November 17, 2024 • 38 mins
Today on the podcast we chat with Dr Lendra James. Lendra is a registered nurse with overtwo decades of nursing. During her career, Lendra has honed her skills as a registered nurse, working tirelessly across various healthcare settings, including cardiology, neurology, trauma, step-down, and nursing leadership. Throughout her journey, she encountered biases and misalignments within healthcare organizations, experiences that fueled her determination to make a difference. The obstacles did not stop her from achieving a nurses executive certification and a Doctor of Nursing Practice degree.
Lendra and I chat about our experiences with burnout. We discuss the impact COVID 19 had on nurses, particularly in the USA and how we can care for each other as nurses in a more productive way.
Lendra is an entrepreneur who believes all nurses have entrepreneurial skills that can be honed and used to our advantage.
Enjoy this chat and you can find further information about Dr Lendra James through LinkedIn and via her website.
She has shared her burnout workbook with you all, so please enjoy and share with your colleagues.
www.dljamesconsulting.com
Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/tendernessnurses
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Appolgiate Production.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hi, my name's beck Woodbine and welcome to Tenderness for Nurses.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
I'm grateful for the person that I have the opportunity
to be.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
So I hit it and parked it for Nelly four years.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
We always have free will, We always get to choose.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
We are autonomous.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Hi. Everyone, thank you for tuning back into Tenderness for Nurses.
Today we have doctor Lendra James from the US having
a chat to us about mentorship, burnout and her journey
in nursing. And it's going to be a really interesting discussion.
After reading all the information that's on her website and
the podcast that she does, I think she's going to
(00:50):
really value add to nurses and what we know here
in Australia and having a look at the two different
countries with nursing, because even though we're the same, we're
quite different. So welcome Lindra. How are you?
Speaker 3 (01:07):
Thank you for having me. I am good. It's actually
a beautiful day here in the US.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
So can you just tell us a little bit about yourself,
how you've ended up in the role of running your
own business, writing programs, mentoring, dealing with other nurses with burnout,
How did you get to this point.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Or sure, so I have.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
I've been a nurse for over twenty over twenty years,
like about twenty two years, and I've worked across the
country in the US, I've worked in several different areas
of nursing, worked my way up to nursing leadership, and
it was during my time in leadership that I experienced
a transformative shift in my purpose. Right the onset of
(01:58):
the COVID nineteen pandemic. It really highlighted the pressing need
for self care, wellness promotion, and preventative.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
Education within communities.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Just witnessing the stream on hospital resources, the lack of
attention to staff well being, I chose to redirect my
focus towards a greater emission, which for.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
Me was self care advocacy.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
And my vision was and is to create a lasting
legacy right that ensures widespread access to self care, wellness
and preventative health education. Just in recognizing that I was
intrigued by the operational, by the business side of healthcare,
(02:49):
I embarked on a new chapter, which was entrepreneurship, and
I launched my own company, leveraging my leadership skills and
my certification as a nurse executive and my Doctor of
Nursing Practice degree. So I based empower nurses and healthcare
professionals to break through from burnout and build generational wealth
(03:13):
so that they can stop trading time for money. And
I do this through courses, mentorship and events. For instance,
I have an upcoming event this Thursday which is called
the Health and Wealth Expo. But through these events, I
am able to you know, network and empower as I mentioned,
healthcare professionals to really understand the reach their professional and
(03:37):
personal and financial goals through the events, and I b
actually empower them to follow their entrepreneurial aspirations and prioritize
self care in the meantime, and I've discovered profound fulfillment
and guiding others towards their optimal wellness.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Did you yourself have been out?
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Oh? Yes, so I experienced burnout.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Like I said, it was during my time in leadership
that I experience a level of burnout.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
And we don't talk about it enough because a few
years ago died.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
You know, burnout was something that was considered a weakness
and or it was tap tapoo, right, you know, you
don't say this is what we were trained to do.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
How can you be, you know, burned out. We were
trained to know.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
We were trained clinically, and we were trained to provide
a service, and we were trained with skills and that
you know, made us become experts in what we do.
But we no one talked excuse me, no one really
teaches or empowers about the taking it, taking hold of
your setting boundaries right and really prioritizing yourself because as
(04:49):
nurses were so used to prioritizing others, and we don't
talk about enough. When you start to see yourself really
start to become disconnected or exhausted, or not sleeping well
or even behaving differently in what you can even identify.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Is not your norm.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
It's when you start to realize that, oh my gosh,
I'm experiencing burnout, and burnout is a symptom. It's a
symptom of something else. And that's why I started to experience.
I started to experience that symptom and it started to
affect me, and excuse me, affect me and areas of
my life personally and professionally.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
It's so interesting with the podcast, the number of nurses
that I've spoken to here that really have developed burnout
moral injury to some degree. Some of the nurses have
had PTSD with things I've had to deal with. It
has never been discussed. And like you here in Australian
(05:56):
nurses were just meant to keep on keeping on, and
we're a little bit I think people think where dispensable
and when not and we really have to start not
only caring for ourselves, but caring for each other and
asking each other you're right, can I give you a
(06:17):
hand with something? Because often when you're in the midst
of burnout, you don't realize you are.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
And it's because it has a ripple effect, right, and
it impacts you in every area of your life.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
And when you're.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Burnt out, you stop pursuing those things that once or you.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
Enjoy, both personally and professionally.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
And I've seen so many talented nurses who put their
dreams and their career aspirations on whole because they're simply
to exhaust it and they're not realizing that they're dealing
with a symptom of exhaustion. And it's not just career
you know, stagnation either. Burnout takes a toll on your
(07:01):
self care. As I mentioned, for nurses who are natural
care giver is we often forget to take care of
ourselves because.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
We want to.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
And when you mentioned trauma, think about how we as nurses.
We can code a patient for about thirty to forty
minutes and have to and say that person doesn't survive
or they do. But after dealing with that, we now
have to walk into that next patient's room and act
(07:29):
like everything is okay.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
But that's what we're trained to.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
Do, and no one really sits us down and say like,
that's kind of not okay, right, because think about if
someone wants to see someone get hit by a car
in the middle of the street and this person tragically die,
that's traumatizing. So we deal with trauma on an ongoing basis.
And one a solution from in my opinion is organizations
(07:57):
really have to look more into the mental health of
their employees. And that's something that is a part the
goal of one of my businesses is to really bring
that wellness into organizations so that we can really start
taking care of our healthcare workers who are consistently traumatized,
(08:18):
and not just with EAP. And I'm not sure what
you guys have in Australia, but in the US, we
have in an employee assistant program and oftentimes.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
It involves you know, you being able to see a.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Mental health expert for three sessions.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
And sometimes that's not enough and sometimes.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Some places it's fifteen minutes, some places that maybe thirty minutes,
and sometimes that's not enough. What about someone coming in
on a consistent basis to be able to provide mental
health services to your employees, whether they understand or know
that they need it or not. But this is how
we really start to move the needle and shift their
perspectives and shift the outcomes for our healthcare workers.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Do you think the hospitals in the States, because you
have a very different system to us here in Australia,
because it's so money driven making money, do you think
they value nurses? Do you think I want to spend
that money on nurses to keep that retention right and
the nurses healthy.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
That is such a great question. So there's two sides.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
If you acts an executive leader that question, they will
say yes.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
If you ask a nurse that question, they.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Will say profit or the patients. And I say that
because I have you know, I know a plethora of
nurses who they don't feel valued and they don't feel
that the organizations and this is part of the problem, right,
And this is why and I don't know about Australia.
