April 21, 2025 • 42 mins
This conversation explores the Nurse Shift Change Movement, emphasizing the importance of political engagement among nurses. Dr. Lendra and Dr. Sharon Goldfarb discuss their experiences in nursing, the impact of COVID-19 on education and practice, and the need for nurses to advocate for social justice and healthcare reform. They highlight the challenges faced by the nursing profession and the necessity for nurses to unite and take action to improve patient care and working conditions.
In this powerful episode, our guest highlights the importance of political engagement, combating misinformation, and collective advocacy to ensure a healthier future for all.
Resources & Actions:
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1. IV Hydration & Wellness Clinics
Low startup costs, high ROI, and a booming wellness market make this a perfect fit for RNs, LPNs, and NPs.
2. PMHNP Clinics & Mental Health Coaching
Mental health is in demand—and PMHNPs are launching private practices to support their communities and reclaim time.
3. Medical Writing & Consulting
From grant writing to healthcare content creation, nurses are getting paid for their expertise—without clocking in.
At the Health & Wealth Expo, you’ll meet real nurse entrepreneurs who have built six-figure businesses—and they’ll show you how you can too.
Join the Nurse Shift Change Movement—make your voice heard at our May 24 Rally! Sign up today:
nurseshiftchange.com
Key Takeaways:
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Nurses play a crucial role in advocating for under‑resourced communities.
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Political engagement is essential for influencing healthcare policy.
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COVID‑19 transformed nursing education and practice—underscoring the need for adaptable leadership.
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Nurses must support candidates who prioritize health and well‑being.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hello, and welcome to this special edition series of the nurse
shift change movement. And I have
Dr. Sharon Goldfarbix, and we are streaming live this episode.
This is a special edition Nurses for Voices podcast series that
we are doing in efforts, in, you know,
efforts to really help there be an understanding of what
(00:22):
we're doing with the nurse of change movement. If you have not heard or
have not already done so, you can go, go ahead and log
on to nurseshiftchange.com and look at
our movement and you'll see a lot about our mission and how
we're looking to enhance humanities ethics,
social justice and science. And without further ado,
(00:45):
I am going to introduce you and allow Dr. Sharon
Garfar to introduce herself to you. And we're going to talk a little bit about
what we're doing here today and why it's so important to have these
conversations.
Hi. Hello. Hello and welcome.
Welcome. I was just introducing you and I know you can, you can do a
(01:07):
better introduction than I can. And I was sharing
what we're going to be, what we're doing with the movement, with the nurse shift
change movement. And I want you to go ahead and introduce
yourself and let everyone know who you are and
why you think this movement is so important and why they should join us. What?
Well, I have been a nurse since
(01:27):
1998, and my
clinical career was mostly working with under
resourced communities. I worked on a mobile medical van that
gave primary care to the unhoused, the undocumented people with
substance use disorder. And I really saw, even before we had
an understanding of what the social determinants of health were,
(01:49):
that some people were not getting the kind of health care that they needed, and
their life circumstances actually was very challenging to their health.
Pretty shortly into my clinical career, I began teaching at
Columbia University, where I taught for about 10 years.
And I also really fell in love with teaching. And I
think that one of the things that's really important to be
(02:11):
a transformational healthcare provider and to really help
your patients, you know, get better, we also have to be
transformational nursing educators and really walk the talk with our
students of what we want to see, you know, in our
time. So I've had a career that spanned both clinical and
academic. And in the last few years, I've gotten a lot more involved in
(02:34):
politics. But I always had this idea in my head
that nurses were not showing up in a political way that I
thought they should. And so with that, I actually worked on
a bill that became a law in California, and
I got A little taste of political power. And that was
interesting to me. And then I was really
(02:56):
excited about Kamala Harris as a presidential candidate. So
I founded Nurses for Harris, and I worked really hard
on her campaign. And I think right
now we're at a crossroads where nurses really need to show up in
a way maybe they haven't ever before. And with
with the statistics that came out that only 4 in 10 nurses
(03:19):
voted, and if you count LVNs and CNAs, there's 7 million of us.
That's millions of nursing voices that weren't heard. And so I
think this is a time when we show up, if not for ourselves
and the policies around, what keeps us happy in the
field, which prevents us from being assaulted, which helps with
ratios. We show up for our patients, and every policy
(03:42):
has ramifications for public health. So I just am really
hoping that nurses can show up. And I
long thought, like, the Million Nurse March, the Million Nurse Nurse. I was very inspired
by the Million Man March, and I talked to a few nursing
friends and leaders I had. And next thing you knew, we were having meetings. And
next thing you know, we had changed it to nurse and ship Change, which is
(04:05):
really a great name for what we want to do. You know, we do
shift work and we're here to change things. Yes. So
wait, you have said so much. Then I have to unpack it.
It's just been so rich. So let's back up
to. You got into politics being a
(04:25):
nurse. Right. And, you know, go from there into
the nurses for Harris, our nurses for Kamala.
