to kind of still be at the bedside 10 plus years later?

SPEAKER_00 19:47

I think having seen what has happened to the nurses that I've worked with that have gone to management has really deterred me from doing that.

SPEAKER_02 19:54

Oh, most definitely.

SPEAKER_00 19:55

You know, just terms of their mental health, in terms of their like exhaustion levels, it just doesn't look like a path that I would want and all of the things that they have to deal with from the top down. Now, that being said, I've had really good managers and I'm grateful for what they do so that I don't have to do that. I think that's one thing that has kept me at the bedside. I like taking care of patients. I'm in the very unique position that I get to care for veterans. I grew up in a military family. Taking care of veterans is not a it's a job. It's great, it's a great job, but it to me, it's more of an honor because most of my family served. So it's my opportunity to serve those who served us. And I take great pride in that. And so that's another thing that has kept me at the bedside. If I was at a public hospital working level one trauma like I've done before, I don't know if I'd still be bedside if I had done that for a full 10 years. But the fact that I get to work with veterans, I think is what keeps me at the bedside.

SPEAKER_01 20:54

I like that. Yeah, I understand that completely because you know, working in a trauma center, it's hard. Like at this point now, I mean, granted, I did it for 20 years, but it was different. You know what I mean? Things have really, really changed. I don't think if I had started 10 years ago, I will be able to do it in like a trauma center now for 10 years. You're lucky if you get people to stay for two years now.

SPEAKER_02 21:20

Right.

SPEAKER_01 21:21

Like it's not easy. It's not all I commend you and I love that.

SPEAKER_00 21:27

I think level one trauma during COVID, I think, aged a lot of nurses because you know, one working level one trauma is stressful. It's taxing physically, emotionally, mentally, you know. I mean, it just wears you down. You throw that in with a global pandemic and you've got a four bed assignment, and every single one of them is COVID positive, which happened regularly. Yeah. You know, that, like right before COVID, which was what, six years ago? Six years ago, this was all brown. All of this was brown.

SPEAKER_01 21:59

I bet.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

One year later. Year later. Oh, gray.

SPEAKER_02 22:02

Oh, great.

SPEAKER_00 22:03

That doesn't happen in a year for most people. That's that's a COVID, you know, PR nurse in a level one trauma center.

SPEAKER_02 22:11

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's COVID.

SPEAKER_00 22:14

Anytime I bring that up and I'm talking to other nurses that did that, they're like, amen. Yep. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 22:20

It's so true. Oh gosh.

SPEAKER_03 22:23

Like we're laughing about it, but we're like, that was a lie. It was a lie.

SPEAKER_01 22:28

It was it was That was the toughest thing I think I ever did in my entire career.

SPEAKER_00 22:34

Oh, hands down. Hands down it was.

SPEAKER_01 22:36

Yeah, it's rough. That was pretty rough.

SPEAKER_00 22:38

So I mean, and that's that's a source of, and I don't use this, I don't use this term lightly at all. That's a source of PTSD for a lot of people, myself including.

SPEAKER_01 22:45

Yes, it is.

SPEAKER_00 22:46

There, I I cannot wear a papper anymore. I cannot, you will not put that mask on me anymore, ever again.

SPEAKER_01 22:52

I don't blame you. I don't.

SPEAKER_00 22:54

I will have a full-on, you know, Robbie from the pit panic attack. Like when I see like I'll tell you right now. I broke down. Broke down because I was like, yes, yes, people can see it now. Like that is what we deal with. And I was so glad they brought that up because like it really did. I like I was in a corner crying watching that episode.

SPEAKER_03 23:15

Exactly. Yep. There's a kind of speaking of that, how do you relate to? I mean, I'm sure you're you're in with a lot of healthcare people, but how do you relate to like friends or family or people who don't have that knowledge? You said, like, your wife now is, you know, a CPA. Like, how does that work when you don't have somebody who understands it? Like, how do you have those relationships with people who really don't get it because they haven't answered?

SPEAKER_00 23:45

I've not figured that out yet. I think you can tell them and they they do their best to understand and they're sympathetic. But, you know, and and to some degree, I think they can have some empathy. Like the concern that my wife had as a parent, you know, coming home and and one of your kids getting COVID. Because you gotta remember, in the early days of COVID, it was we didn't know what was gonna happen. We didn't started up in New York, and all you saw was the news stories, bringing in the trailers, ice trailers.