This is why a lot of the hospitals in the
US are striking because I'm a big part of it
(09:57):
is because of feeling underappreciated and undervalue. So what we
have here in the US we have value based health
care and the hospitals are paid according to the amount
of value that in the quality of care that they
provide to patients. So we have nurse sensitive indicators. And
(10:19):
I'll give you an example. If a patient falls in
the hospital and they break their hip, CMS, the Center
for Medicaid and Medicare Services, they will not pay that
hospital for the treatment to fix that hip. So now
that's cost, that's loss, right, that's a financial loss for
the hospitals because now the patient has to stay longer.
(10:42):
Now we have to pay for that surgery. So anything
that basically comes out after that surgery that's not related
to anything prior to that patient being in the hospital.
Say the patient came in for stomach virus, they were
eighty years old, and they slipped and they fell and they.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
Broke their hip. That's a nurse sensitive indicator.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
So the hospital will now not be paid because this
patient fell and broke their hip, and the hospitals won't
be paid for that. Or let's say they get an
infection from a central line, where they get an infection
from a fully catheter, the hospital won't be paid for that.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
And there's been.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Hospital who has been in hospitals where they've been fined
in the million, the seven figures because of these infections.
And so now what that's more push on the nurses
to do more, but they're doing more for less. And
now so you see how the shift and the burnout
because now there's a huge you know, push from the
(11:35):
higher ups to you know, now we have to do that.
We have to have zero clapses, we have to have
zero qualities, we have to have zero you know, zero falls.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
And I get it because we don't want to do
harm to our patients. But what we.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Don't realize is that we're now pushing the nurses to
do more with less because we're not necessarily giving them
the tools and the resources that they need like staffing,
for instance, right or investing in bet alarms, or investing
in the tools and the resources that they'll need in
order to in order to stop these falls or in
(12:11):
order to prevent these clapses and these qualities from occurring.
So now and then, and this is how just another
example of how the burnout and the exhaustion becomes because
now your leader has to come and be the voice
of all of.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
The directives that are coming from the higher ups.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
So I say all this to say, and again this
is just you know, an example, but I say all
this to say, this is why and how nurses are
not feeling appreciated. So you're not giving me the resources
because you're making me work short staff, but yet you're
telling me that I still have to make sure I
prevent that fall from recurring.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
How can I prevent that fall if I.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Had eight patients and we only have one nursing assistant,
or if there's only three nurses on the floor. So yeah,
I've beenished situations where I've had nurses working short staff, and.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
Thing was still able to.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Prevent those falls from recurring because you know, we instill
a level of empowerment and pride in them so that
they took pride in making sure that their patients were safe.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
Because most nurses, they want to make sure that their patients. Absolutely,
but if you're not empowering them and engaging them, you
don't understand how you're leading to that exhaustion.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
You're leading to that feeling of being undervalue, their feeling
of being underappreciated, and that's not what you want.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
And I love that term of empowering your nurses. I
think that's through education, through correct staffing. That's so important.
And I think since the pandemic, we weren't hit anywhere
near as hard as you were in the States. When
I went for a conference last year, I interviewed one
(13:51):
of the nurses that I met at the conference, and
she had worked in Philadelphia and she was on the
COVID ward. She arrived, everything was shut down. They went
in and they were locked into the ward. They couldn't
get doctors, the food was left outside. They had to
do everything. And she said they just got on and
did it and did it well or as well as
(14:12):
they could. And I said to her, how psychologically were
you afterwards? And she said I was fine until I
stopped working. And she said and then I fell apart.
And she said, none of my family wanted to see me,
no one wanted to be around me because everyone was
so scared. So she was also not only isolated at work,
(14:32):
she was coming home and feeling isolated.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
It was terrible.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
And she left. She's gone into the aesthetics space. She
just didn't want to deal with that rubbish anymore.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
And that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
There's been a huge shift of nurses leaving the traditional
setting and going into spaces like aesthetics and wellness and
met spars.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
As you mentioned, I myself on a met spar well.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
I own an alternative form of treatment on a wellness business.
I own a IV hydration vioment therapy, so we offer
that and we offer wheat loss services as well. And
we also have added a component of wellness right, a
wellness service for stress management, burnout and such. And I
say that to say the pandemic it just really gave
(15:18):
rise to a huge shift and a lot there were
a lot of epitomes, epiphanies, excuse me, and you know,
people realized taking their power back. So for me, starting
my wellness business is you know, becoming an entrepreneur was
more of a way of taking my power back. And
to your point, and to that nurses point, that's exactly
(15:38):
what happened. So I am in New Jersey and dealing
with COVID in New Jersey. So we were right next
to New York. So any if you know anything about
and remember about the pandemic, New York was like the epicenter.
And because we're right here in New Jersey, we got
all of that overflow sort of speak. So people were
(15:59):
not going to New York hospitals because they were like, oh.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
No, I'm not going to New York. I'm going to
get COVID, so I'm not going there.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
But guess what, So they were coming over into New
Jersey and they were still getting COVID because we got
all of the overflow, all of the patients from from
that tri state area, from Brooklyn, just all over New York.
They used to they would come to New Jersey they
still had COVID And just what that nurse mentioned to you,
that is.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
Exactly how it was.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
It went from I'll never forget it went from us
having one patient to after it was one weekend went
by and have the unit was COVID positive and exactly
no one wanted to come on.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
To the floor.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
You didn't see anyone. All the doors were closed and
even during codes. I can remember doing codes. Nurses would
be in the rooms running the codes on their own,
and the doctors would be at the door writing signs,
you know, putting the paper up against the window, saying
like pul socks, like what's the pull sox? Like are
(16:59):
you kidding me? You know, so you want us to
intubate the patient too, like.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
What are we doing?
Speaker 2 (17:05):
Nurses were dispensable, but doctors weren't right.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
And that was unfortunately, that was the feeling now. I
will say in the area where I was, doctors were
you know, we had doctors who we actually lost due
to COVID, and doctors were just as suicidal as nurses were, right,
and because there was a time where we felt like
(17:30):
we were losing patients at such a rapid rate, and
there was a feeling.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
Of what are we doing wrong?
Speaker 1 (17:37):
You know, we didn't know what we know now about
the disease, and there was a feeling that we felt
like we were doing you know, we were doing something wrong,
and healthcare professionals were actually committing suicide and becoming suicidal,
and all of those elements that you talk about about
feeling isolated. People were sleeping in their cars, people were
getting hotels. You know, there were some nursing organizations that
(17:59):
were providing free hotel rooms because not only did families
not want people to come home, people didn't want to
go home because they didn't want to infect their husbands
or their children. They didn't know what was going on.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
So again, so when we.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
Talk about like burnouts, that's a whole different that's a
whole different level of just mental health and burnout.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
That's what it is.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
It's a symptom of mental health, and it's often a
mix of being overworked, underappreciated, and facing systemic issues. And
the COVID nineteen pandemic was definitely one that was you know,
we didn't know how long it was going to last.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
We didn't know, there was nothing we knew about it.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
The policies were changing every day, these you know CDC
every time, you know, they were changing.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
I felt like the policies and the rules change daily.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
So we got to a point where it made no
sense to write anything down because you know it's.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
Going to change tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
And it did, right, So sometimes things would change like
two or three times a day.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
So we went from needing to have.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
In ninety five to know you can just have a
surgical mass, right, and like, wait a minute, So now
we just lost one hundred and fifty nurses who caught
COVID because you're saying we only need a surgical but
they only need a surgical mask. And guess what, they
still caught COVID root those.