Right. Like, so talk a little bit about that. So I think to
a certain extent, like, my background was a political background. And
my grandmother came to this country when she was 15 and worked
at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory, which actually was very famous because
(04:48):
there was a fire and many of the young women perished. My grandmother wasn't working
that day. She worked the day before. And it started the, you know,
labor movement as we knew it. So there has always been,
like, part politics in my family. And, you know,
a lot of my family perished in World War II. So there was the sense,
like, what's happening in your government can have a lot to do with you and
(05:11):
your quality of life. And even if you can be alive at all, you can
go to school. And so there's always been a little bit
of me that's been interested in policy. And I started
working with IV drug users on the street with the
mobile medical van. And at the time, there was no needle exchanges.
And I was asked to Sit on the HIV planning committee for the city of
(05:33):
New York. And I was able to tell stories of my patients. I had one
patient who came to this country with his family and five
siblings. And the siblings were very close, so they shared needles. And four
of them had died of aids. And my patient was HIV
positive. And I remember being able to give the
testimony with my experience
(05:55):
and what I saw with my patients that helped usher in needle
exchanges. There's always been the sense, like you show up for your
patients, whether you're seeing them one on one or supporting families in a difficult
time. And sometimes the best thing we can do for our patients is actually
make some policy change. So the next big thing for me was
Covid. And in California, where I moved 20 years ago,
(06:18):
the board of Registered nursing had a rule that you have to teach at the
same time you're at clinical. And with the start of COVID clinical
disappeared. And I remember thinking, like, wait,
nurses are dying from COVID Nurses are having moral
outrage from how much is put on them. And we're going to stop 30,000
nursing students in their track because they can't go to the hospital,
(06:40):
nor should they go to the hospital. Right. They don't. And we
don't really know what's going on with this. And they have decades to be
nurses, but we have other ways to give students clinical
experiences. So I took that up, that
issue up in arms and reached out to my local
politicians, reached out to the press and helped pen a
(07:02):
bill. And then it turned into a law about the rules
for the California Board of Registered Nursing, what it would look like
during a state of emergency that we could suspend some of the rules.
And so a lot of students got put back. And the dean, where I
was, the school where I was a dean, we actually had all our students graduate
on time. Yes, I remember that very.
(07:24):
The students, a lot of the nurses who graduated at the time
of COVID they were coming out, you know, coming out of school, and they had
hardly had any clinical experience. But I have to tell you, and I have to
be very honest with you, the nurses who started at
that time, my hat goes off to them, it was twofold. I saw
them when it was like the end of their nursing education, but the beginning of
(07:46):
their nursing career. So they were coming in, they didn't have a lot of
clinicals or. Right. They didn't have a lot of clinical experience, but they were
thrown right into the fire. But guess what? I also
noticed that because turnover was so high, a lot of them had
to start Taking charge, like, right after orientation. But
they did it, and they did it. And, like,
(08:08):
even now, some of those nurses are great nurses
right now, and they didn't have the luxury of. Because
I can remember as a nurse leader, like, my nurses would get sometimes, like,
12 weeks of orientation, and these nurses
barely got about six weeks of orientation. But that's what I remember having.
Remember having about six weeks of orientation, and I was on my
(08:31):
own. So it was almost like seeing them go back to what
it was like 20 years ago. But they still. They
came into the fire and they dealt with it. So, I
mean, I just had to jump in and share that
because it's true and good for you. So that was one political
experience. Tell me about Kamala Harris. Like, tell me about that movement.
(08:53):
Nurses. Yeah, I mean, I just really.
I just was so excited about her as a
presidential candidate, and I think she was saying things we needed to
hear, and she could put things together in such a way that
resonated with me. I remember her saying that the average American
doesn't have $600 in their bank, but if we don't have the good
(09:16):
infrastructure of roads and our tires get more wear and tear,
and all of a sudden you need two tires, there goes your 600 bucks.
So that there's a reason, like, we do things
in support of the, you know, the good of the American people.
So. And having been an old ed nurse, you know, I definitely saw a few
terrible blowout car accidents. So I really liked
(09:38):
what she said, and I felt like it was the time to
support a candidate who I felt supported nursing, who supported
public health, who supported justice and equity.
And, you know, I just feel like the
longer I go in my career and the more I really recognize myself
(09:59):
as a leader. You know, there are a lot of great organizations out there, and
I've been involved with a lot of them. I've been involved with Voer. I've
been involved with Nurses for America. You know, I've been involved with this is
Our Shot, where I actually learned a lot about vaccine
hesitancy and mis and disinformation and how
nurses are at a really new time of life where we have to
(10:20):
combat mis and disinformation or one of my former students
call Dr. Tick Tock's always in the room when you're seeing a patient.
So I just. I just learned that I have a voice, and I want to
say the things that I believe. And I think I put things together that in
a way that people don't. And that when I put it together. There's often,
often a political or policy ramification in
(10:43):
what I'm thinking about. So talk a little bit about this is our
shot. Can you share, like, what. What came out of
it and how was it even formed?
So, you know, I think there was this time
where people just totally believed what a doctor said
and totally trusted and believed what nurses said. And that time is
(11:04):
changing, and I think sometimes that's a good thing, but sometimes it's a challenging
thing. So what we knew about COVID was that vaccines
could be helpful and that wearing masks could be helpful. And it was
really shocking to me that so many Americans were pushing back and
saying, I don't want to wear a mask. I don't want to get a vaccine.
And, you know, in nursing, we always struggle, like the rights of the
(11:27):
individual versus the good of society. Right.