SPEAKER_02 24:11

We didn't understand, we didn't know what was. Yeah, no idea.

SPEAKER_00 24:14

And so, like when when you hear about somebody that got it, and I was the first one to get it at our hospital as a we weren't even masked yet. We didn't even know it was really down that far yet. I had had a patient, it was the third visit in five days. Third time they came in, SPO2, 60% on room air, happy epoxic, looked completely fine. And we were like, oh, that's what that's what they're talking about. It's here. Yep. So, and then like two days later, we got the test result back. They called me and said, Hey, your patient tested positive for COVID.

SPEAKER_02 24:44

And you're like, Oh, right.

SPEAKER_00 24:46

Um, and then I got it and it was bad. Like it was really bad. Like I was on oxygen, I had double demonia. Yep, my coags were like off the chart. They had no idea what was happening. I'm proning. I was a 88% on room air, so they had to give me home oxygen. So I think that scared my wife for sure, right? So I think they have empathy from that standpoint, but in terms of going back to work and then dealing with subsequent wave after wave, I don't think they can ever fully understand that, no matter how much we explain that.

SPEAKER_01 25:17

No, they can't.

SPEAKER_00 25:19

Right. So they the love is there, the compassion is there, the sympathy is there. But in terms of in terms when I tell when I tell my wife like I get PTSD, like she hears it, but I don't know if she truly understands what it feels like to experience that. Like when I heard the Papper for the first time in like a year, like I did, like I panicked.

SPEAKER_01 25:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:42

So I don't have a good answer. It's a work in progress. Therapy. A good therapist is No, you're right.

SPEAKER_03 25:48

Yeah, absolutely. And it's me and Felicia both have non-medical significant others. So like we also kind of relate to that. And I feel like in a way, it's it's kind of nice because you have somebody that doesn't bring that, you don't bring that home necessarily with you. You have kind of a release where you just kind of hopefully can leave things at the door and you have friends or other things you talk about this life with. But I feel like it's actually been a good thing to not be with somebody. Yep. Totally.

SPEAKER_00 26:23

Like one degree of separation away from that trauma.

SPEAKER_03 26:26

That's it. Yeah, it gives you like that little like space to be like that safe space where you're not coming home constantly being like just talking about it more and more. So I think there's pros and cons to you know having partners that are healthcare workers versus you can never talk about your day if you with somebody that is a healthcare worker.

SPEAKER_01 26:46

They don't want to hear it. They're like, it's like I go to work, I gotta deal with it, I come home, we talking about it. Nobody wants to talk about it.

SPEAKER_03 26:54

See, I'm like one upping each other, like your story one up each other.

SPEAKER_01 27:06

I don't know how you deal with that. Like, but yet it's like, oh my God, definitely just tell you this story that you know what I mean. Because even though they don't really get it, it's interesting to them. Right.

SPEAKER_00 27:17

So it's a juicy stuff.

SPEAKER_01 27:20

It is juicy. I I mean, we we've dealt with some great stories. I've I've had some great stories.

SPEAKER_00 27:27

Yeah, in your yeah, because in your career you've done it twice as long as I have.

SPEAKER_01 27:30

Oh my god, oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 27:32

I can write a book, you can write an encyclopedia series.

SPEAKER_01 27:35

Like, something's wrong with us as people that want to keep dealing with this kind of stuff. Like, but it was just so drawing. Like, you wanted to go back, it was never a dull moment. It didn't matter. Like, no two people came here with the same complaint was it the same. And that's what I loved about it. And I'm very grateful for those who do bedside nursing and mass surgery floors, IC's, whatever. But I love the camaraderie of like people coming and going, man. And the next one's going on here, this was crashing over here. This one's and me giving them the death stare. Like, if nothing's wrong with you, I need you to stay in that room. You know, like I miss that life sometimes. Like it was fun, but you know, you get old, you get older now, like, I'm too tired, I can't keep doing this.

SPEAKER_00 28:22

You know, I'm getting there.

SPEAKER_01 28:24

Oh God, I'm like, I can't keep it.