Speaker 3 (19:20):
In ninety fives.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
So there was just such a lack of appropriate care
for nurses. I can remember some of the nurses in
New York going to work in garbage bags. But then
you have the media who's coming into the hospital and
they have a full astronauts suit on right, so to speak.
So why aren't we protecting our healthcare workers the same way.
(19:42):
So there's a lot of bureaucracy that leads to the
burnout of healthcare professionals, and.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
The way we change these things.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
We have to change what takes place more at the
legislative level in order, if in at least in New
Jersey it excuse me, in the US, so that we
can really start to affect change. So there are a
lot of nurses going into politics now. Myself, I've joined
organizations like the American Nurse and Nursing Association dmpis of
(20:10):
color all to really start to start to give rise
and have a voice in how politics plays into nursing,
just like Rob Wade being something that has been taking
away and that's a huge We have our presidency election
coming up and that's a huge talk. Right now. I
won't get into politics, but I say all this to
(20:32):
say that you know, we in order for there to
be changed in our healthcare system, there needs to be
changed from a political standpoint, from a legislative level. And
the way a lot of nurses are taking their power
back is by starting their own businesses.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
And that's where I come in. Part of what I
do is I help.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
And I show nurses how to start their own business,
how to gain that power back because no one teaches
us the business side of healthcare. And that's a part
of my mentorship. And my mentorship goes.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
From being.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
One Most nurses will contact me because or nurse leaders
and they'll say, you know, they're burned out, they're at
a place of exhaustion and they're not sure.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
Where to go. And we really unpack that. We set
a plan.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
We help to recognize the burnout, where's the burnout coming from?
Speaker 3 (21:19):
And then we set a.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
Plan and then we identify what are you doing about it?
And what are you going to do about it? And
then once we're able to unpack that burnout and really
set that plan to release it and develop and grow
from it. Now, what are the next steps? Is the
next steps to write about it? Because I you know,
that's one of the courses that I offer craft your bestseller.
(21:44):
A lot of nurses have a authorship inside of the
inside of us because we have stories to tell, you know.
Or like I said, it's starting a business, whether it's
a concierge business, and I help.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
You do that as well.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
So there's a lot of different ways that you can
escape the burnout and really advocate for yourself so that
you can and really gain that power back and really
start looking at other so you can stop trading time
for money and other streams of income. Because when I
say stop trading times for money, what is it that
we do when we want to buy a house, we
(22:20):
just go we work extra, right, Or we want to
put our kids through college, we just work extra and
we just work those two and three jobs. But guess
what that time that we're putting in is now even
more so adding to that burnout factor.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Yeah, without a doubt, So how many businesses do you have?
Speaker 3 (22:38):
So have I own two businesses.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
I own Premier Fusions and Wellness, which is my wellness business,
and then I own a Deal James Consulting, So gl
James Consulting is my consulting business where I coach and
mentor other nurses and my podcast is listed under my
ideal of Deal James Consulting as well.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
And can Australian nurses access your skills?
Speaker 1 (23:00):
Absolutely because the services that I offer are online, their
virginal and you can definitely access me through my website
which I'm happy to share. I also have a burnout
Guide that I can provide to your listeners and to
your nurses as well that I created, and it really
(23:21):
talks about helping you how to beat burnout. It really
provides the strategies that you will need to really take
a shift in what you're doing. So it's a really
big jump start and helping you to recognize the bias
and what strategies you should use to really beat the burnout.
So what I do is we go through a strategy call.
(23:42):
So we would go through a strategy call and during
that strategy call, we identify what your needs are and
if your needs are to work with me for three months,
or if your needs are to work with me for
six months, that's what we do. We work together for
six months, or you can work with me for a
year if we have options like that as well. And again,
like I said, I provide courses by I have virtual platforms.
(24:08):
We are creating an alliance burnout to break through alliance
on LinkedIn and you know we'll probably open it up
on another platform as well. But it's to create community,
right so that people can have a safe space to
come and discuss, you know, what their issue is or
(24:28):
just you know, sometimes you just need a place to
not feel judged, right and just talk about event on
what you may be feeling. So I wanted to create
a safe space where nurses can feel nurtured go through
their burnout, whether it's at the novice level, whether it's
at the leadership level, and really be able to have
(24:49):
someone who can comment and provide without feeling like they're
being judged. And I think that's important because I think
oftentimes we feel like we're going through something alone. I
know I did, like I felt like I did alone.
And it's to your point.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
Burnout is a pandemic, right now it really is.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
And it's just now that we're starting to realize that,
and it's nothing, you know, it's identifying it identifying the symptoms.
You know, if you're feeling anything like I mentioned earlier,
like that disconnect or that exhaustion or that lack of sleep,
you know, you have to really start understanding, like, you
know what, maybe maybe I am overworked, maybe I.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
Am going to burnout.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
And you know, to answer your question about how do
I not get burnt out from just my businesses is
what I've learned to do is I've learned to structure
my businesses so that it revolves around my availability. So,
for instance, my wellness business, I've hired nurses. That's that's
(25:52):
that's number one. And so in my case, if you're
going to have a business, you need a team. Otherwise
if you try to do everything yourself. Because that's the
thing with us nurses, we want to do everything because
that's how we were taught, right, we were told.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
To be everything to everyone and we can't.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
So a huge part in one of the strategies that
I mentioned in that burnout guide that I created that
we're going to share with your listeners, a huge one
of the first things you have to do is create boundaries,
create boundaries, and learn how to say now right because
and I may have mentioned this, when you don't say no,
when you say yes to something all the time, you're
saying no to something else.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
And so creating those.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
Boundaries and creating those boundaries for yourself they're huge. And
for me, my work schedule for my wellness business is
Monday through Thursday. And like I said, I have nurses
who I'm able to work outside of the business and
run the business and not work within the business. And
that's because I have a team. So having a team
(26:53):
around you and being able to delegate with your skills
that we learned clinically, right, those those delegation skills are important.
A lot of the things we learn as nurses are
so transferable. And being an entrepreneur and I didn't realize that,
and it wasn't until I started my own business, and
when I gained mentorship is when there was so much
(27:14):
I had so many epiphanies and so many things.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Started to make more sense.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
Because no one teaches us the business side of healthcare,
so I was intrigued with it. But I can remember
having my first budget that I had to go through
as a nurse leader, and like there was no no
one to show me how to do this, so I
had to learn things on my own. And it was
the same thing when I got into entrepreneurship. I had
to learn how the finance side, but I got a mentor.
(27:40):
So having a mentor seeking that guidance was huge, and
that's how I'm able to not get burned out because
I have had mentors and I continue to have mentors.