And, you know, the understanding of herd immunity and people who can't
get vaccines or who get a vaccine and don't mount an immune
response. We have to protect them by, you know, doing this. And
so we really wanted to come across
combating the information that was both misinformation and
(11:48):
disinformation, things that people just got wrong. But there was no mal intent. But
there was actually a lot of people putting stuff out there with mal intent.
And through research, we found that the most trusted messenger
around healthcare messages isn't NIH or CDC or the
Surgeon General. It's actually your nurse and your doctor. And
so we decided we would do a social media grassroots
(12:11):
campaign talking about, you know, as. As
a provider, you can trust me and get the shot and wear the mask.
And it was amazing because we had only a handful of
people at the table, mostly physicians, two nurses.
And it ended up having 2 billion social media
hits. I mean, we were all over the place. And I got to bring in
(12:33):
national ana, and they did a really touching. This is our
shot video with nurses getting vaccines, including, you know,
some of my former students, some pregnant nurses getting vaccines.
And. And we got to meet, you know, the Surgeon General,
and we got to meet Anthony Fauci, and we sponsored webinars, and we did a
lot of trainings through the California Department of Public
(12:56):
Health. And it was. I felt like it was. I
really wanted to do something for Covid. I wrote personally 94
condolence letters. And so it felt like a way I could be
doing something, taking some action, you know, living the best of
nursing, the heart of nursing, the brain of nursing, to kind of help people
and let them know how to be safe. And
(13:18):
I'm still in touch with these people. We're about to have our five year anniversary
and we're sort of revisiting what this is our shot might look like in this
political climate. But you know, I do think all
us nurses, we really need to, to work on the issues that touch
our patients lives in our lives. Absolutely, absolutely.
Well, bringing it back full circle, so to
(13:41):
speak, when we talk about this as our shot, it sounds
like you guys did an amazing job with COVID Right. And
how about, how do you feel that this all kind of ties
into what's going on now with this administration,
with health care, with DEI being so
weaponized, with so much being dismantled, even,
(14:03):
you know, the injustice of, you know, the health and
Human services. Talk a little bit about that
politically and professionally. Well, I
do think that we're living in very interesting times and I
think we have this sort of perfect storm. So we have low
literacy rates and literacy rates, both math literacy and English
(14:25):
literacy actually went down with the COVID and it hasn't picked up. And
I read a really interesting article in the Atlantic by a Columbia
professor of English literature and that he has students coming to Columbia who've
never read a book in their whole lives. And you know, they're getting into
an Ivy League school and they never read a book. And there was a very
interesting David Brooks editorial about the sort of
(14:48):
waning intellectualism of America is making people not
be able to make as good decisions. And so I think you have this set
of low literacy and then you have low medical literacy and America
has very high, low medical literacy rates. And then you add low
digital literacy. Right. As we all have electronic medical records and
AI is really taking over a lot of health care. So I think people are
(15:10):
a little overwhelmed with what's happening in the world and they're feeling
frustrated. They're feeling frustrated that they have such high co pays when
they carry insurance and pay for insurance and they're frustrated at the
gas tank, how much gas and groceries and
egg prices and people don't want this life
and they want things to be different and they're desperate to make
(15:33):
some changes. I can see the frustration. I see it with my patients, I
see it with my students. I mean, nursing students give up so much to get
through nursing school, you know, give up income, you know, leave their
children and they. And it's a process that takes years
in order to serve. And so people are frustrated. I guess
where I see things is like change can happen in a
(15:55):
kinder and gentler way and it can happen in A way where we
support people and we bring them up. And
so I do think, you know, the policies that
talk about, like, we don't support dei and we don't support
immigrants, and we don't support, you know, science, and we don't
support, you know, our Parks Department, and we don't
(16:18):
support the FDA and we don't support Social Security. For me,
it all. Those are all things that will make America worse, not
better. So I think nurses understand this. Not
all, of course, but I think a lot of nurses understand this.
And, you know, when you have a patient who is depending on Social Security for
their food and medicine, and there are lines and the phone isn't working
(16:40):
and they're being cut off and they have no money at all, you know,
we see how our patients suffer. And I've had patients say it's
food or money. And I don't think. I didn't go into
nursing to treat the social determinants of health. I think everyone should have a
basic income, access to medicine, access to health
care. And, you know, that shouldn't, like, break the bank.
(17:03):
So what I'm hearing is you. You don't agree with
what's happening, but what if you had to share
three things to make nurses understand
what's happening? Because in some parts of the world, healthcare
is under attack, and I think some, in some parts
where people's, you know, nurses, POC books
(17:25):
probably aren't really being affected, they may not understand
the severity of what's happening. So how
can nurse ship change the movement? And
just from your understanding, politically, like, what should we
be doing to help them to understand that we need to
move and we need to move now because this is definitely. We're.