SPEAKER_03 28:27

It's hard though. It's hard being at the bedside every day. Like, I know you've probably seen it, but there's definitely been a shift after COVID with the you know how people dealt with it. And I feel like still there's remnants of people dealing with that and the effect that it's had on bedside nurses. Like nursing's always been tough, but it's been a lot harder since COVID. What's kind of your I mean, you said you switched over different hospital systems. Do you feel like that's also kind of reinvigorated you being able to take care of veterans as opposed to that community hospital? And kind of like, how has that helped you stay? I guess not burned out. Like, how have you been able to kind of maintain that?

SPEAKER_00 29:10

Yes, you're no, that's a that's a great question. I think moving to a the VA system, which I had, that's the VA that I did my residency at. So I think that really helped. I was had some familiarity with it. In fact, some of the people that were in the ER when I was a student were still there.

SPEAKER_02 29:25

Okay. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 29:26

That definitely helped.

SPEAKER_02 29:27

That's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 29:29

And going to the VA, things are a little bit different. It's a federal facility. The way we almost all of their patient records are all together, unified. Their med recs are done. Those are things that we don't, extra layers of stress we don't have to worry about. Absolutely. And our nurse to step to patient ratio is way better. And so that allows you to. So like our ER is one to two, one to three, one to three on a bad day, one to two usual. Now the trade-off, the trade-off is we had to give up our FTE full-time employee position for ward clerks. So we don't have ward clerks. Your charge nurse is the one that has to handle all of that responsibility. Fair trade. We'll take it every day of the week and twice on Sunday.

SPEAKER_04 30:10

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 30:12

Not that I don't, I don't value the ward clerks, but if that gives me an extra nurse to take, you know, to take two patients or three patients instead of four patients, those veterans get better care. Now that may not be the case at every VA, but at our VA, that, and you know what? We have veterans that bypass other VAs and drive hours to get to us because they feel like they get better care. So we'll take that. We'll take that. Wow, that's amazing.

SPEAKER_03 30:39

That is. Yeah, that like that sounds like you found a place where you're actually able to do good the right way. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01 30:49

It's not fucking in life out of you either.

SPEAKER_00 30:51

Exactly. Well, and if you've, you know, if you worked, if you have four beds and you're in a busy level one trauma center where you've got six, sick patients, think about all the tasks that don't get done. Because you just don't have time. During COVID, you get a COVID patient who is septic. You're in that room for a solid hour, hour and a half. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:09

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:10

Blood cultures, lactics, two lines, doing all that stuff.

SPEAKER_01 31:14

And you don't come out and it's you're done.

SPEAKER_00 31:16

So 90 minutes, you've got four patients. You're doing that for all of them. And that's half your day. And, you know, going down to one, the to like two or three patients, that is you don't miss anything. Everything gets done. Those veterans get the care that they deserve. And I'll tell you, I was I felt really hesitant to share that with other people in the beginning. I felt not like not ashamed, but I felt like I wasn't a real nurse.

SPEAKER_01 31:41

No, you are.

SPEAKER_00 31:42

But what I understood was this should be standard of care at every ER.

SPEAKER_01 31:46

It should. But it's not a smart nurse, is what it is. You're smart. That's it.

SPEAKER_00 31:51

Because most hospitals are owned by corporations. Corporations put profit above people, generally speaking, in this country. That seems to be the case. And so they're gonna operate with minimal staff, maximize their profits.

SPEAKER_01 32:04

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 32:04

And that's when we start losing patients and things don't get done or things get missed.

SPEAKER_01 32:09

Yep. And you're absolutely right.

unknown 32:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:11

Wow. Yeah, I do wonder, like, this isn't obviously how to call out any specific healthcare system, but you know, um, you kind of hear kind of the two sides when it comes to like that federal kind of health care, you know, because and I don't know if it's changed or not, but you know, like you hear the stories, right? Can't come, you know, if they're true or not. But like veterans are waiting years to be seen by their primaries, or there's no psychiatric care for them and they're not being seen that way. I guess in your specific area, how is that kind of care? Because you said your hospital care is great, but do you have like good outpatient and follow-up care in your area?

SPEAKER_00 32:50

I think for the most part, we do. There is definitely challenges with getting follow-up care. Now, uh, one of the things that we do at RVA, and again, this is our VA. I don't know if this is other VA, we have in the ER, we have a position called a nurse navigator.

SPEAKER_01 33:08

Oh my God, that's an amazing role.

