My Best Life

#5 - Colleen Fitzgibbons - Grace under pressure: a nurse's life of service

• Peter Kolakovic • Episode 5

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Courage isn’t always loud. Sometimes it looks like walking into a pediatric ICU, taking a deep breath, and choosing to care anyway.

We talk with pediatric ICU nurse Colleen Fitzgibbons about what critical care nursing really demands: sharp clinical judgment, fast crisis response, and the kind of teamwork that can feel like an unspoken pact in the middle of chaos. Colleen shares how she found nursing unexpectedly, why the “nurses are just caring angels” stereotype misses the point, and what it’s like to grow from a brand-new nurse who feels sick with nerves into a steady teammate families can lean on.

We also go where the job gets complicated. Colleen explains moral distress and burnout through a lens many people don’t expect: healthcare staffing shortages, missed breaks, and the constant pressure of trying to deliver safe care when the system is stretched thin. We talk family-centered care, the power of simple presence, and why what you say at the bedside matters more than you think. Finally, we get practical about self-care for nurses and caregivers, including boundaries, exercise, yoga, meditation, and normalizing therapy as part of resilience.

If you care about nursing, healthcare culture, or building a meaningful life through service, hit play. Subscribe, share this conversation with someone who needs it, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway.

Kindness As A Different Best Life

Peter Kolakovic

Hi everyone. Welcome back to the podcast. My name is Peter, and you are listening to My Best Life. You know, we spend a lot of time on this show talking about how to optimize our health, our habits, and our happiness. But today we're exploring a different path to the best life, one that isn't about what we get, but what we give. There's a quote from the ancient Stoic philosopher Seneca, who once wrote, Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for a kindness. For most of us, those opportunities happen in our everyday lives, say at the grocery store or at the office. But for today's guest, Colleen Fitzgibbons, those opportunities happened every single day in the high stakes, heartbeat to heartbeat world of a pediatric intensive care unit, or ICU. Colleen is a nurse who spent years caring for our most vulnerable, critically ill children, and of course their families. We talk about what service is, the courage it takes to care when the outcome is uncertain, and why losing yourself in the service of others might actually be the fastest way to find yourself, as Gandhi once said. This interview with Colleen offers an in-depth look into the realities of nursing in an ICU, highlighting the courage, skills, and emotional resilience required for such a demanding job. So in this interview, Colleen and I explore the emotional landscape of nursing, the importance of self-care, and the profound rewards of serving others. She shares personal stories, and I share one myself, insights on teamwork during crises, and there's also a lot of good advice for aspiring nurses. So if uh if that's you, then please give it a listen. As she talks quite a bit about the importance of values such as compassion, resilience, and living authentically. So if that sounds interesting, then please give this episode a listen. Please like it, please share it, please subscribe, you know, all that jazz. And please enjoy my conversation with Colleen Fitzgibbons. Thanks for listening. Colleen Fitzgibbons, welcome

Courage Grows From Caring

Peter Kolakovic

to the podcast.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you. I'm happy to be here.

Peter Kolakovic

I'm happy to have you here. So I wanted to start with a quote from the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu, who wrote many centuries ago, From caring comes courage. Some people think that people are born brave, but Lao Tzu suggests that bravery actually comes from the act of caring. You worked in an ICU in a children's hospital for many years. So tell me about courage while caring for sick children.

SPEAKER_02

I think it's an excellent quote because you certainly need courage to do that type of work. And many times we see very sick children, children that have gone through traumatic injuries or just devastating diagnoses like brain tumors and that type of thing. And it's difficult. And sometimes you aren't sure whether you're going to be able to keep a brave face on around the families, which is tough. And you learn that skill over time. So perhaps that's where that piece comes in. You learn the courage by doing the care. You get good at it, I guess, over time. And you know, when you're first starting, you really need courage to be there at all. Every day that you go to work, when you're brand new, you want to throw up, and you're not sure whether you can do it, and you're not really sure even of the expectations. So something bad happens to a patient. Are you the one who has to know everything? You know, when I first started, that's what I thought every day. Like all these people around me know what they're doing. And I imagine I'm supposed to know what I'm doing too. I'm supposed to know how to be exactly like them if I'm here, which isn't the case because you work in a team and you learn that later on. But at the beginning, that's certainly you don't have that courage at all. And I can see how over time it develops.

Finding Nursing By Surprise

Peter Kolakovic

Well, let's uh let's talk about your early days. What was the specific moment or spark that made you realize that nursing was your path?