(17:47):
We're in a crisis. And I don't know if there's recognition of
that before it goes any farther. That's a great question. I
do think that the kind of nurse I want to be with my patients and
the kind of nurse I want to be with my students is the kind of
nurse I want to be, like, when I'm talking politics. And I
think, you know, nurses can make a pretty good salary and
(18:08):
you can kind of live in the bubble of, you know, I. With my
nursing salary, I can still get gas and groceries. But I
think it's not true that you won't feel the
effects because, you know, for example, I have a
friend who works in geriatric policy, and they have
predicted that with the removal of immigrants under Trump policies, we are
(18:30):
losing a third third of the workforce who take care of our elderly
that's both at home doing home health work and in,
like, SNFs and nursing homes. So what is it like for the nurse
who's used to doing the meds and overseeing, to lose a third of the
hands on, who are, you know, changing the adult briefs and doing the bathing and
bringing meal trees? I think, I think our lives as nurses will get
(18:52):
harder. And I think as our patients are upset and feeling like
the system isn't working for them, we're going to have
more incivility and more probably physical
assaults. And already one in three nurses is going to be assaulted in their
professional career. So I think, you know,
nursing is a hard job, and if you go to the hospital and you take
(19:14):
care of one patient, you are a hero in my book, a total hero in
my book. But if you can look at the experience of your
work as a nurse or your patients lived reality and say
there's more to it than this one story, you know, there's,
this is happening to many people, and it goes back to some, some
root cause, you know, that have some policy
(19:36):
ramifications. And we know when we, you know, changed,
when we overturned Roe v. Wade, in many states, we are seeing women
die waiting for a therapeutic abortion because they're having a
miscarriage, and they're dying because, you know, providers are scared of
performing an abortion. I just don't think in this day and age,
women should be dying, waiting at the hospital while they're
(19:58):
miscarrying and then bleed out or develop an infection. To me,
that's like something that happened in the Middle Ages. It shouldn't be happening in
2025. So those, those patients dying affect
nurses. And I can tell you, every patient I've had who've died, I
remember everything about them. I could sit here and tell hours of stories of
patients I've lost. And that's where the frustration
(20:20):
comes from. You bring up a great example of Roe v. Wade.
That's where the frustration comes from. It's frustrating when you
have to, your loved one, your wife, you're waiting and watching for
her, watching her basically become septic, watching her
basically be at the bridge of death before someone can actually do
something. And it's unfortunate when we have
(20:42):
incidences like the UnitedHealthcare CEO, right,
that it's, it's very unfortunate. But these are people who are becoming
so frustrated with health care. So by
dismantling Health and Human Services, you are
perpetuating and adding to the problem. This is
not helping, not helping the country. When you do Things like
(21:04):
this. And that's what I want
nurses to understand. Healthcare professionals, we need to understand
that it's all of our problem. It really, really is. Because.
But it's not until it's like you said, we start seeing it at the staffing
level is when, and that's at the front line is
when we really start to hurt or when we start to see hospitals close
(21:27):
down and now they're messing with Medicare and Medicaid. Where do
you see health care going in the next, I was
going to say five years, but the way things are going, such a rapid rate,
like where, where, where do you see it going? Well, I
think, you know, just because I do do work at free clinics,
I see people who often don't come to the doctor until it's too late. Like
(21:49):
I had a 38 year old man walk into my clinic with his two
small daughters in each hand and he came in and he's like, I can't see.
And it turns out his hemoglobin A1C was 13.
His blood sugar was like, couldn't even register on the glucometer
we had. And he had already lost most of his vision from untreated
diabetes, you know, and he was a construction worker supporting
(22:11):
two children. Like it shouldn't get to that point. And I think
it's just kind of getting to that point. And I think, you know, it's very
interesting. Historically, nurses stood for Social Security,
nurses supported Medicare, nurses supported Medicaid, doctors
did not. They were scared of their bottom line, of what this would do
to what they earned. So I think nurses have shown up again and
(22:34):
again in a way that says we're here for our patients, we're here for
the good of our communities. And I think we're at that time
now. So with these tremendous cuts, which ironically are not. The
government is still spending more money than they're just changing
priorities like billions of dollars for
SpaceX and money away from, you know,
(22:56):
health care and you know, things that I think are important.
And so I do think what's going to happen is that.
And there it's this way. Anyway. It used to be like you could go to
the doctor and it was free or it was a very low copay. Now co
pays are prohibitive and drug costs can be prohibited.
And I was talking to this guy, he's a savvy businessman and he went to
(23:17):
the hospital, he needed some surgery, the hospital took his insurance,
the surgeon took his insurance, he went on surgery, was successful,
recovering well, and he gets a bill for $10,000.