SPEAKER_00 33:10

Right. So the way our nurse navigator works, so if we discharge a patient and they put in a consult for neurology, they put in a consult for whatever specialty, flag, there's a part on the discharge where we flag the chart, automatically gets sent to the nurse navigator. So when they come in the next day, she's gonna look, okay, I've got these five cases. They need to follow up. I'm going to make sure that that call happens.

SPEAKER_02 33:30

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_00 33:31

So they follow up to make sure that those appointments get made. And then whenever we have a veteran call that say, I was not able to get in with my primary. I need to see somebody, blah, blah, blah. I get on the phone with the nurse navigator. Hey, I've got a veteran on the phone that is having trouble. Do you know somebody? Can you make a call? That's our hospital. That's our ER. I don't know if that's across the board.

SPEAKER_01 33:51

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_00 33:52

But we do the stories that you hear, yes, there is definitely some truth to that, especially when there's what we call commute like care in the community. Let's say we don't have a specialty, neurosurgery. We don't have neurosurgery. We have neurologists, right?

SPEAKER_01 34:03

But not neurosurgeons, right.

SPEAKER_00 34:05

They got to go to an outside facility. Those appointments can be tough to make, not necessarily on our end. That is on their end because they're so busy. So that's where it can get a little challenging.

SPEAKER_01 34:14

Okay. Overall, the VA is pretty good about making sure they have those specialties available for the most part for their, you know, for veterans.

SPEAKER_00 34:23

And if we don't have it, we will do care in the community consults and get them with local specialists.

SPEAKER_02 34:28

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 34:29

As best we can. Yeah. And in some cases, we'll transfer them to another VA that does. It's not always the best.

SPEAKER_02 34:34

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 34:34

It's not always the best option because a lot of times they want to stay local because they got family. They don't want to have to go four hours away. But in some cases, if that's the best option, then we will do that.

SPEAKER_01 34:43

Awesome. Wow. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_03 34:46

This is probably a really tough question that I'm going to ask next. But speaking about healthcare systems, I'm at such a point right now, too, in my career, like I've been through it all. And I don't have a problem with any really healthcare system itself. I have a problem with corporate health care. And kind of like what you were saying, there's so many barriers because medicine has become a business. And there's so many barriers that prevent nurses across the country from being able to do what we really want to do. And I know you're probably not gonna have a solution, but what do you think about that? What do you think we as nurses in the community can do to try to help move that needle? Because there has to be a change. There dies. We can't keep doing the things that we're doing right now. Like we are in a rocket system. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:38

So that's a very good question. And I actually do have an answer. But there is no, but you know, it it requires a lot of work on a lot of different people's parts. So 10 years ago, I was on Capitol Hill, almost 10 years to the day. I was on Capitol Hill and I was lobbying for nursing. As a senior, I was chosen to go with the dean of our college to Capitol Hill as part of the student nurses, you know, National Student Nurses Organization, where we went into offices and we talked with legislators. We went to conferences, we presented our case for safe staffing for many things. Nurses make up an estimated three million in this country. Three million nurses. If we came together, we would be able to have one of the strongest lobbying groups in the country. Now, we can go down this pathway and talk about the ethical nature of lobbying groups. The fact is that's how things get done right now in the current political climate.

SPEAKER_02 36:34

Right.

SPEAKER_00 36:34

If nurses can get together and form a cohesive unit with a lot of support behind it. And when I say support, that means financial support because that's how lobbyist groups work.

SPEAKER_01 36:46

Right.

SPEAKER_00 36:46

We could affect change at the national legislative level. State level is great too. Like states are doing, we're doing great things in terms of getting, you know, legislation passed in various states that mandate safe staffing ratios. At the national level, however, we are very weak. And I think that is where we need to come together. Who's going to lead that charge? It's not me. Like I am not that person, but there are people out there that have a bigger voice that can, I mean, if Jen Hamilton told us all to jump, we would ask, how high? And where are we jumping? If she told us to meet her in DC and we're going to go, I guarantee you there'd be a hundred thousand nurses there in the next month. So finding the right people to do that is is what's going to be the important part. But the answer to your question is we need to come together three million strong because that's hard to ignore when you go to Capitol Hill with a lobby group representing three million people.