Even at every stage, you still need to coach. You
still need a mentor. So at every stage of you
know what, every level that you elevate to, you'll still
need coaching and you still need mentoring.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
And that mentorship is what keeps me from burning out.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
That was why I started tending this finis is that
I saw a need for nurses to support nurses and
be kind to each other and to ask each other
if you know you're okay, and to look out for
each other. And the one thing I have learned because
I go to the States a lot to see my
daughter is no matter where I have been and what
(28:25):
nurses and doctors I have had the privilege of spending
time with, we all want the same thing, which is
time with our loved ones and our families. We want
to give the best care we can to our patients,
go to work, do the best we can, come home safely,
which didn't happen in the pandemic. But in amongst all
(28:48):
of that, we've forgotten to look after ourselves. We're so
busy just trying to put all the other hats on
that we just aren't being tender and kind to ourselves.
And that's one thing after now, I've interviewed over sixty nurses, doctors,
(29:09):
lay people, and it's been fascinating to hear the journey
of different nurses and what they have gone through and
how they didn't seek help, And you wonder would they
still be in the system if they had have had
some mentorship and some guidance and someone to listen to.
(29:31):
And it makes me think, well, they probably would be,
and all these wonderful nurses wouldn't be leaving.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
Exactly exactly because I think you asked the question about
feeling underappreciated and undervalue if you have someone to empower you,
if you have someone to simply guide you so that
you Because I made mispeeds as a nurse, and I'm
not necessarily, you know, referring to clinical mistakes, I mean
(30:00):
I made mistakes. As a nurse leader. I meet mistakes,
but again I didn't have mentorship. And think, you make
a great point. Had I had a mentor in nursing.
Now I had a mentor for my business, and it
made a huge difference. Had I had a mentor in nursing,
just imagine how much more I've could have done.
Speaker 3 (30:19):
I mean, I've opened.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
Programs, closed programs, open units, created programs, created policies.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
I've done all the things right. My units were constantly
number one.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
I decreased falls throughout organizations within the hospital from using
my models.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
And I say all this not to toot my own
worn I say all this to.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
Say, imagine, had I had a mentor and actually had
someone actually able to guide me as a nurse leader,
how far I could have gotten my last role in nursing.
I've reported directly to the CNO, so my next level
would have been CNO, which is where a lot of
nurses in the traditional setting see themselves. But by the
(31:03):
time I got there, I had no incentive or passion
to continue on to that stage, to a ce ANDO,
and ultimately I became the CEO and CEO of my
own companies, and I wrote about this in my book.
So I actually wrote a book discussing the bias and
(31:25):
the burnout that I dealt with in healthcare. And the
book is titled Confessions of a Nurse Executive and the
subtitle is the Conscious and Unconscious Bias and Healthcare. And
I write about how my passion for nursing and for
being a leader, it just really came to a crashing
(31:46):
hope and I realized that that's not what I aspired.
I no longer aspired to be that, and stepping into
the world of entrepreneurship, it really started to bring my
passion back for nursing and for health care. And I said, okay,
this is my purpose I am. I'm meant to help others,
(32:06):
but now I can help others in a different way,
so I can help communities.
Speaker 3 (32:11):
So when you say can I.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
Help nurses in Australia, absolutely, I can help other nurses,
so not just clients and patients. Through my wellness, I
can actually offer my services and expertise on a broader scale.
And that's what it's about, and that is where I'm
fulfilling my purpose.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
And doesn't that make you feel good?
Speaker 1 (32:33):
And it makes me feel amazing, It really really does.
It makes me feel amazing. Often we limit ourselves to
the traditional setting, and it's no one's fault because that's
what we're taught.
Speaker 3 (32:49):
We're taught clinical.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
We're taught, you know, patient care in the hospital, at
least in the US, we're taught, you know, the Florence
Nightingale way of going, you know, going to the hospital,
you know, taking the doctor's orders. But we're not taught
that empowered me of entrepreneurship. We're not taught the finance
and the business things. So unless you grew up at
a dinner table talking about these things. You may know
(33:12):
about finances, you may know about investments, but you're really
not taught about entrepreneurship in nursing and how you can
really you're constantly told, oh, there's so many things you
could do when they're in nursing, but you're not actually
shown what it.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
Is unless it's inside the traditional setting.
Speaker 2 (33:28):
Absolutely, and here in Australia, for the nurses that have
gone out on their own and do it within the
esthetic space, there's been a lot of pushback. People you
don't like nurses that go out and unfortunately in Australia
we're not like you guys in the States that applaud
(33:49):
and love people that are hugely successful. We have a
little bit of that British colonialism where you know, the
tall poppy syndrome and if someone's doing better than everyone else,
people like to bring them down. Whereas that's one thing
I must say I love about the States is you
go applaud people that go out and are entrepreneurial and
(34:09):
try different things, and it's so obvious. It's so obvious.
So when I got sick and took a year off,
I didn't tell anybody. I was so afraid of people
saying naki things about me that I just told everyone
I was working on the business. I didn't tell anyone
(34:31):
I was actually taking time off because I was a mess.
I was so so sick, and I can talk about
it now, but how sad. At the time, I was
so isolated, so alone, so scared. I thought I was
going to lose my business. It was horrendous and I
(34:53):
don't want anyone to feel the way I felt because
it was so awful. No one should feel the way
I felt. And I think we have to change the
dialogue around that it's okay that you're feeling this way,
but let's do something about it.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
Absolutely, absolutely, and you're so right. We feel shamed, so
to speak, when we have to step away, and that's
unfortunately how we've been trained, where we've been trained to
think that it's something wrong when we step away for
our own self care.
Speaker 3 (35:30):
And I did the same thing.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
I stepped away from I resigned from my position as
a nursing leader, and I didn't have a job lined up.
I just stepped away because I knew that I needed
to do this for my own sanity, like I needed
to really rethink where I was going and what I
was doing and redefine myself and redefine my.
Speaker 3 (35:53):
Purpose and my purpose.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
It all really came back to still being a nursing
being nursing and healthcare, but it was in a different
way and that made me feel liberated. And I can appreciate, Yes,
they're being seeing other nurses, you know, going forward.
Speaker 3 (36:13):
Trying to reach their goals or.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
Doing something different, because if this is not what is
making me happy, I can't stay in that situation. And
I was doing it, and I was doing it because
you know, I had I have a mortgage. You know,
I have a family to take care of. I have,
so you have all of these you know, I don't
want to say burdens, but this is a part of life.
Speaker 3 (36:35):
Life. Life is life, right, yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
And you have all of these things that you need
to take care of the last thing you need is
to be in a situation where you're unhappy. But you
have to be here because this is what's paying the bills.
Speaker 3 (36:51):
That shouldn't be. That shouldn't be the case. I shouldn't
have to be just because.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
We've come to normalize burnout unfortunately, and the things that
we go through at work as this is just what it's.
Speaker 3 (37:04):
You know, you have to noble it.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
Right, And unfortunately that's not normal and we shouldn't have
to deal with it, you know, we we should not
have We should not normalize it as oh well, if
you don't do it, you're just not strong enough.
Speaker 3 (37:18):
No, that's not it at all.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
And we need to start realizing that we can speak
up and it's okay.
Speaker 3 (37:23):
And I love that people are.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
Coming with you and saying that, because that's the first
sign when someone comes to you and they recognize that
they need help, we need to help them and not
make it feel bad that they're coming to you for help.
We have to help them.
Speaker 3 (37:39):
If they're coming to you, it's because they need help,
and it's for me. I feel obligated.