Well, it turns out the anesthesiologist was not covered by his
insurance. You know, there's nothing transparent about the
costs. And you know, when your loved one is suffering
(23:40):
or may die, you will do anything. But we shouldn't have to break
the bank. There are models all over the world. You know,
you could do Medicare for all or universal health care
where we don't do this. And it will get worse because
you're talking about 880 billion dollar cut. You know,
maybe as many as 75 million children not having health insurance
(24:02):
anymore. You know, and I think it's like this, there's this
perfect storm. The number one cause of death is gun violence to
children. Sometimes it's self inflicted, sometimes it's
accidental, sometimes it's school shootings. But it's like if
you don't do gun control legislation, you
know, how many children do we bury before we say this is enough? You
(24:24):
know, so. Well, that's a good point because you,
you, you, you actually bring up something we have. We're paying to send
people to space, right? You see the women who just went to space
and we're paying for that, but yet
we're cutting healthy human services and we have all of
these plants, planes falling out of the sky. And
(24:46):
you can't tell me that this is not related
to some type of staffing crisis or some type of cut that took
place somewhere in the government, right? You just can't tell me that
because we have never had this many planes falling out the sky unless they
were happening and it just wasn't making the news. So. But
yet we have money to send people to space. Well, I think there's
(25:08):
this, this energy behind our current administration which is
like the answer lies in privatization and we'll just
let private places take over that. But we have seen this with the
whole development of AI. It used to be that all the AI was done in
universities and there were checks and balances about universities and it was
about the academic pursuit, not about the bottom line of how rich can
(25:30):
we get. And there were ways you had to like vet before you could do
studies at universities. You know, you have to, you have to apply and show it's
not going to hurt anyone. Well, AI has totally moved into the private sector
and the AI for public good is changed to AI
for profit. And so, you know, when things
privatize, that doesn't make them better and it doesn't even save the government
(25:52):
money necessarily. So I think it would be really great if
nurses kind of said like we demand
policies that support our patients health and whether
it's environmental stuff, reproductive stuff, gun controls,
you know, AI that's fair and equitable
because it's not. Right now I have a friend whose husband like bought an
(26:15):
iWatch to check his physical training and he's dark skinned and the
iWatch doesn't read his metrics. You know, we know
that a lot of racism built in AI so we can either say like we
don't have to deal with racism and too bad for a bunch of people or
we say no. Like we have done research and we know diverse
workforce, good patient care or whatever, race, class,
(26:37):
gender makes the world a better place. Rising tides lift all
boats. And so I want to put the energy there and I hope
more nurses do. Absolutely. And I can appreciate
how you mentioned that, how the bias in
AI and it's so funny and
I probably even shouldn't even mention this because there's a gentleman who has
(27:00):
created his own AI and I think it's
called Joe. And I may have to go back and correct
myself, but it's an AI version that is non biased
and this is actually a gentle. It's an African American gentleman who
created his own AI system to combat,
to your point, the systemic racism, the systemic bias that is in
(27:22):
our everyday chatgpt. I say that to say you're right, it's,
it's interesting how, and I don't think people really think about that either
because it wasn't something I thought about until I read, you know,
until I was introduced to this gentleman about how he
created this, his own AI system. And I actually thought about having him
as a guest at my upcoming summit, the Health and well, that's all on May
(27:45):
15 and 16. Because I was like this is so interesting, like people need
to hear about this. I would recommend, if you're interested in that, there's out of
Yale professor named Dr. Rupa
Benjamin and she has founded the Ida B. Wells center
for Digital Equity and she's written several books
on digital equity and her work is super important. She just won
(28:07):
the MacArthur genius grant. Her work is so important. I love
it. I love it. And this is important. So and this is what I mean.
And this is how we shift change. And that's why like you
said, we have the perfect title for the movement, Nurse Shift
Change. And I want to hear your opinion. How can nurses get
involved more politically? How can nurses
(28:29):
be a part of the movement? And what, what three
strategies would you give them to empower them to be a part of
the movement? That we're trying to build. Oh, that's a great question.
Well, I would say that, that nurses have to
be brave. We have to be brave all the time. And if being
involved in politics feels scary, it's okay because you can
(28:52):
be brave. And we are here to help and support. And this is a really
powerful movement. So Please show up May 24th for our
March on Washington or in your local state.
We really want to have the voice. And I think there are so many ways
to get politically active. I think you can take to social media
and you can get to know who are your legislative representatives
(29:14):
and comment on their social media page. You can
download the app called five calls, and it
literally like, what issues are important to you? And here's the letter you
can write, here's the phone call you can make with the script,
and it tells you who to reach out to. I think you know,
showing up for hearings, even your, like, board of
(29:35):
nursing hearings, often policy is discussed there. And
really like getting involved either with a political campaign, your
League of women Voters with voter. There are so many
organizations that really are committed to,
like, making politics for the people. And
nurses know people like nobody else's business. And so if we just
(29:57):
show up, if we write some letters, if we make some calls. I wrote 9,000
postcards during the campaign for Harris.
I what was the name of the organization I bought the postcards for? But I
literally had people come to my house, ordered pizza, and I was like, we're
writing postcards all day long, postcards
(30:18):
to a lot of swing states. And everyone had a little
sticker or a little smiley face. We tried to personalize it. So
I think there are a lot of ways to do it. And, you know, there
are clubs and groups and you can join, you know, your
Democratic or Republican
national Committee and just get involved. I mean, the thing is,
(30:39):
is I cannot stress enough that we nurses, like, we understand
policy politics in a way that no one else does. And if our voice
is not there, our patients won't get what they need.
Absolutely, absolutely. And something that I've always said
is because I think nurses
sometimes feel that we're the most trusted, but I feel like we're not the
(31:01):
most respect expected. And because of that, a lot
of times nurses may not feel, and this is my opinion,
may not feel that they have a voice, hence nurses with
voices. But in order to affect change,
we really have to have a voice at the legislative level. And
to your point, we are the perfect people to answer
(31:24):
questions, especially for someone who doesn't know
Anything about health care, to be in certain roles and
make certain decisions about vaccines, I think is absurd.
Right. Where we can speak to that. Right. And we can
speak to the importance of these things. And I think, you know, historically,
nurses have been socialized to be nice and helpful and kind. And
(31:46):
I think, you know, a lot of people choose nursing who have
those personality traits. And I would just push back and say, sometimes
the nicest thing you can do is like, scream and shout
and make a stink. And if it's patient's life on the line,
you can't be nice. You might have to, like, really make stink. And
I mean, I heard a story by a colleague of mine who, you know,
(32:10):
this pediatric patient was about to go home, and the vital
signs look good and the, you know, the clinical indicators look good, but she
had the gut feeling that this patient should not go home.