SPEAKER_03 37:41

I'm with you. I'm I'm I'm gonna bring the picket fence with you and go. Cause, you know, I definitely care about this profession. Like, I mean, it's it's it's burned me a couple of times, but like I still care about nursing. I care about I just see this trend over the almost 20 years I've been in healthcare. And it just I hate kind of the trajectory that corporate and kind of that business model is pushing us to because it is, and I I truly I hate it so much. Like it's all the focus is truly on the numbers. And you know, everything's coming down to being like, how quickly are you getting patients through? What are your contaminations with this? What's your length of stay? You're through like all of these metrics, and if people aren't meeting the metrics, it doesn't matter the care that was provided. It you didn't meet the metrics, so it wasn't good. So it's hard to fight a system that's fighting against you, you know? So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:38

Right. But until they take until at the national level, until they remove profit from health care, it's gonna be difficult to change those things because when you have a billion-dollar hospital conglomerates, their priority is not patient care. No, it's not the priority is to the shareholders, the stakeholders, yes, the board. So until you remove profit from health care in this country, patient care will never be the number one concern for these countries.

SPEAKER_01 39:06

It won't. Nope.

SPEAKER_00 39:08

And even the four even the not-for-profit, that is a name only.

SPEAKER_01 39:11

Yep, it's still name only.

SPEAKER_00 39:13

It's a technicality. Don't let anybody fool you that, oh, we're a not not-for-profit. Right. Why is your CEO making like three million a year?

SPEAKER_01 39:21

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 39:22

You took that profit and you just built it into the packages.

SPEAKER_03 39:28

Yeah. It's crazy. All right. Let's move on to just another kind of subject before we kind of start wrapping it up. Um, what kind of advice, or I guess advice is probably the best word that you have for people getting into nursing, getting into ER nursing, or even wanting to get into social media and building kind of that way. What would you kind of tell those groups of people?

SPEAKER_00 39:53

So when I do my lives, inevitably somebody asks a question similar to that. Like, I'm thinking about nursing. What advice would you have? My advice is you have to have passion for people.

SPEAKER_01 40:01

Right.

SPEAKER_00 40:02

You you have to want to help people. It is not a job. It's like teaching. You don't just teach because it's a job. You have to be passionate about that. To be good at it, you need to be passionate about that. To be a good nurse, you need to care about people. If you have that, then I say go for it. It's hard. School's hard. Nursing school is one of the hardest things ever.

SPEAKER_01 40:23

Isn't it? It's the hardest, it's the hardest thing ever. It really is.

SPEAKER_00 40:27

And so, and then when I tell them when you go to nursing school, these are the things that I think will help you be successful. Find a good study group. And I mean, not the ones that you get along with. That's good. The ones that are going to make you a better student, the ones that are going to push you and they're going to hold up their end of the bargain. Use Quizlet.

SPEAKER_02 40:44

Use Quizlet.

SPEAKER_00 40:45

I love Quizlet. We would divide up chapters. I take chapter one, two, U3, four, U five, six, you do your notes, put it all in one big study guide. You're still responsible for the reading. You still have to read all that, but we can get different perspectives. Quizlet was a huge help for me in nursing school. And then, do I need to go to med surge when I graduate? No.

SPEAKER_01 41:05

No.

SPEAKER_00 41:06

You go to whatever unit you feel drawn to. You want to go to dialysis? Go do dialysis. Yeah. Maybe your parents are on dialysis and that's what you want to specialize in. Go for it as a new graduate. If you want to do ER, we'd love to have you. I will precept you myself. You want to go to the ICU? I started in the ICU. I'm all for that. Again, MedSurge is a wonderful unit. You will learn time management. You will be running all day.

SPEAKER_01 41:31

The whole day. Everybody's up walking, talking on those call lights. That's why you call yourself call light guy. On those call lights, it's from that man's search floor. They live on it.

SPEAKER_00 41:42

Yep. And and med surge is, I mean, that's a it's a very noble, specialized, difficult nursing specialty. And I have a lot of respect for the med surge nurses.

SPEAKER_02 41:53

Me too.

SPEAKER_00 41:53

I knew that's not where I belong. Critical care was where I wanted to be, and that's where I ended up. And that's what I tell nursing students. Where do you want to be? Do you want to start in hospice? If that's what you're passionate about, go do hospice. I love the hospice nurses I've worked with. They're great. Palliative care, it doesn't matter.

SPEAKER_01 42:08

Pediatrics, OB, there's a ton of places to go.

SPEAKER_00 42:12

We'll definitely not do OB.

SPEAKER_01 42:14

Neither. Neither. But I'm saying if that's what people say they want to go, by all means, go right in.