Speaker 1 (37:44):
And again it's that part of nursing where we that
nurturing side where we want to help everyone. So if
I can help you, I definitely will, or I'll show
you I'll give you a resource that can't help you.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
And I absolutely love that, Lindra. I have loved every
second talking to you. I appreciate you taking the time.
I do have all your information, but I am going
to put it all on the show notes. I love
that you know you were doing so many wonderful things
(38:16):
for nurses. It just warms my heart. And thank you
for taking the time to chat to me today. I
really appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (38:23):
Well, thank you for having me. It's been great.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (38:25):
I appreciate it.
Appolgiate Production.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hi, my name's beck Woodbine and welcome to Tenderness for Nurses.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
I'm grateful for the person that I have the opportunity
to be.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
So I hit it and parked it for Nelly four years.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
We always have free will, We always get to choose.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
We are autonomous.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Hi. Everyone, thank you for tuning back into Tenderness for Nurses.
Today we have doctor Lendra James from the US having
a chat to us about mentorship, burnout and her journey
in nursing. And it's going to be a really interesting discussion.
After reading all the information that's on her website and
the podcast that she does, I think she's going to
(00:50):
really value add to nurses and what we know here
in Australia and having a look at the two different
countries with nursing, because even though we're the same, we're
quite different. So welcome Lindra. How are you?
Speaker 3 (01:07):
Thank you for having me. I am good. It's actually
a beautiful day here in the US.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
So can you just tell us a little bit about yourself,
how you've ended up in the role of running your
own business, writing programs, mentoring, dealing with other nurses with burnout,
How did you get to this point.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Or sure, so I have.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
I've been a nurse for over twenty over twenty years,
like about twenty two years, and I've worked across the
country in the US, I've worked in several different areas
of nursing, worked my way up to nursing leadership, and
it was during my time in leadership that I experienced
a transformative shift in my purpose. Right the onset of
(01:58):
the COVID nineteen pandemic. It really highlighted the pressing need
for self care, wellness promotion, and preventative.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
Education within communities.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Just witnessing the stream on hospital resources, the lack of
attention to staff well being, I chose to redirect my
focus towards a greater emission, which for.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
Me was self care advocacy.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
And my vision was and is to create a lasting
legacy right that ensures widespread access to self care, wellness
and preventative health education. Just in recognizing that I was
intrigued by the operational, by the business side of healthcare,
(02:49):
I embarked on a new chapter, which was entrepreneurship, and
I launched my own company, leveraging my leadership skills and
my certification as a nurse executive and my Doctor of
Nursing Practice degree. So I based empower nurses and healthcare
professionals to break through from burnout and build generational wealth
(03:13):
so that they can stop trading time for money. And
I do this through courses, mentorship and events. For instance,
I have an upcoming event this Thursday which is called
the Health and Wealth Expo. But through these events, I
am able to you know, network and empower as I mentioned,
healthcare professionals to really understand the reach their professional and
(03:37):
personal and financial goals through the events, and I b
actually empower them to follow their entrepreneurial aspirations and prioritize
self care in the meantime, and I've discovered profound fulfillment
and guiding others towards their optimal wellness.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Did you yourself have been out?
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Oh? Yes, so I experienced burnout.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Like I said, it was during my time in leadership
that I experience a level of burnout.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
And we don't talk about it enough because a few
years ago died.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
You know, burnout was something that was considered a weakness
and or it was tap tapoo, right, you know, you
don't say this is what we were trained to do.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
How can you be, you know, burned out. We were
trained to know.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
We were trained clinically, and we were trained to provide
a service, and we were trained with skills and that
you know, made us become experts in what we do.
But we no one talked excuse me, no one really
teaches or empowers about the taking it, taking hold of
your setting boundaries right and really prioritizing yourself because as
(04:49):
nurses were so used to prioritizing others, and we don't
talk about enough. When you start to see yourself really
start to become disconnected or exhausted, or not sleeping well
or even behaving differently in what you can even identify.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Is not your norm.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
It's when you start to realize that, oh my gosh,
I'm experiencing burnout, and burnout is a symptom. It's a
symptom of something else. And that's why I started to experience.
I started to experience that symptom and it started to
affect me, and excuse me, affect me and areas of
my life personally and professionally.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
It's so interesting with the podcast, the number of nurses
that I've spoken to here that really have developed burnout
moral injury to some degree. Some of the nurses have
had PTSD with things I've had to deal with. It
has never been discussed. And like you here in Australian
(05:56):
nurses were just meant to keep on keeping on, and
we're a little bit I think people think where dispensable
and when not and we really have to start not
only caring for ourselves, but caring for each other and
asking each other you're right, can I give you a
(06:17):
hand with something? Because often when you're in the midst
of burnout, you don't realize you are.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
And it's because it has a ripple effect, right, and
it impacts you in every area of your life.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
And when you're.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Burnt out, you stop pursuing those things that once or you.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
Enjoy, both personally and professionally.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
And I've seen so many talented nurses who put their
dreams and their career aspirations on whole because they're simply
to exhaust it and they're not realizing that they're dealing
with a symptom of exhaustion. And it's not just career
you know, stagnation either. Burnout takes a toll on your
(07:01):
self care. As I mentioned, for nurses who are natural
care giver is we often forget to take care of
ourselves because.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
We want to.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
And when you mentioned trauma, think about how we as nurses.
We can code a patient for about thirty to forty
minutes and have to and say that person doesn't survive
or they do. But after dealing with that, we now
have to walk into that next patient's room and act
(07:29):
like everything is okay.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
But that's what we're trained to.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
Do, and no one really sits us down and say like,
that's kind of not okay, right, because think about if
someone wants to see someone get hit by a car
in the middle of the street and this person tragically die,
that's traumatizing. So we deal with trauma on an ongoing basis.
And one a solution from in my opinion is organizations
(07:57):
really have to look more into the mental health of
their employees. And that's something that is a part the
goal of one of my businesses is to really bring
that wellness into organizations so that we can really start
taking care of our healthcare workers who are consistently traumatized,
(08:18):
and not just with EAP. And I'm not sure what
you guys have in Australia, but in the US, we
have in an employee assistant program and oftentimes.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
It involves you know, you being able to see a.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Mental health expert for three sessions.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
And sometimes that's not enough and sometimes.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Some places it's fifteen minutes, some places that maybe thirty minutes,
and sometimes that's not enough. What about someone coming in
on a consistent basis to be able to provide mental
health services to your employees, whether they understand or know
that they need it or not. But this is how
we really start to move the needle and shift their
perspectives and shift the outcomes for our healthcare workers.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Do you think the hospitals in the States, because you
have a very different system to us here in Australia,
because it's so money driven making money, do you think
they value nurses? Do you think I want to spend
that money on nurses to keep that retention right and
the nurses healthy.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
That is such a great question. So there's two sides.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
If you acts an executive leader that question, they will
say yes.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
If you ask a nurse that question, they.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Will say profit or the patients. And I say that
because I have you know, I know a plethora of
nurses who they don't feel valued and they don't feel
that the organizations and this is part of the problem, right,
And this is why and I don't know about Australia.
This is why a lot of the hospitals in the
US are striking because I'm a big part of it
(09:57):
is because of feeling underappreciated and undervalue. So what we
have here in the US we have value based health
care and the hospitals are paid according to the amount
of value that in the quality of care that they
provide to patients. So we have nurse sensitive indicators. And
(10:19):
I'll give you an example. If a patient falls in
the hospital and they break their hip, CMS, the Center
for Medicaid and Medicare Services, they will not pay that
hospital for the treatment to fix that hip. So now
that's cost, that's loss, right, that's a financial loss for
the hospitals because now the patient has to stay longer.