SPEAKER_02

It's a really good question because it certainly wasn't something that I thought I would be doing. Or, you know, my entire childhood, I didn't dream of becoming a nurse at all. And I wanted to be a dietitian. I wanted to be a chef, actually, mostly I wanted to be a chef. And then I realized I should probably do something that would pay me and be more appropriate. And so then I thought, oh, I'll be a dietitian. I love health. And then I had surgery when I was 21. And the people who were around me were the nurses. The nurses did everything. And obviously the physician did the surgery, but you're knocked out and you don't see that part. And the nurses were incredibly knowledgeable. They had tremendous skill and compassion. And I thought, wow, I didn't realize that nurses did that. I was heavy at the time. I was studying lots of science, and that's kind of the way I wanted to go. And I thought nursing wasn't like that at all. Oh, you know, you hear they're kind of fluffy and caring. And, you know, maybe there's thoughts that they don't do very much in terms of like they're going to just bathe people and that kind of a thing. And I was really wrong. And I think most people that have that opinion are very wrong. And when you meet a nurse and you go through a situation where a nurse is caring for you, you realize, oh my God, they're really smart and they know a lot and they have to know a lot and they have a lot of skill. And I was so impressed by the nurses, one in particular, but many of the nurses around me. And I think I just realized that it was potentially an option. And I had applied to McGill. I got in for dietetics. McGill, Guelph, those were the places that you needed to go to do it. And I wasn't sure whether I could move away and come back. I had a young daughter and wasn't sure whether I'd be able to do that all on my own. So I said, Oh, I'll do a year of nursing in Ottawa. I'll just put my name, you know, put that as one of the options. I got into that as well. And then over time thought, how the heck am I going to go to McGill all on my own? Where's my daughter going to be when I'm at school and I don't have any family there? So I'll do a you a year here and see how that goes, whether I can hack everything. And I didn't stop. I kept thinking, okay, I'm getting out. This isn't for me. I'm I'm, you know, going to be doing something different. And it just kept drawing me in, I suppose. And throughout my career, I think it's done the same thing where I kind of have so many experiences and so much respect for the people around me and the profession. It just keeps on growing. And so there have been many times where I have contemplated not being a nurse as well. When you say, what made you know you wanted to be a nurse? Well, I'm still figuring that out, I think. But it's really probably the thing that always leads me back to saying, wow, yeah, I want to do this. It's the people around me who I watch doing it. And I just have so much respect for them.

Peter Kolakovic

Well, you've already kind of touched upon the response to my next question, but I was going to ask you about those nurses that you were working with in your early days. What qualities did you encounter in them that you hoped to emulate?

SPEAKER_02

Another good question. I I think many of the people who I work with and who when I was young and sort of deciding, is this for me, I suppose. I mean, you've already done four years of school and now you're you're almost uh when you get out, it's almost like being an apprentice. You you start learning on the job, uh, the way that physicians have residencies. Nurses don't have in Canada something formalized like a residency, but that's essentially what you do. You get on the job and then you start working beside people. We call them preceptorships or clinical placements and that kind of thing when you're in school. When you get out, you're still kind of in this really new learning phase where you're trying to figure it all out and people are teaching you all of the skills. And I think the team that I was with really knocked my socks off in terms of how much they knew, how smart they were, how quick they were to respond to patients, how skilled they were at getting particular drugs up and running super fast, how adept they were at assessing patients and knowing just when they needed to do something quickly or when they needed to involve other people and get other treatments. And they were funny and compassionate. They always would tell me tons of stories. In fact, when I was young and starting out, I thought, oh my God, we got to write a book. You've got to write a book of all your experiences because these stories are incredible. And it was just, you know, every day at lunch, story after story after story of patients and families that they had dealt with and certain experiences that were just incredible. And the more, yeah, the more I was around them, I

What Great ICU Nurses Actually Do

SPEAKER_02

suppose they kind of hooked me a little bit.

Peter Kolakovic

Mm-hmm. So, in what way did your initial expectations of nursing differ from the reality of what you were learning on the job from these more experienced nurses?

SPEAKER_02

I think what always has grabbed me about nursing that contradicted my maybe early thoughts on what it was about, my early understandings perhaps of sort of just what society or people around you kind of give you this sense. I always felt maybe it was people in my family or even students that like classmates that I was studying with. There was always a sense of if you were bright, if you I don't know, you're good at math and science or whatever. If you're if you're bright, you shouldn't be a nurse. And that's sort of nurses care and they're gentle and they're soft and they're loving and they're angels and they're heroes. These are the the images that we get told that this these are what nurses do and what they are. And you don't actually hear about what nurses really do, which is they study hard. It's a challenging job. They need to be smart, they need to know their drugs, they need to know physiology, they need to know how to interact with people and have incredible communication skills. And they need to, in an ICU, you really need to be able to manage stress and you need to act very quickly and be able to manage crises really well. And those are things that you don't hear about at all. I don't think. I think in in the discourse of about nurses, it's a lot of, you know, nurses are quite caring and soft and wonderful and compassionate in these angels that just somehow they just do it all. And, you know, you don't hear the rest. So the thing that constantly impresses me is just how skilled people are and knowledgeable.

Peter Kolakovic

Amen. So when you started nursing, did you did you immediately start working in an ICU? I I imagine you would have started in a less uh complex environment in your early days, or or when did you move to the ICU?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, so I did my, we call it a consolidation, which is your last final placement of school. I did it in in a pediatric ICU.