SPEAKER_00 42:20

I delivered three babies in my EMS career. I've met my quota. I'm done.

SPEAKER_01 42:25

I don't blame you. That's it. I don't want to deliver no babies. Listen, as ER nurses, every time they tell somebody coming in there and we all freak out every single time. I don't care how many children are.

SPEAKER_00 42:38

We're going down the hallway.

SPEAKER_01 42:39

Yeah. Nope. You're going to get her across the street. Across the street, please. So yeah, that's not my thing, but thank you for all those who want to do it. I love it.

SPEAKER_00 42:49

And then your last part of that question was social media, getting into social media. Again, just be yourself. Talk about the things that you're passionate about. If you're not familiar with it, if it's not your specialty, it's not that you can't talk about it, but you need to take it from the approach and preface it with like, I'm learning this. So this is what I learned about this topic today. I would love your feedback. And you'll get a lot of feedback. The other thing I tell people is trust but verify. I got burned on this as a new grad. You will get told a lot of things by a lot of people, people that you would trust outside of the healthcare profession. A doctor tells you something, you're going to trust it. Resident tells you something, respiratory therapist. It doesn't matter. Trust but verify. It's not that they're lying to you or telling you information incorrect on purpose. Things change. These people that have been in nursing for 30 years, maybe it was true 25 years ago, but things change. So take that information, process it, say thank you. I appreciate that feedback. And then you go look it up to make sure that's accurate. Because if you if you regurgitate that and somebody calls you out on it, guess who's going to look like the fool? Right. So trust but verify.

SPEAKER_01 43:53

I like it. I like that a lot of advice. That's a great advice. Yeah, I do. I like that a lot. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 44:00

My last kind of question is I also transitioned as another side hustle into doing clinical instructor. Like I took a clinical group as well. So how did you kind of start or want to go down that path as another kind of side hustle?

SPEAKER_00 44:14

So I've been I've been in a EMS preceptor for years. I have been a nurse preceptor for many years as well. At my first hospital that I worked at when I went from ICU to ER, after having been in the ER for several years, they came to me and said, Would you like to be one of our preceptors for new grads? And I was like, Yeah, that'd be great. Nursing students and new grads. I said, Great. And of course, then COVID hit. I got my first student in, you know, doing a practical. And then COVID hit and nobody got a student. Nobody did nothing.

SPEAKER_01 44:43

They learned on the school.

SPEAKER_00 44:44

And then once COVID kind of settled down, um, I started getting like new grads that would come in and do rotations. And then when I came to the VA system, I was like, where are the students? Oh, we got we didn't let students in after COVID. We've not let them back in. I was like, what are you talking about? We need to get them back in here. So they're working. We got students um doing med surge rotations. We are not yet down to the ER, but we're working on it. I'm working with the education department to get them back in. I'm a I will be soon a certified preceptor for the VA. I'm going through that training. And then one of my coworkers actually got one of the clinical instructor jobs for one of the campuses at the university. It's my uh alma mater. And she came to me and she goes, they have an opening for the campus near you. I think you'd be a great fit. You should apply for it. I was like, Oh, sure, I'll do that. Applied for it, interviewed. They offered, I accepted. I'm super nervous. And I was like, you, Felicia. I told them, I was like, I have zero med surge experience. I've never been a med surge nurse. I'm not sure I'm the right fit for this job. And they were like, neither were we. Don't worry about it. You know, one was like a neurotrauma ICU nurse, the other one was like an ER nurse. Like, we weren't either.

SPEAKER_01 45:52

Like, okay. There you go. You're gonna learn the bad baths all over again. There you go. Learn, that's right. Get back into it. Bad baths right up those corners on them sheets. Listen, there's some things you just gotta refresh, like freshen back up on, but it's in there. Yeah, it's in there. Tell that gate walking. I can't say I can't, I can't, I can't say where it is. But you know what? Gotta be done. You're gonna do it. I'm even thinking about crossing over to that avenue a little bit like you know, Dibney. It's like the little side.

SPEAKER_00 46:26

You've got so much experience that students would benefit immensely from your experience. You should absolutely do that.