(10:42):
Now we have to pay for that surgery. So anything
that basically comes out after that surgery that's not related
to anything prior to that patient being in the hospital.
Say the patient came in for stomach virus, they were
eighty years old, and they slipped and they fell and they.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
Broke their hip. That's a nurse sensitive indicator.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
So the hospital will now not be paid because this
patient fell and broke their hip, and the hospitals won't
be paid for that. Or let's say they get an
infection from a central line, where they get an infection
from a fully catheter, the hospital won't be paid for that.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
And there's been.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Hospital who has been in hospitals where they've been fined
in the million, the seven figures because of these infections.
And so now what that's more push on the nurses
to do more, but they're doing more for less. And
now so you see how the shift and the burnout
because now there's a huge you know, push from the
(11:35):
higher ups to you know, now we have to do that.
We have to have zero clapses, we have to have
zero qualities, we have to have zero you know, zero falls.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
And I get it because we don't want to do
harm to our patients. But what we.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Don't realize is that we're now pushing the nurses to
do more with less because we're not necessarily giving them
the tools and the resources that they need like staffing,
for instance, right or investing in bet alarms, or investing
in the tools and the resources that they'll need in
order to in order to stop these falls or in
(12:11):
order to prevent these clapses and these qualities from occurring.
So now and then, and this is how just another
example of how the burnout and the exhaustion becomes because
now your leader has to come and be the voice
of all of.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
The directives that are coming from the higher ups.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
So I say all this to say, and again this
is just you know, an example, but I say all
this to say, this is why and how nurses are
not feeling appreciated. So you're not giving me the resources
because you're making me work short staff, but yet you're
telling me that I still have to make sure I
prevent that fall from recurring.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
How can I prevent that fall if I.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Had eight patients and we only have one nursing assistant,
or if there's only three nurses on the floor. So yeah,
I've beenished situations where I've had nurses working short staff, and.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
Thing was still able to.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Prevent those falls from recurring because you know, we instill
a level of empowerment and pride in them so that
they took pride in making sure that their patients were safe.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
Because most nurses, they want to make sure that their patients. Absolutely,
but if you're not empowering them and engaging them, you
don't understand how you're leading to that exhaustion.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
You're leading to that feeling of being undervalue, their feeling
of being underappreciated, and that's not what you want.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
And I love that term of empowering your nurses. I
think that's through education, through correct staffing. That's so important.
And I think since the pandemic, we weren't hit anywhere
near as hard as you were in the States. When
I went for a conference last year, I interviewed one
(13:51):
of the nurses that I met at the conference, and
she had worked in Philadelphia and she was on the
COVID ward. She arrived, everything was shut down. They went
in and they were locked into the ward. They couldn't
get doctors, the food was left outside. They had to
do everything. And she said they just got on and
did it and did it well or as well as
(14:12):
they could. And I said to her, how psychologically were
you afterwards? And she said I was fine until I
stopped working. And she said and then I fell apart.
And she said, none of my family wanted to see me,
no one wanted to be around me because everyone was
so scared. So she was also not only isolated at work,
(14:32):
she was coming home and feeling isolated.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
It was terrible.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
And she left. She's gone into the aesthetics space. She
just didn't want to deal with that rubbish anymore.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
And that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
There's been a huge shift of nurses leaving the traditional
setting and going into spaces like aesthetics and wellness and
met spars.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
As you mentioned, I myself on a met spar well.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
I own an alternative form of treatment on a wellness business.
I own a IV hydration vioment therapy, so we offer
that and we offer wheat loss services as well. And
we also have added a component of wellness right, a
wellness service for stress management, burnout and such. And I
say that to say the pandemic it just really gave
(15:18):
rise to a huge shift and a lot there were
a lot of epitomes, epiphanies, excuse me, and you know,
people realized taking their power back. So for me, starting
my wellness business is you know, becoming an entrepreneur was
more of a way of taking my power back. And
to your point, and to that nurses point, that's exactly
(15:38):
what happened. So I am in New Jersey and dealing
with COVID in New Jersey. So we were right next
to New York. So any if you know anything about
and remember about the pandemic, New York was like the epicenter.
And because we're right here in New Jersey, we got
all of that overflow sort of speak. So people were
(15:59):
not going to New York hospitals because they were like, oh.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
No, I'm not going to New York. I'm going to
get COVID, so I'm not going there.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
But guess what, So they were coming over into New
Jersey and they were still getting COVID because we got
all of the overflow, all of the patients from from
that tri state area, from Brooklyn, just all over New York.
They used to they would come to New Jersey they
still had COVID And just what that nurse mentioned to you,
that is.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
Exactly how it was.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
It went from I'll never forget it went from us
having one patient to after it was one weekend went
by and have the unit was COVID positive and exactly
no one wanted to come on.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
To the floor.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
You didn't see anyone. All the doors were closed and
even during codes. I can remember doing codes. Nurses would
be in the rooms running the codes on their own,
and the doctors would be at the door writing signs,
you know, putting the paper up against the window, saying
like pul socks, like what's the pull sox? Like are
(16:59):
you kidding me? You know, so you want us to
intubate the patient too, like.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
What are we doing?
Speaker 2 (17:05):
Nurses were dispensable, but doctors weren't right.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
And that was unfortunately, that was the feeling now. I
will say in the area where I was, doctors were
you know, we had doctors who we actually lost due
to COVID, and doctors were just as suicidal as nurses were, right,
and because there was a time where we felt like
(17:30):
we were losing patients at such a rapid rate, and
there was a feeling.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
Of what are we doing wrong?
Speaker 1 (17:37):
You know, we didn't know what we know now about
the disease, and there was a feeling that we felt
like we were doing you know, we were doing something wrong,
and healthcare professionals were actually committing suicide and becoming suicidal,
and all of those elements that you talk about about
feeling isolated. People were sleeping in their cars, people were
getting hotels. You know, there were some nursing organizations that
(17:59):
were providing free hotel rooms because not only did families
not want people to come home, people didn't want to
go home because they didn't want to infect their husbands
or their children. They didn't know what was going on.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
So again, so when we.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
Talk about like burnouts, that's a whole different that's a
whole different level of just mental health and burnout.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
That's what it is.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
It's a symptom of mental health, and it's often a
mix of being overworked, underappreciated, and facing systemic issues. And
the COVID nineteen pandemic was definitely one that was you know,
we didn't know how long it was going to last.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
We didn't know, there was nothing we knew about it.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
The policies were changing every day, these you know CDC
every time, you know, they were changing.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
I felt like the policies and the rules change daily.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
So we got to a point where it made no
sense to write anything down because you know it's.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
Going to change tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
And it did, right, So sometimes things would change like
two or three times a day.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
So we went from needing to have.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
In ninety five to know you can just have a
surgical mass, right, and like, wait a minute, So now
we just lost one hundred and fifty nurses who caught
COVID because you're saying we only need a surgical but
they only need a surgical mask. And guess what, they
still caught COVID root those.