Peter Kolakovic

You did, okay.

SPEAKER_02

And at the time, they would never hire a new grad. Because it makes sense, right? You should go and figure out how to be a nurse before you come into that type of an environment. And so I went to a pediatric ward for a few months, maybe about five months, I think. Didn't have a full-time job there at the time. There, you know, it's not easy to get a full-time job all the time in nursing. It kind of goes up and down in terms of the job situation. And at that point, we were in a tougher spot where there weren't many jobs. So went to the pediatric ward, worked casually, and the ICU phoned and said, Hey, you know, we're short, come back, kind of thing. And after working for a little while, I realized, oh my God, I know nothing. And I wanted so badly to work in the ICU right when I graduated. Oh, that would be so cool. And then I kind of got wise to it a little bit in the first couple of months of working and realized you can make mistakes, and those mistakes can be really big, and I don't think I'm ready. And so, anyways, over coffee, I was convinced, just come, come, you'll figure it out. We'll take care of you. Come on. So, probably about five months after I graduated, I started in the ICU.

Peter Kolakovic

Oh, wow. And so, what were some of the more profound lessons that you were learning working in that environment in your first weeks and months?

SPEAKER_02

I didn't do that well when I first started. As I said earlier, I felt like I needed to know everything and I put a tremendous amount of pressure on myself. But what I learned over time was that I had this amazing team and that the work that you're doing in an ICU is completely team-based. So you're you lean on your colleagues all the time. You need your colleagues, and you damn well better be a good colleague and a good teammate. So I think one of the biggest things I learned was how to play on a team and how to be a good teammate and what that looks like and what that doesn't look like. I think I also learned, you know, whether that was the probably I didn't learn it in the early days. It took a while to learn, but the early days shaped perhaps what I was learning was that there are some cases that will really, really, really shake you. And working there in general is tough. And you need to find a way to deal with all of the stuff that you're seeing. And in the beginning, you have no idea that that's yeah, sure, it makes sense. You're gonna be in an ICU, it's probably gonna be tough. You you know that on paper, and you're scared every day when you go to work that something big is gonna happen. But you don't really have a sense. There's no way you can have a sense of how that feels at all. And nobody who, you know, people who don't do that work or don't have those experiences would never be able to know exactly how that feels either. That's normal. You don't learn that in school, but then you get out and you see a whole bunch of different experiences and you aren't really sure, you know, as a 20-something year old, are you ready for that to see certain things or go through certain things? And I think one of the biggest lessons I learned was that you need ways to cope with that. And that is a tremendous part of the job. So part of being a nurse in general, which maybe they don't teach you in school, part of being a doctor, I'm sure, a respiratory therapist, all of us that are in these working in these situations, there really need to be, or it would be nice if there were courses, and maybe that's part of the curriculum at this point, that teach you that you need to have outlets. You need to find as part of your learning, and as an educator in the ICU, I would tell people that all the time on orientation, you have to figure out what your thing is to cope with all of this stuff. And that is as important as figuring out the cardiac physiology, for example. You know, the things we're going to talk about, and the meds and all that stuff. That's important. But equally, how you take care of yourself is is really important. And you don't know that going in. And I don't think you know that when you're a 20-something year old, period. Sure. That you need to figure out who to talk to, how to talk, you know, whatever, that it's okay to talk, that it's okay to have a therapist, that it's okay to do these kinds of things. You don't really realize that. But I think once you do the job for a while, then you realize, yeah, I probably need that. And yeah. So I think your question was, what did I learn when I was new? Sorry. Yes. I digressed, maybe. But I think those were things that stood out to me were just the the team atmosphere and you know, giving yourself some grace and then really that you need to figure out ways

Teamwork And Coping Skills That Matter

SPEAKER_02

to take care of yourself and good coping skills for sure.

Peter Kolakovic

Sure, sure. So I I recall the first time I came across this term ICU or intensive care unit. I was eight years old and my father became sick. He eventually passed away. And of course, as I said, I was eight years old, so I didn't really understand all that much. But I remember my mom saying that, you know, your dad is in the intensive care, intensive care. And my mom spoke very broken English. So, you know, that's what she would say, intensive care. And I had no idea what it meant, but I could tell from her expression and from her body language that it was not good. Years later, I had a loved one who was in an ICU and I and I had to visit that person. And I don't think I could go into that environment every day. It was just, it was so heavy. Yeah, so you know, I I have nothing but admiration for for people that that do that job every day. So I guess my question for you is like, how do you prepare yourself? How do you prepare your heart and your mind to go into that environment every single day?