She said to the doctor, don't release this patient. This doctor actually really
trusted her and knew her. She was well seasoned and said, okay. And certainly
what happened in the middle of the night, the kid had coded. Had the kid
(32:32):
been home, they might not have survived. But I think if you have that conversation
with a doctor and they're like, no, they're going home, you might have to say,
no, I really don't want them to go home. And maybe I'm not going to
be the nice person because I so passionately believe
in saving this patient's life. Absolutely. And I think
that's a part of the nursing frustration. Nurses
(32:54):
are tired and nurses are exhausted because there's a
huge push for
profit, right? So when we talk about profit over
patients, there's a huge push forward to your point.
Some may discharge the patient because guess what? Well, guess what?
Their stay is not going to be covered. Whether or not you can look at
(33:15):
this patient and clearly tell they don't need to go home.
Not every doctor would have done that, right? Or.
Or you have the press. Ganey. Let's talk about
press. Kaney, for a second. Our center for, you know, our cms,
where hospitals get reimbursed according to how nice
we are or how responsive we are or our patient experience.
(33:37):
So what happens is there's a huge push, right, for
nurses to not only be nice, yes, we are taught to be nice. We're supposed
to be respectful. We're supposed to provide customer service. But
above that, we supposed to make sure that we're answering that call bell
in a timely fashion. Right? We got to make sure that our patients don't fall,
even though we're short Staffed. Right. We got to make sure
(33:59):
that there's so many things that we got to make sure, make sure that patient
doesn't get pressure, injury, but yet we have all of the people who
are taking certain positions. They're being deported. Right. So
I'm saying all of this loosely, but the point
is there's a pressure on nurses
to. Even though we know what we should be doing, there's also
(34:22):
a pressure of what we have to do. And there's no
in between. We need our patient experience scores to
be 99 or above or 95 and above. And
it's all about patient experience. It's all about. But you're not teaching
the nurses. You're teaching them to a patient experience score, but
you're not teaching them how to be nurses. And in the middle, they're being
(34:45):
frustrated and you're just giving them, making them do more with
less, with less resources. We're taking away
more resources that we need for health care. And it's not
just health care being affected. So many different industries
are being affected, and nurses have always been the champions,
to your point. They're very nurturing. We're caring. We're taught to be respectful.
(35:07):
We're taught to be nice. And then when we put our foot down, sometimes that
can put us in jeopardy. I say all this to say, where
is the. Where's the bottom line? And this is why it's important for
nurses to come out and be a part of a movement that we're really trying
to shift all of this, because when we talk about social justice,
sciences, humanities, the ethics, all of
(35:29):
this, this is what we stand for. We're standing for the
staffing, were standing for the workplace violence. Because you
also made a good point in saying how now we're putting our healthcare workers
to be even more under attack, because so many
people, Americans or community, they're frustrated.
We're frustrated, too. This is why it's so important to come out
(35:51):
and be a part of this movement. This is how we shift change
collectively. We have to have a voice. I know we're tired, but we really
have to come together in order to shift. We have to. We have to
shift. We have to shift the pendulum, because right now what's happening isn't working
right. And I would say that nurses getting so tired and what I would
really call, like moral outrage is. Is really a political
(36:13):
issue and a policy issue, too, because no one should have a
job that's so hard that they feel burnt out. And I think there are so
many structural issues. Nurses are not paid for what we do. We're
part of the room rate in the hospital. So if you're the kind of nurse
who your patient gets their meal tray right away, their water's always filled, their
IVs changed in time, pain management is done in a timely
(36:35):
manner. You spend time with them, and you're the nurse who never
even shows up, who hides away in the nurses lounge and plays, you
know, a game on your phone the whole time. You're of the same value to
the hospital. You're part of the roommate. And I think that's a problem. And I
think we have to understand that, you know, but the
elephant in the room is we actually get money in hospitals for patients
(36:57):
getting sick. And the best nurses keep people well. So we
actually are in a way, expensive to the system. So
I think, you know, you want. You want nurses to be.
Spend more time so patients have better satisfaction, yet you make
them document, document on an emr and they're looking at the computer and
not the phone, and you're giving them too many patients and you're giving them too
(37:19):
long shifts, and you're requesting and threatening them with patient
abandonment if they don't work overtime, you know, and you
don't, like, they might have children or sick parents, and you're like, no, you have
to stay. And I think we're just not
setting a standard of work for nurses that really lets
us shine and really supports us. And everyone
(37:41):
loses. Right? Doctors like working with really confident nurses.
Patients and families love competent nurses. We love being able
to give the best care to patients. But the system is about money. And the
system is about paying hospital CEOs and
pharmaceutical CEOs and insurance CEOs, and it's not
about the care. It's about. Yeah,
(38:02):
yeah, great point, Great point. And this is again, all the reason
that we want you to come out and Support us on May
24th. It's not just support. Supporting us is supporting a movement. Right. So in
your state. I'm in New Jersey. So if you are in New Jersey, please come
join me. You can log on to nurse shiftchange.com
and you can sign up to be a volunteer. Dr. Danielle McCamey
(38:25):
did a great job at hosting a volunteer
orientation last weekend and over this past weekend,
actually. And this is just. And this is how you shift change. So nurses are
getting involved. We need more. We want more because May
24th is the day. Dr. Sharon, if there's anything
that you'd like to share before we close out. Thank you so much for coming
(38:47):
on. It was such a delight to talk to you and thanks for inviting
me. And I'm just excited because I think the power in nursing
is really going to make important changes and we're going to have
jobs we like better and healthier patients and more quality of life.