Speaker 3 (19:20):
In ninety fives.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
So there was just such a lack of appropriate care
for nurses. I can remember some of the nurses in
New York going to work in garbage bags. But then
you have the media who's coming into the hospital and
they have a full astronauts suit on right, so to speak.
So why aren't we protecting our healthcare workers the same way.
(19:42):
So there's a lot of bureaucracy that leads to the
burnout of healthcare professionals, and.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
The way we change these things.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
We have to change what takes place more at the
legislative level in order, if in at least in New
Jersey it excuse me, in the US, so that we
can really start to affect change. So there are a
lot of nurses going into politics now. Myself, I've joined
organizations like the American Nurse and Nursing Association dmpis of
(20:10):
color all to really start to start to give rise
and have a voice in how politics plays into nursing,
just like Rob Wade being something that has been taking
away and that's a huge We have our presidency election
coming up and that's a huge talk. Right now. I
won't get into politics, but I say all this to
(20:32):
say that you know, we in order for there to
be changed in our healthcare system, there needs to be
changed from a political standpoint, from a legislative level. And
the way a lot of nurses are taking their power
back is by starting their own businesses.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
And that's where I come in. Part of what I
do is I help.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
And I show nurses how to start their own business,
how to gain that power back because no one teaches
us the business side of healthcare. And that's a part
of my mentorship. And my mentorship goes.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
From being.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
One Most nurses will contact me because or nurse leaders
and they'll say, you know, they're burned out, they're at
a place of exhaustion and they're not sure.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
Where to go. And we really unpack that. We set
a plan.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
We help to recognize the burnout, where's the burnout coming from?
Speaker 3 (21:19):
And then we set a.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
Plan and then we identify what are you doing about it?
And what are you going to do about it? And
then once we're able to unpack that burnout and really
set that plan to release it and develop and grow
from it. Now, what are the next steps? Is the
next steps to write about it? Because I you know,
that's one of the courses that I offer craft your bestseller.
(21:44):
A lot of nurses have a authorship inside of the
inside of us because we have stories to tell, you know.
Or like I said, it's starting a business, whether it's
a concierge business, and I help.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
You do that as well.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
So there's a lot of different ways that you can
escape the burnout and really advocate for yourself so that
you can and really gain that power back and really
start looking at other so you can stop trading time
for money and other streams of income. Because when I
say stop trading times for money, what is it that
we do when we want to buy a house, we
(22:20):
just go we work extra, right, Or we want to
put our kids through college, we just work extra and
we just work those two and three jobs. But guess
what that time that we're putting in is now even
more so adding to that burnout factor.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Yeah, without a doubt, So how many businesses do you have?
Speaker 3 (22:38):
So have I own two businesses.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
I own Premier Fusions and Wellness, which is my wellness business,
and then I own a Deal James Consulting, So gl
James Consulting is my consulting business where I coach and
mentor other nurses and my podcast is listed under my
ideal of Deal James Consulting as well.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
And can Australian nurses access your skills?
Speaker 1 (23:00):
Absolutely because the services that I offer are online, their
virginal and you can definitely access me through my website
which I'm happy to share. I also have a burnout
Guide that I can provide to your listeners and to
your nurses as well that I created, and it really
(23:21):
talks about helping you how to beat burnout. It really
provides the strategies that you will need to really take
a shift in what you're doing. So it's a really
big jump start and helping you to recognize the bias
and what strategies you should use to really beat the burnout.
So what I do is we go through a strategy call.
(23:42):
So we would go through a strategy call and during
that strategy call, we identify what your needs are and
if your needs are to work with me for three months,
or if your needs are to work with me for
six months, that's what we do. We work together for
six months, or you can work with me for a
year if we have options like that as well. And again,
like I said, I provide courses by I have virtual platforms.
(24:08):
We are creating an alliance burnout to break through alliance
on LinkedIn and you know we'll probably open it up
on another platform as well. But it's to create community,
right so that people can have a safe space to
come and discuss, you know, what their issue is or
(24:28):
just you know, sometimes you just need a place to
not feel judged, right and just talk about event on
what you may be feeling. So I wanted to create
a safe space where nurses can feel nurtured go through
their burnout, whether it's at the novice level, whether it's
at the leadership level, and really be able to have
(24:49):
someone who can comment and provide without feeling like they're
being judged. And I think that's important because I think
oftentimes we feel like we're going through something alone. I
know I did, like I felt like I did alone.
And it's to your point.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
Burnout is a pandemic, right now it really is.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
And it's just now that we're starting to realize that,
and it's nothing, you know, it's identifying it identifying the symptoms.
You know, if you're feeling anything like I mentioned earlier,
like that disconnect or that exhaustion or that lack of sleep,
you know, you have to really start understanding, like, you
know what, maybe maybe I am overworked, maybe I.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
Am going to burnout.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
And you know, to answer your question about how do
I not get burnt out from just my businesses is
what I've learned to do is I've learned to structure
my businesses so that it revolves around my availability. So,
for instance, my wellness business, I've hired nurses. That's that's
(25:52):
that's number one. And so in my case, if you're
going to have a business, you need a team. Otherwise
if you try to do everything yourself. Because that's the
thing with us nurses, we want to do everything because
that's how we were taught, right, we were told.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
To be everything to everyone and we can't.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
So a huge part in one of the strategies that
I mentioned in that burnout guide that I created that
we're going to share with your listeners, a huge one
of the first things you have to do is create boundaries,
create boundaries, and learn how to say now right because
and I may have mentioned this, when you don't say no,
when you say yes to something all the time, you're
saying no to something else.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
And so creating those.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
Boundaries and creating those boundaries for yourself they're huge. And
for me, my work schedule for my wellness business is
Monday through Thursday. And like I said, I have nurses
who I'm able to work outside of the business and
run the business and not work within the business. And
that's because I have a team. So having a team
(26:53):
around you and being able to delegate with your skills
that we learned clinically, right, those those delegation skills are important.
A lot of the things we learn as nurses are
so transferable. And being an entrepreneur and I didn't realize that,
and it wasn't until I started my own business, and
when I gained mentorship is when there was so much
(27:14):
I had so many epiphanies and so many things.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Started to make more sense.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
Because no one teaches us the business side of healthcare,
so I was intrigued with it. But I can remember
having my first budget that I had to go through
as a nurse leader, and like there was no no
one to show me how to do this, so I
had to learn things on my own. And it was
the same thing when I got into entrepreneurship. I had
to learn how the finance side, but I got a mentor.
(27:40):
So having a mentor seeking that guidance was huge, and
that's how I'm able to not get burned out because
I have had mentors and I continue to have mentors.
Even at every stage, you still need to coach. You
still need a mentor. So at every stage of you
know what, every level that you elevate to, you'll still
need coaching and you still need mentoring.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
And that mentorship is what keeps me from burning out.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
That was why I started tending this finis is that
I saw a need for nurses to support nurses and
be kind to each other and to ask each other
if you know you're okay, and to look out for
each other. And the one thing I have learned because
I go to the States a lot to see my
daughter is no matter where I have been and what
(28:25):
nurses and doctors I have had the privilege of spending
time with, we all want the same thing, which is
time with our loved ones and our families. We want
to give the best care we can to our patients,
go to work, do the best we can, come home safely,
which didn't happen in the pandemic. But in amongst all
(28:48):
of that, we've forgotten to look after ourselves. We're so
busy just trying to put all the other hats on
that we just aren't being tender and kind to ourselves.