SPEAKER_02

I love that question because you know, if you were when I was in my 20s, starting out in the ICU and you go to parties all the time, and people are like, what do you do? That's you know, obvious famous question when you're mingling. What do you do? I work in the in a pediatric ICU. Oh, oh, it must be so hard. Oh, and it was every time a conversation ended, you know, what are you supposed to say to that? So, you know, in a way, your question isn't exactly the same, but in a way, I got that feeling for for a second again, like, oh, it must be so hard, and how do you do that? But what I think people don't realize is it's so cool. You know, if you are into physiology, you are into maybe a little bit of adrenaline, you're into like having something move quickly, having to do things in order to get results and to see those results immediately, to kind of have something crazy go on and then to win. You know, if this were, if you were to think of this in terms of winning and losing, somebody is rapidly deteriorating and you do a whole bunch of treatments and you make that stop, and then they survive and they go on, and you maybe you see them come back to the ICU and they walk out of there when everybody thought there's no way. That is so cool. It is addictive. It's like heroin. I don't know, never done heroin, but I that's what I often think of. It's like, it's such a cool, incredible thing that you go in for a whole ton of reasons. You don't go in thinking, oh my God, this place is so sad. It's so difficult, my job is so hard. Never. I think you go in thinking, well, this is so cool. What am I gonna see today? And imagine having a job where every day you don't know what you're gonna see. You don't know how fast you're gonna have to move. You're certainly not gonna sit around. Well, some days you sit around. Because your patients are well enough, or you don't have very many patients. So your pace slows a little bit. But often your pace is pretty damn quick, you know? And there's there's a nursing shortage. So we work really, really hard. And I think you can take pride in that. I think that there's something to be said for not sitting, but moving, you know, the whole day long towards a goal that is really, really important. And when you leave, you know you did something meaningful. When you think about your career or you think about your job, you are doing something that is so meaningful and really matters. And, you know, our jobs give us purpose. And this type of a job, I mean, it's it blows your mind how purposeful it is, I suppose. So the kind of like, how do you prepare for all the stuff and the the difficulty? I think you constantly go into it with all these other things, thinking about all these other things. And how are you going to perform? Are you going to make it? Are you going to perform well today? Are you going to do what you need to do in the situation? And, you know, for the most part, I would say that's probably how lots of people think. And yet it is really difficult. And so, you know, maybe it's a case that has been in the unit for a few days or a difficult patient, a difficult circumstance with the patient, you know, things that are going on with them that are emotionally really difficult. Those days, those times are tough. And everything I just said is doesn't negate that, you know. And I think that's where you lean on your friends and your colleagues. And you're if you get a therapist, you lean on your therapist and you come home and you find your ways to kind of deal with the stuff that you're seeing that's tough and to get it out, whether that's like a movie that makes you cry or something like that, whatever it is, you go play soccer. I don't know. But yeah, you I think you prepare for the difficulty by thinking of the good and why it's so great and what you're really doing. And when the bad comes along, you got to figure out how to cope with it, I

What Kids Hear When They Seem Asleep

SPEAKER_02

suppose.

Peter Kolakovic

Right. Right. So in your you know, early years as a nurse, obviously you're you're doing a lot of learning, and I imagine throughout your career, you're you're learning uh all the time. So, what have you learned from the children under your care?

SPEAKER_02

That's a tough question. It's a tough question. It's a tough question because a lot of the children, you know, when you're just thinking straight up, what do you learn from these kids that you're caring for? You are caring for children who are either infants or very young, they're not talking to you, or they're sedated often. And so you're not having lots of conversations with children, you know, in the majority of the time, let's say you're having conversations with their parents, and you are, you know, we we give family-centered care. So our families are just as valued valued as our patients, and we care for them as much as we care for our patients. So we learn a lot from families, I think. A few things I've learned from kids, a few of our patients, is that we really need to be careful about what we say at the bedside because they can l they can hear.

Peter Kolakovic

Sure, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

So we definitely have had children wake up and they say what we were to tell us what they heard us saying. Okay, interesting. Sometimes sometimes that's not great, you know. Sometimes we say stuff because the things there's children who I've learned stuff from who have woken up and told us what we said, and one of them was losing his feet, and he learned that he was going to lose his feet before he ever walked, woke up, because he heard us talking about it.

Peter Kolakovic

Right, right.

SPEAKER_02

He heard everybody in the room. I mean, we were obsessed over his feet and trying to care for them and trying to do everything that we could to keep his feet. So there would have been a multitude of conversations related to his circulation and what we were going to do and how we were managing the care in order to save his feet. And, you know, it was heartbreaking to have him wake up and say, I knew that before you ever told me.

Peter Kolakovic

Right.

SPEAKER_02

Because I could hear you. And, you know, then you think, oh my God, how terrifying, how awful would that be to be in a state where you are aware enough to be able to hear something like that, but you can't talk about it. You can't tell anybody that you heard it, you you can't do anything with it. And, you know, maybe there's a certain in and out in terms of the consciousness, but we don't really know what the experiences is when you are sedated. What is your consciousness at that time? So, you know, anyways, there's been more more than one circumstance like that where somebody has kind of talked about, talked about their diagnosis and their situation and expressed it as a child.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_02

In a childlike way.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

You know, depending on the age and the developmental stage, you know, the the young man who with his feet, he was 17 or something like that. But, you know, other younger children say uh other have told us other things. And sometimes they're a little bit distorted because they don't have the understanding of what's going on. But you realize, wow, you really have to be careful about what you're saying when somebody is lying in a bed and they don't appear to be conscious, but they still have consciousness.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

And that goes for, that goes for, you know, I'm I'm talking about being in an intensive care unit where you're being given sedatives, but this goes for our patients as they're dying, you know, even uh elderly patients, older patients, maybe our loved ones, and we're gonna go through this, we'll be at their bedsides. And they can probably hear and, you know, there there's a consciousness there that we, when we see a person with their eyes closed, don't recognize.