So it's worth. This is a flight worth undertaking.
Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, stick around. I'm just going to say
(39:09):
goodbye to everyone and thank you so much for coming on once
again. Hi everyone. Thanks for coming on. Well, there you have it. Thank
you so much for joining us for this special edition Nurse Shift Change
series on Nurses with Voices podcast. Remember to join us
on May 24th. Log on to nurse shiftchange.com and
before May 24th, you can definitely join us at the Health and Wealth
(39:31):
Expo Live Summit that is taking place in Mount Laurel, New
Jersey. And head on over to
healthandwealthexpolife.com to register. This
summit is really addressing the systemic bias in health care.
We are looking at the lack of leadership, the lack of mentorship and
blending and advocating for health, wealth and
(39:52):
wellness. So please log on to
HealthAndWealThexPolive.com and join us. So it's two duties
that you have. Head over to HealthAndWealThexpolive.com for the health
and Wealth Expo and then we'll meet you from there. We'll meet you at
the rally on May 24th and you'll have more information.
Head over to nurse shiftchange.com and I will see
(40:13):
you next time. Thanks for joining. Until next time, stay
inspired, stay educated and stay empowered.
Hello, and welcome to this special edition series of the nurse
shift change movement. And I have
Dr. Sharon Goldfarbix, and we are streaming live this episode.
This is a special edition Nurses for Voices podcast series that
we are doing in efforts, in, you know,
efforts to really help there be an understanding of what
(00:22):
we're doing with the nurse of change movement. If you have not heard or
have not already done so, you can go, go ahead and log
on to nurseshiftchange.com and look at
our movement and you'll see a lot about our mission and how
we're looking to enhance humanities ethics,
social justice and science. And without further ado,
(00:45):
I am going to introduce you and allow Dr. Sharon
Garfar to introduce herself to you. And we're going to talk a little bit about
what we're doing here today and why it's so important to have these
conversations.
Hi. Hello. Hello and welcome.
Welcome. I was just introducing you and I know you can, you can do a
(01:07):
better introduction than I can. And I was sharing
what we're going to be, what we're doing with the movement, with the nurse shift
change movement. And I want you to go ahead and introduce
yourself and let everyone know who you are and
why you think this movement is so important and why they should join us. What?
Well, I have been a nurse since
(01:27):
1998, and my
clinical career was mostly working with under
resourced communities. I worked on a mobile medical van that
gave primary care to the unhoused, the undocumented people with
substance use disorder. And I really saw, even before we had
an understanding of what the social determinants of health were,
(01:49):
that some people were not getting the kind of health care that they needed, and
their life circumstances actually was very challenging to their health.
Pretty shortly into my clinical career, I began teaching at
Columbia University, where I taught for about 10 years.
And I also really fell in love with teaching. And I
think that one of the things that's really important to be
(02:11):
a transformational healthcare provider and to really help
your patients, you know, get better, we also have to be
transformational nursing educators and really walk the talk with our
students of what we want to see, you know, in our
time. So I've had a career that spanned both clinical and
academic. And in the last few years, I've gotten a lot more involved in
(02:34):
politics. But I always had this idea in my head
that nurses were not showing up in a political way that I
thought they should. And so with that, I actually worked on
a bill that became a law in California, and
I got A little taste of political power. And that was
interesting to me. And then I was really
(02:56):
excited about Kamala Harris as a presidential candidate. So
I founded Nurses for Harris, and I worked really hard
on her campaign. And I think right
now we're at a crossroads where nurses really need to show up in
a way maybe they haven't ever before. And with
with the statistics that came out that only 4 in 10 nurses
(03:19):
voted, and if you count LVNs and CNAs, there's 7 million of us.
That's millions of nursing voices that weren't heard. And so I
think this is a time when we show up, if not for ourselves
and the policies around, what keeps us happy in the
field, which prevents us from being assaulted, which helps with
ratios. We show up for our patients, and every policy
(03:42):
has ramifications for public health. So I just am really
hoping that nurses can show up. And I
long thought, like, the Million Nurse March, the Million Nurse Nurse. I was very inspired
by the Million Man March, and I talked to a few nursing
friends and leaders I had. And next thing you knew, we were having meetings. And
next thing you know, we had changed it to nurse and ship Change, which is
(04:05):
really a great name for what we want to do. You know, we do
shift work and we're here to change things. Yes. So
wait, you have said so much. Then I have to unpack it.
It's just been so rich. So let's back up
to. You got into politics being a
(04:25):
nurse. Right. And, you know, go from there into
the nurses for Harris, our nurses for Kamala.