SPEAKER_03 46:31

I know I didn't miss that. She's thinking, you see her, she's like, Well, it's you know, when I got into it, I've been doing it for about two years now. It's it really kind of also revigorates you as a nurse because you know, you we're both educators in a hospital sizing. So we have people that are coming in general experience um and and kind of re-upping and doing their education, but it really gives you a different perspective when you go back to a nursing school student who's truly learning all of this stuff for the first time and you can have like a you know a blank place almost to impart wisdom on them. And you know, there's still that frustration that people, you know, they're gonna they're gonna learn how they wanna learn. So if they don't want to take your advice, they're not. But if you have a student who's literally like opens up and is like a sponge, like those students, like, oh my god, they want my heart. Fresh meat, I will do a lot for you.

SPEAKER_01 47:28

Fresh meat because they're not coming with that. I already know.

SPEAKER_00 47:32

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:33

Yeah, I did that at this hospital. I love the fresh meat because you're right, they're like sponges. They've been soaked just soaking it in, and you're just trying to get you giving it, you just giving it to them, and they're just trying to take it. They taking notes. I love it. Because you're not gonna remember everything I'm saying. So you're like I love that. I I would much prefer.

SPEAKER_03 47:52

I would you gotta get her after after your first shift carrier. It's actually really it's fun. I need to do it. I need to do it. You do because I can help the next generation lady. Right.

SPEAKER_01 48:09

Because I get a little, I don't want to use the word frustrated, but I'm dealing with supposed to be seasoned nurses. They're supposed to already be coming with this experience. Then to find out, they don't really know. And people will try to fake it till they make it. And I get it on some things, but when you work in a small hospital, you can't fake it. Like you will be seen. We see we see you. So just be honest about whatever it is that your experience is.

SPEAKER_00 48:39

They're having a nurse who's, you know, two, three years in a career. If they came and they said and they had to do something, I'd rather them come to me and say, I don't know. I have never done this procedure before. I have no idea. Because I do that today.

SPEAKER_01 48:51

Me too.

SPEAKER_00 48:51

There's a couple things I can't even, I'm trying to think of something I've done, but I I literally went to one of the nurses and like this guy, he's been he's been a nurse forever. And I was like, dude, I have never done this in my life. And he goes, Oh man, come on, let's go. Let's go, let's go. I'll teach you how to do it.

SPEAKER_01 49:05

Listen, I've been in patient care now in four years, and I promise you, I'm feeling like I'm losing all my skills. I'm not doing anything. So I took another nurse and we pulled the level one. I'm like, we're setting this bad boy up because I'm not done this in a while. You know what I mean? And I'm afraid that one day I might be where I'm gonna need it on one of these floors. And I don't wanna look, I don't wanna look crazy, but it's okay. Together, we're gonna look this up and make sure that we're doing everything right and no alarms are alarming. Like stuff like that. No shame in my game for saying, I haven't done this in a while. I need to like practice this. YouTube, my friend, too. I'm telling you.

SPEAKER_00 49:48

And your fellow nurses will appreciate you more and respect you more when you come to them and say, hey, I'm not sure how to do this. Can you refresh my memory or can you help me with this? One, they're gonna understand that you respect their experience. Two, they're gonna respect that you, that, that you recognize that you don't know everything and you're willing to seek help. And that's gonna build trust among the whole team. So there's value in that.

SPEAKER_01 50:13

You are, you're absolutely right.

SPEAKER_03 50:15

Yeah, those are those are great pieces of advice to kind of, you know, end this episode with because we have a lot of younger. We're in a profession right now where it's a lot of younger people. And it's so important to use your resources. Like I I mean, like you said, Felicia's been doing this 20 years. I've been doing this almost 20 years, you've been doing this 10 plus years. We don't know everything. I don't think there's always strange. And the people that do scare me so bad because you don't know everything. So like and they don't ask.

SPEAKER_01 50:48

That's scary if you don't ask. These are people's lives we're dealing with. I need to ask, you know.

SPEAKER_00 50:54

Yeah, you do that one time and you cowboy something and you mess it up, you're gonna you're gonna lose the the trust and respect of your crew.

SPEAKER_01 51:02

You're absolutely right, Gary. Um, but I'm very proud of you. I love all the avenues in which you have gone, you know. Like, I really admire that because it was like somebody say, Hey, why don't you try this? You're like, Okay, okay, okay. I'm about to say, like, Gary, what's the next thing you're about to try? Like, why don't you give me a plan? I really, really like that. So with your podcast, I do have a question.