Peter Kolakovic

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

And I think that is something, I think that's something really valuable to learn from our patients.

Moral Residue From A Broken System

Peter Kolakovic

So let's let's talk about. I mean, you've already kind of touched upon this, some of the challenges and then also some of the rewards, because you know, we don't want to make it too heavy, but you know, you you've just kind of touched upon having to make difficult decisions. And, you know, doctors, nurses, anyone that works in a hospital will, you know, from time to time, I'm sure, have to make some difficult decisions. And that comes with a certain amount of, you know, what would you call it, moral residue. So, how do you process that when you go home at night?

SPEAKER_02

It's funny that you talk about moral residue because the, you know, what we're just talking about, and probably what you're thinking about, I would imagine, or listeners might be thinking about, is a moral residue that comes with the difficulties of people dying or people being ill and physically having these challenges and caring for these people. But I think the biggest moral residue that nurses face, certainly from the ICU and my experience and the ICU that I was working in. But I think that all nurses and healthcare workers are facing right now, it's not always the sick patient. It's actually the system that we're working in. And when you talk about difficult decisions, it's difficult decisions about staffing more than anything. You know, it's the tough days are when you don't have enough nurses. When you're making decisions related to your patients and you're caring for your patients in ways that aren't really probably great, you know, not necessarily that the patient's going to be harmed. The nurse is going to be harmed. And the nurses are harmed day in, day out. You know, we talk many times about, you know, we we had this meeting once with a bioethicist about a really difficult case. And as we went around the table and shared our stories and and how we were feeling, a lot of the nurses were talking about not peeing, not being able to go to the bathroom, not drinking, purposefully making yourself dehydrated because you don't have time to go to the bathroom because we can't leave our patients.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_02

They're one-to-one, they have breathing tubes, we have to stay at their at their bedsides. Well, if you don't have enough nurses, you don't have somebody to relieve you from your bedside if there's not enough staff. If a crisis is going on in a room, it doesn't take one nurse, it takes five sometimes. So all those resources go in one place. And now everybody else in the unit isn't going to get extra support or what they need. And it's not extra support, it's basic. So you may not eat, you may not void, you may not drink, you may not. And this happens all the time where where nurses, I say nurses because I'm a nurse and that's what we're talking about, but this is all healthcare workers, I would imagine. You just sort of, there's a lot of self-sacrifice in order to keep people, to give people good care. And sometimes you, the moral residue is the fact that maybe I didn't give the best care that I possibly could have given. We as a unit didn't give the best care that we possibly could have given to all of these patients. I was terrified all night long because if one more little thing happened, I wasn't sure that we were going to keep everybody alive and everybody going and everybody getting their meds. Like that's what's facing nurses. And that is the that is the moral residue that when you say, like, you know, it exists, what do you do with it? Oh, that's a hard question to answer. And I don't think that we always know what to do with it. And I think there's a lot of a tremendous amount of burnout.

Peter Kolakovic

Right.

SPEAKER_02

Especially after years of being in those types of environments. My ICU in particular has turned over almost all of its staff in the last few years. Myself included. I'm not, I'm not working in the ICU at the moment. And a lot of people left because it's just, you know, when you say what do you do with that residue? Sometimes you you don't have anywhere to put it. Or you're so full, there's so much residue that you're just drowning in it. And there's what are you gonna do? Keep keep it up, keep going every single day, and just you know, putting more and more on, even though you've got all these wins and all these wonderful things. So you're sort of like, oh, it's so amazing and it's what I do, and it's great. And then on the other end, you're you're like, well, it's taking a real toll on me and maybe my health, or maybe my family, or maybe whatever else going on. So I don't know how to answer that. I mean, I can answer it in terms of like you see a therapist, you go for a run, you depending on who you are and what you do, you've you've almost got to balance out all that stuff with with other things. So, you know, you find you find your ways for sure.

Family Centered Care And Presence

Peter Kolakovic

So you're working in, or you were working in pediatrics, which means you're not only treating your patient, you're also supporting their parents who I imagine are nearby. So, how do you support those parents when they're facing, you know, the probably the worst nightmare of their lives?