And that's one thing after now, I've interviewed over sixty nurses, doctors,
(29:09):
lay people, and it's been fascinating to hear the journey
of different nurses and what they have gone through and
how they didn't seek help, And you wonder would they
still be in the system if they had have had
some mentorship and some guidance and someone to listen to.
(29:31):
And it makes me think, well, they probably would be,
and all these wonderful nurses wouldn't be leaving.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
Exactly exactly because I think you asked the question about
feeling underappreciated and undervalue if you have someone to empower you,
if you have someone to simply guide you so that
you Because I made mispeeds as a nurse, and I'm
not necessarily, you know, referring to clinical mistakes, I mean
(30:00):
I made mistakes. As a nurse leader. I meet mistakes,
but again I didn't have mentorship. And think, you make
a great point. Had I had a mentor in nursing.
Now I had a mentor for my business, and it
made a huge difference. Had I had a mentor in nursing,
just imagine how much more I've could have done.
Speaker 3 (30:19):
I mean, I've opened.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
Programs, closed programs, open units, created programs, created policies.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
I've done all the things right. My units were constantly
number one.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
I decreased falls throughout organizations within the hospital from using
my models.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
And I say all this not to toot my own
worn I say all this to.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
Say, imagine, had I had a mentor and actually had
someone actually able to guide me as a nurse leader,
how far I could have gotten my last role in nursing.
I've reported directly to the CNO, so my next level
would have been CNO, which is where a lot of
nurses in the traditional setting see themselves. But by the
(31:03):
time I got there, I had no incentive or passion
to continue on to that stage, to a ce ANDO,
and ultimately I became the CEO and CEO of my
own companies, and I wrote about this in my book.
So I actually wrote a book discussing the bias and
(31:25):
the burnout that I dealt with in healthcare. And the
book is titled Confessions of a Nurse Executive and the
subtitle is the Conscious and Unconscious Bias and Healthcare. And
I write about how my passion for nursing and for
being a leader, it just really came to a crashing
(31:46):
hope and I realized that that's not what I aspired.
I no longer aspired to be that, and stepping into
the world of entrepreneurship, it really started to bring my
passion back for nursing and for health care. And I said, okay,
this is my purpose I am. I'm meant to help others,
(32:06):
but now I can help others in a different way,
so I can help communities.
Speaker 3 (32:11):
So when you say can I.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
Help nurses in Australia, absolutely, I can help other nurses,
so not just clients and patients. Through my wellness, I
can actually offer my services and expertise on a broader scale.
And that's what it's about, and that is where I'm
fulfilling my purpose.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
And doesn't that make you feel good?
Speaker 1 (32:33):
And it makes me feel amazing, It really really does.
It makes me feel amazing. Often we limit ourselves to
the traditional setting, and it's no one's fault because that's
what we're taught.
Speaker 3 (32:49):
We're taught clinical.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
We're taught, you know, patient care in the hospital, at
least in the US, we're taught, you know, the Florence
Nightingale way of going, you know, going to the hospital,
you know, taking the doctor's orders. But we're not taught
that empowered me of entrepreneurship. We're not taught the finance
and the business things. So unless you grew up at
a dinner table talking about these things. You may know
(33:12):
about finances, you may know about investments, but you're really
not taught about entrepreneurship in nursing and how you can
really you're constantly told, oh, there's so many things you
could do when they're in nursing, but you're not actually
shown what it.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
Is unless it's inside the traditional setting.
Speaker 2 (33:28):
Absolutely, and here in Australia, for the nurses that have
gone out on their own and do it within the
esthetic space, there's been a lot of pushback. People you
don't like nurses that go out and unfortunately in Australia
we're not like you guys in the States that applaud
(33:49):
and love people that are hugely successful. We have a
little bit of that British colonialism where you know, the
tall poppy syndrome and if someone's doing better than everyone else,
people like to bring them down. Whereas that's one thing
I must say I love about the States is you
go applaud people that go out and are entrepreneurial and
(34:09):
try different things, and it's so obvious. It's so obvious.
So when I got sick and took a year off,
I didn't tell anybody. I was so afraid of people
saying naki things about me that I just told everyone
I was working on the business. I didn't tell anyone
(34:31):
I was actually taking time off because I was a mess.
I was so so sick, and I can talk about
it now, but how sad. At the time, I was
so isolated, so alone, so scared. I thought I was
going to lose my business. It was horrendous and I
(34:53):
don't want anyone to feel the way I felt because
it was so awful. No one should feel the way
I felt. And I think we have to change the
dialogue around that it's okay that you're feeling this way,
but let's do something about it.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
Absolutely, absolutely, and you're so right. We feel shamed, so
to speak, when we have to step away, and that's
unfortunately how we've been trained, where we've been trained to
think that it's something wrong when we step away for
our own self care.
Speaker 3 (35:30):
And I did the same thing.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
I stepped away from I resigned from my position as
a nursing leader, and I didn't have a job lined up.
I just stepped away because I knew that I needed
to do this for my own sanity, like I needed
to really rethink where I was going and what I
was doing and redefine myself and redefine my.
Speaker 3 (35:53):
Purpose and my purpose.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
It all really came back to still being a nursing
being nursing and healthcare, but it was in a different
way and that made me feel liberated. And I can appreciate, Yes,
they're being seeing other nurses, you know, going forward.
Speaker 3 (36:13):
Trying to reach their goals or.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
Doing something different, because if this is not what is
making me happy, I can't stay in that situation. And
I was doing it, and I was doing it because
you know, I had I have a mortgage. You know,
I have a family to take care of. I have,
so you have all of these you know, I don't
want to say burdens, but this is a part of life.
Speaker 3 (36:35):
Life. Life is life, right, yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
And you have all of these things that you need
to take care of the last thing you need is
to be in a situation where you're unhappy. But you
have to be here because this is what's paying the bills.
Speaker 3 (36:51):
That shouldn't be. That shouldn't be the case. I shouldn't
have to be just because.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
We've come to normalize burnout unfortunately, and the things that
we go through at work as this is just what it's.
Speaker 3 (37:04):
You know, you have to noble it.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
Right, And unfortunately that's not normal and we shouldn't have
to deal with it, you know, we we should not
have We should not normalize it as oh well, if
you don't do it, you're just not strong enough.
Speaker 3 (37:18):
No, that's not it at all.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
And we need to start realizing that we can speak
up and it's okay.
Speaker 3 (37:23):
And I love that people are.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
Coming with you and saying that, because that's the first
sign when someone comes to you and they recognize that
they need help, we need to help them and not
make it feel bad that they're coming to you for help.
We have to help them.
Speaker 3 (37:39):
If they're coming to you, it's because they need help,
and it's for me. I feel obligated.
Speaker 1 (37:44):
And again it's that part of nursing where we that
nurturing side where we want to help everyone. So if
I can help you, I definitely will, or I'll show
you I'll give you a resource that can't help you.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
And I absolutely love that, Lindra. I have loved every
second talking to you. I appreciate you taking the time.
I do have all your information, but I am going
to put it all on the show notes. I love
that you know you were doing so many wonderful things
(38:16):
for nurses. It just warms my heart. And thank you
for taking the time to chat to me today. I
really appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (38:23):
Well, thank you for having me. It's been great.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (38:25):
I appreciate it.
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