SPEAKER_00 51:32

Yes, ma'am.

SPEAKER_01 51:33

What has surprised you the most since starting it?

SPEAKER_00 51:37

How much work goes into it?

SPEAKER_01 51:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 51:39

I think if you want to do it right, I think it takes a lot more effort and work on scheduling. We all work full-time jobs. Right. The people that we're interviewing work full-time jobs. So finding that common time, the editing process. Now, this is might be where it's a little more, it's a little different for me. Coming from a broadcast journalism world where I did a lot of editing, I'm a kind of a perfectionist.

SPEAKER_02 52:03

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 52:04

So I listen to every second of that. I will pour over it. It probably takes me five hours to edit an episode. Because now they now I I noticed you guys use Riverside. I use Riverside, it's got amazing, powerful features. Thank God automate it. But like I'm a perfectionist and I will pour over that thing probably obsessively, more than I probably should. But it does take a lot of work.

SPEAKER_02 52:27

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 52:28

Yeah, thank you. That's great because I, you know, we were both very novice podcasters. We still are. We're still in our novice. We are novice at this. And if I didn't have this platform, we would have never gotten off the road because you're right.

SPEAKER_00 52:44

I mean, for novices, it's a great platform. Yeah. It does make it a lot easier. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 52:48

So if you're starting out, we we both recommend Riverside. It's been a great podcasting platform.

SPEAKER_00 52:54

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 52:55

Is there another one that you use other than Riverside?

SPEAKER_00 52:59

I looked at the scripts. It did not have as robust a video feature.

SPEAKER_01 53:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 53:04

Ultimately, and my friend uh John Smith, the paramedic to RN John Smith, he recommended this. And he was actually very instrumental in getting me up and running. He had already made a lot of mistakes through his podcast. So he helped me avoid some of those.

SPEAKER_03 53:19

Okay. Okay. That's great. Yeah. So last thing is plug yourself, Gary the ER nurse. Tell everybody where they can find you. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 53:30

Uh, so my name's Gary. I'm the ER nurse. You can find me on pretty much any social media platform. Um, Gary the ER Nurse, pretty much everywhere. Facebook is my podcast, which is beyond the call light. You'll see my bald head and gray beard on that as well. Um, so the face is recognizable pretty much anywhere. My largest following is on TikTok. Across all platforms, I have like 45,000. So we're we're building this time last year. I had 8,000. So I have I've been very blessed in the last year.

SPEAKER_01 53:59

You really have.

SPEAKER_00 54:00

So, but and that's constant. That's just being consistent with your content, being genuine, being honest with who you are, and being respectful of other people, engaging them. It takes a lot of time to build that.

SPEAKER_03 54:11

It does. So well, like I said, thank you so much for engaging with us and for on our podcast. Like I said, so grateful. You read my message, you probably get a ton and were able to do this with us because you know, we're nurses, we all want to support each other.

SPEAKER_01 54:28

So we appreciate it because you know that that back and forth happens. And nurses going through things personally. Yeah. So we really, really, really appreciate that.

SPEAKER_00 54:39

Well, I appreciate the work that y'all are doing. And that's what I like to do with my platform is to lift other nurses up that have a message to share. Because the more voices that we can make louder, the better our profession will be. So if I can, in some small way, lift up a nurse who is trying to get that knowledge out, then I'm gonna do that. And you know what? I've done that for a couple of people where I've helped get them out, and they're bigger than me now. And I love that for them because they've got a massive voice now and they can share that knowledge and build our profession up, and we all win from that. It's not a competition.

SPEAKER_03 55:12

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 55:12

You're all in this together.

SPEAKER_03 55:14

And that's a great point because I feel like somebody else said it. There's room for everybody in it. Yes. Yes, there's no competition. There really isn't a competition between us, and there shouldn't be, because we can all win by banding together and being that three million people who go to Capitol Hill. So right. And we need to be. That's a that's a great sentiment. And you have been amazing to talk to. I'm so glad that you were able to come on this podcast. We are sure. You too. Thank you. Thank you so much. So everybody, please follow Gary. He's amazing. I love his TikToks. Right. Found him, and he's great. So please follow him. And once again, thank you. We will see you guys Wednesday. All right. Take care.

SPEAKER_01 55:57

Bye.

SPEAKER_03 55:57

Gary.

SPEAKER_01 55:58

Bye, everybody.