SPEAKER_02

I don't know. Supporting the families is it's just part of the job, really. And it's it's amazing. It's just it's part of like I think nurses again, going back to people probably don't know what nurses do. I think it's hard for us to articulate exactly what we do all of the things that we do. One of the things that we do is listen, you know, actively listen to people, help them through stuff, have compassion. Like that is a huge part of the job and sitting with people's pain and acknowledging it and holding it for them, making space for it really. So, in an intensive care unit, when you have a really sick patient, they usually have a breathing tube and are on a ventilator and sedated. And you can't leave a patient like that because there's always a potential that they're they could wake up, their tube could come out, and they wouldn't be able to breathe. So that kind of a patient, or or there's very many, there's a you know, a number of reasons in an intensive care unit that causes a nurse to be what we call one-to-one. So the nurse can't leave the room. And the parents are in the room with their child, and your shift is a 12-hour shift. So you sit with people sometimes for almost 12 hours.

Peter Kolakovic

Wow.

SPEAKER_02

And you sit with them day in and day out. If the if you're assigned, if you're lucky and you're assigned to the same patient, you know, for a few days, and the family sits in that room, which most families do. They don't want to leave their child, and you sit with them for for days and you just have conversations and you have conversations about what's going on, you have conversations about their lives, sometimes your life, where they're at, what they do for a living, all you know, all the regular conversations that we have with people. And you just develop a relationship and you sit with them and you sit with what's going on. And it's a really beautiful thing that unless you're in it and have gone through it, I don't think that people would know that that exists. And so, again, going back to how how the job is so meaningful and you find a lot of purpose, sometimes it's just sitting in those conversations with people and just making space for how they're feeling and doing your best to hopefully say the right thing, hopefully say something that that helps them. And I've recently been on the receiving end of that. And it's incredible how somebody can really make a huge impact on you by saying the right thing, or perhaps not saying any, you know, maybe saying a couple of words that just makes you say something that helps you to express what you're feeling. And it's huge. So I think I think sometimes, you know, with in nursing, we talk about just being present. So it's not that you're you have a script or you have to talk about certain things or that there's this way you have to be. Sometimes just being that is part of nursing, the knowing, the doing, and the being. And just being is really important to just sit with somebody and do it in a way that meets them where they're at, really, is is huge and honors their experience.

Wins That Keep You Going

Peter Kolakovic

Well, that's a great segue to start talking about some of the rewards of this really challenging profession. So what does it feel like to see a child that you cared for, you know, as you talked about earlier, get up and walk out of the ICU?

SPEAKER_02

It's like climbing Everest or winning. No, it's like winning the Olympic gold. I don't know. It's it's incredible. It's such an incredible feeling when the kids do well. And especially when they come back and they show you that they're doing well. And yeah, it's an incredible feeling to know that you won essentially. That's how I don't know why I started thinking of it that way. I think it's, you know, we had a really tough case at one point, and everybody was pretty depressed, and it went on for a very long time. And, you know, we were trying to figure out why do we, why are we like this? Why is this so hard for us? Like we're great. Why, you know, what's going on here? Kind of thing. And and I I kind of made that analogy that like we don't, we're not used to losing. We don't like to lose, you know, and and we suck when we, you know, when we when we lose, we're like babies, you know. We're really, it's hard on us, I guess. And so, you know, the opposite of that, when everybody, when people come back and they do well, it's incredible. And we we have teams, they're called medical emergency teams. So they're they always operate operate outside of an ICU. So it's usually made up of a doctor, a nurse, and a respiratory therapist. And it's for the patients who are not in the ICU who are causing concern for some reason or other. And we'll get a consult, we'll go, we'll assess them and help them out where they are or bring them back to the ICU. And we also follow through that team all of the patients that get discharged. So when you're doing your consults just for your discharge patients, it's incredible to actually see the follow-through because if we didn't have that, or if people didn't come back to the ICU, you would never know what happened to them. We'd hope they were okay. When they leave, they're not in phenomenal shape necessarily. They're just ready to go to a place that's less acute in terms of their illness and their care, but they're not necessarily fully healed. So to be able to have those experiences where you go up and see them or they come back is really important, I think. And it feels like a million bucks.

Peter Kolakovic

What's the most beautiful thing that you've witnessed in the middle of a crisis?

SPEAKER_02

I think the most beautiful thing is probably the teamwork that happens. It's just something so spectacular to watch everybody come together and to come together, but there's sometimes these moments when you're in a crisis where there's a little bit of a pause, and that might be a transition to, you know, for example, like there's kids that will be so sick they get put on a heartlung bypass machine. And that has to be initiated by a surgical team. And so, you know, you're getting up to that point, and then there's this pause in terms of that handover where the other team's coming in and doing stuff. And, you know, probably one of the most, as you say, beautiful moments was a moment where we were doing that with somebody and the whole team, the whole team just kind of paused. The people that were in the room, they just paused and looked at each other. I don't know. We all looked at each other. It's like nothing really happened, you could say, but so much happened. Right. The way we looked at each other, the way that in our, you know, we all just paused, took a deep breath. It was only a couple of seconds, and everybody just looked into each other's eyes and kind of everybody gave this nod, like, yeah, here we go. We're about to do this. And it's gonna be this big thing. And I mean, we we the child was incredibly sick, got him onto this treatment, which it lasted a number of days or a week or two or something like that. And then we de-escalated and came back and he did really well and he survived. But in those moments, sometimes you you have no idea if the person is gonna actually survive or not. And yet it's just you and your team and all the things that you're about to do or all the things that you've been doing that are gonna make the difference. And so I think I think that was a really beautiful moment. I think there's there's been so many others as well with families and patients. That one just stands out to me where everybody just kind of, I don't know, had this knowing look like, okay, here we go. This is we're gonna save this guy, you know, and and it was pretty cool.

Peter Kolakovic

So you had a uh a moment of unspoken shared understanding. Definitely. Yeah, that is absolutely beautiful. Thank you for sharing that.

Service, Burnout, And Losing Yourself

Peter Kolakovic

What are some of the hidden perks of nursing, or you know, more generally, a life dedicated to service that people might not expect?

SPEAKER_02

There's a lot in the discourse lately about how important it is to do things for others.

unknown

Right.

SPEAKER_02

And how that is, you know, when you're talking about having a meaningful life and having your best life and that kind of thing, that one of the best things you could do is probably do things for others, help other people. So the biggest perk is knowing that you are helping other people, knowing that you are every day going in and you know, you're trying at least. Sometimes the system gets in the way or circumstances or whatever, things don't work out, but your entire career is based on helping other people, doing something for other people to make them have a better day or a better life or to survive. And I think that is the biggest perk, knowing that you have a meaningful career.

Peter Kolakovic

I think it was Gandhi who said something like The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.

SPEAKER_02

I definitely have lost myself. I think many of us, I don't know. I I would love to pick the brains of all kinds of ICU nurses and see what their experiences are and how they feel. And after 20 some years, how do you feel? And, you know, did you lose yourself or did you not lose yourself? You know, I don't know that we because I'm I what's coming to my mind is just a lot of people experiencing burnout. And so this losing yourself makes me think of burnout. Right. You've literally lost yourself within it. And you kind of can't see yourself anymore, you know, within it or whatever. I don't know. You're you're not doing well. So that's sort of what what comes to mind when I'm thinking of losing yourself. But I think also you can get so immersed in it and be doing the work, and you have to work really hard. As I said, there's staffing shortages and there's all these things within the system. And there's really difficult cases. And sometimes you do lose yourself within all that difficulty. And figuring out how to get through that, figuring out how to cope, figuring out how to perform within that, how to be a nice person, how to be a good partner, how to be a good kid in terms of like how you treat your parents when you see them or whatever, how to be a good person throughout that is something that then you find, I think. Because I think it gets rocky when you first start for a while and you're overwhelmed by everything for sure.

Self Care Through Boundaries And Movement

Peter Kolakovic

So then how do you practice self-care to ensure that you have enough to give to others? What sorts of things do you do for yourself?

SPEAKER_02

Lots of things, I think. I think when I was working lots in the ICU, I probably did not take the best care of myself, which probably lots of us don't. And it took a toll, and I had to pause and take some time to figure out how to be better at that. And I read a lot and studied a lot on what that meant and what self-care really means. And, you know, I think it's it's such a big, such a big topic in terms of like, you know, it's not an easy thing to answer. What do you do? I think you have to figure yourself out, first of all. Like to take the best care of yourself, you have to know yourself. And that is not easy, I don't think. And so, you know, sometimes we don't know the pattern. So for me, I don't set boundaries very well at all. And I certainly didn't when I worked in the ICU. And so part of taking care of myself is figuring out how to have boundaries and studying that and trying to learn that and then noticing when I say yes to everything and trying to say no more often, that kind of thing. But then there's always there's always been exercise, I think is the balance for me running and soccer and skiing and tennis and everything under the sun to burn the energy, all the adrenaline, I guess, the stress hormones from it all, and then yoga and a practice of yoga and meditation to try to find calm in everything. You've got to have good friends and good family around you and all of that in order to take care of yourself as well. And yeah, I think the biggest thing maybe with self-care is admitting that you need to do it and that you are as important as all of those other people that you're taking care of. And I think that that is probably the hardest thing or the thing that people in general don't do, probably women don't do, nurses don't do well, probably not. I mean, many of them, I suppose. Caretakers, right? When you're a caretaker or you're in that type of a role, you don't think of yourself in the same way. And it's really difficult. I think it's getting easier to say, I'm not okay. It stands to reason. My God, if you work in certain professions, you should probably not be okay all the time with all the stuff that you see. It should be pretty normal to see a therapist and to talk about the things that you've seen, to work through it. Should be normal for everybody, but it's not. So when I say like being able to admit that you need to take care of yourself, it's also stuff like that, being confident enough in the world in society to say, yeah, I see somebody, I talk to somebody. That's normal. Yeah, I sit and I meditate, I do yoga, I do self-care. That's normal. Versus, you know, I have a good friend, a very good friend, who always thinks that that's incredibly self-indulgent. That's what she says. It's just self-indulgent. Yoga is self-indulgent.

Peter Kolakovic

Interesting.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. It's as if you you love yourself so much. That's what she says. That you just sit with yourself and you love yourself so much and you, you know, and I I think there's there could be anything further from the truth. It's not about that at all, right? But there could be a resistance to self-care, right?

Peter Kolakovic

Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

You know, because yeah, especially for a caretaker. I think, you know, when I say caretaker, I'm talking like all, I'm talking that of that word in a broad sense. So think of a lot of people our age have parents that are going to die or are dying, family members that are dying, and you have to take care of them and you become that caretaker. And there's something about saying I need to take care of myself that feels incredibly selfish and self-indulgent and wrong. And so I think, as I said, like, how do you take care of yourself? One of the biggest things is to admit that you need to, that you're valuable, that you should, that it's okay.

Advice For New Nurses

Peter Kolakovic

Well said. If you could go back to your first day of nursing school, what would you tell your younger self about the journey ahead?

SPEAKER_02

I guess I'd tell myself to just be open, but I think I have been open. So I I don't know what I would exactly what I think when you when you first start, you have oh, when you first start, you have no idea what it what it is. I still don't even know if I know fully what this is because it's just so cool and there's so much to it. Maybe that, maybe I would say to myself, give it a chance. Give it a chance. Yeah, there's a lot to this, and it's pretty cool, and it's cooler than you think. Because I think when I started, I as I said earlier, there was sort of this idea that nursing was a lesser type of a thing to go into. You know, when you're choosing your programs and you're applying for school, if you if you chose nursing, I did. I chose, you know, that was one of the things on my on my list. And my classmates all around me were like, oh, you can't do that. You're better than that, pretty much, was the was the feeling. My family was like, oh, people, family, uh, friends of my parents. So many people said to me, Okay, that's really great. So you're gonna be a nurse. Cool. Okay. So yeah, if it goes well, so you're gonna be a doctor after all the time. And I think when I was young, that was the message I was being sent. It was certainly something I was thinking about. I almost left second year to go take the science courses that I wanted to take so that I could apply to med school, potentially, because there was this sense that it wasn't good enough. And I think that's what I would probably tell my young self was this is good enough. This is great, this is incredible, stick with it. It is more than anybody realizes, and it's pretty freaking cool. And yeah, you don't need to be a doctor to have value or worth or whatever. You just just you know, go where your heart is, but at the same time, it's uh it's it's a shame, I think. Maybe it's just me, but it no, it's not just me because I got the message from somewhere that was external to me. It is a shame that there's a sense that it is less than, I think. And, you know, I I think now as a certainly a more senior nurse, a nurse that's been doing this for a while, and somebody who has an interest in research. I think a lot about how we how we see nurses and how our healthcare system could be better off if perhaps we gave nurses more credit and realized that the importance and the value of a nurse.

Peter Kolakovic

Well, there may be some people listening that are considering a career in nursing. So, what would you say to those people?

SPEAKER_02

I I think I would say do it. And but I would also I would probably say do it, figure out how to cope. Right off the bat, that's gonna be one of the most important things is finding coping mechanisms. And I think I would probably say hang in because it's not gonna be easy at all. It will not be at all easy. And I think I would probably say kind of stick up for yourself, fight for what you're doing and try to articulate it to people. And if there's people who are young and savvy with with media, I think I would be saying please go out and you know, be awesome and and get into it. And it's a great, it's a such a cool, amazing profession. And do us all a favor and promote it and talk about it and you know, let people know what you do. I I guess I would say very good advice.

Defining Your Best Life

Peter Kolakovic

Colleen, one last question for you. The name of this podcast is My Best Life. So, what does it mean to you to live your best life?

SPEAKER_02

I guess living your best life is being happy, you know, which is a silly answer, perhaps. But I I think figuring out what makes you tick and makes you happy and gives you meaning and purpose is how you live your best life. And that seems like such a simple concept, a silly answer. Like, how do you live your best life? You just be happy. But honestly, being happy, figuring out what you want and what you need and who you are and what will make you happy and satisfied is what you need to do to live your best life. Because everybody else is going to tell you what living the best life, a good life is about. It's about having stuff, a big house, a big car, a great job, or a spouse, or three kids and a dog, or whatever everybody has in their mind that makes us live these best, you know, these amazing, incredible lives. And that might not be what suits you. So the the only way to live your best life is to figure out what that means to you and to not be ashamed in any way to say exactly what it is that would give you your best life and then to live it, regardless of who's watching and what they think.

Peter Kolakovic

I don't think that's a silly answer at all. I think that's a wonderful answer. So thank you very much. Thank you, Colleen. This has been a wonderful conversation. I've learned so much from you. Thank you so much for sharing all of your experience and your insights.

SPEAKER_02

Thanks for having me on your podcast and listening to what nurses do.

Peter Kolakovic

Thank you.