Right. Like, so talk a little bit about that. So I think to
a certain extent, like, my background was a political background. And
my grandmother came to this country when she was 15 and worked
at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory, which actually was very famous because
(04:48):
there was a fire and many of the young women perished. My grandmother wasn't working
that day. She worked the day before. And it started the, you know,
labor movement as we knew it. So there has always been,
like, part politics in my family. And, you know,
a lot of my family perished in World War II. So there was the sense,
like, what's happening in your government can have a lot to do with you and
(05:11):
your quality of life. And even if you can be alive at all, you can
go to school. And so there's always been a little bit
of me that's been interested in policy. And I started
working with IV drug users on the street with the
mobile medical van. And at the time, there was no needle exchanges.
And I was asked to Sit on the HIV planning committee for the city of
(05:33):
New York. And I was able to tell stories of my patients. I had one
patient who came to this country with his family and five
siblings. And the siblings were very close, so they shared needles. And four
of them had died of aids. And my patient was HIV
positive. And I remember being able to give the
testimony with my experience
(05:55):
and what I saw with my patients that helped usher in needle
exchanges. There's always been the sense, like you show up for your
patients, whether you're seeing them one on one or supporting families in a difficult
time. And sometimes the best thing we can do for our patients is actually
make some policy change. So the next big thing for me was
Covid. And in California, where I moved 20 years ago,
(06:18):
the board of Registered nursing had a rule that you have to teach at the
same time you're at clinical. And with the start of COVID clinical
disappeared. And I remember thinking, like, wait,
nurses are dying from COVID Nurses are having moral
outrage from how much is put on them. And we're going to stop 30,000
nursing students in their track because they can't go to the hospital,
(06:40):
nor should they go to the hospital. Right. They don't. And we
don't really know what's going on with this. And they have decades to be
nurses, but we have other ways to give students clinical
experiences. So I took that up, that
issue up in arms and reached out to my local
politicians, reached out to the press and helped pen a
(07:02):
bill. And then it turned into a law about the rules
for the California Board of Registered Nursing, what it would look like
during a state of emergency that we could suspend some of the rules.
And so a lot of students got put back. And the dean, where I
was, the school where I was a dean, we actually had all our students graduate
on time. Yes, I remember that very.
(07:24):
The students, a lot of the nurses who graduated at the time
of COVID they were coming out, you know, coming out of school, and they had
hardly had any clinical experience. But I have to tell you, and I have to
be very honest with you, the nurses who started at
that time, my hat goes off to them, it was twofold. I saw
them when it was like the end of their nursing education, but the beginning of
(07:46):
their nursing career. So they were coming in, they didn't have a lot of
clinicals or. Right. They didn't have a lot of clinical experience, but they were
thrown right into the fire. But guess what? I also
noticed that because turnover was so high, a lot of them had
to start Taking charge, like, right after orientation. But
they did it, and they did it. And, like,
(08:08):
even now, some of those nurses are great nurses
right now, and they didn't have the luxury of. Because
I can remember as a nurse leader, like, my nurses would get sometimes, like,
12 weeks of orientation, and these nurses
barely got about six weeks of orientation. But that's what I remember having.
Remember having about six weeks of orientation, and I was on my
(08:31):
own. So it was almost like seeing them go back to what
it was like 20 years ago. But they still. They
came into the fire and they dealt with it. So, I
mean, I just had to jump in and share that
because it's true and good for you. So that was one political
experience. Tell me about Kamala Harris. Like, tell me about that movement.
(08:53):
Nurses. Yeah, I mean, I just really.
I just was so excited about her as a
presidential candidate, and I think she was saying things we needed to
hear, and she could put things together in such a way that
resonated with me. I remember her saying that the average American
doesn't have $600 in their bank, but if we don't have the good
(09:16):
infrastructure of roads and our tires get more wear and tear,
and all of a sudden you need two tires, there goes your 600 bucks.
So that there's a reason, like, we do things
in support of the, you know, the good of the American people.
So. And having been an old ed nurse, you know, I definitely saw a few
terrible blowout car accidents. So I really liked
(09:38):
what she said, and I felt like it was the time to
support a candidate who I felt supported nursing, who supported
public health, who supported justice and equity.
And, you know, I just feel like the
longer I go in my career and the more I really recognize myself
(09:59):
as a leader. You know, there are a lot of great organizations out there, and
I've been involved with a lot of them. I've been involved with Voer. I've
been involved with Nurses for America. You know, I've been involved with this is
Our Shot, where I actually learned a lot about vaccine
hesitancy and mis and disinformation and how
nurses are at a really new time of life where we have to
(10:20):
combat mis and disinformation or one of my former students
call Dr. Tick Tock's always in the room when you're seeing a patient.
So I just. I just learned that I have a voice, and I want to
say the things that I believe. And I think I put things together that in
a way that people don't. And that when I put it together. There's often,
often a political or policy ramification in
(10:43):
what I'm thinking about. So talk a little bit about this is our
shot. Can you share, like, what. What came out of
it and how was it even formed?
So, you know, I think there was this time
where people just totally believed what a doctor said
and totally trusted and believed what nurses said. And that time is
(11:04):
changing, and I think sometimes that's a good thing, but sometimes it's a challenging
thing. So what we knew about COVID was that vaccines
could be helpful and that wearing masks could be helpful. And it was
really shocking to me that so many Americans were pushing back and
saying, I don't want to wear a mask. I don't want to get a vaccine.
And, you know, in nursing, we always struggle, like the rights of the
(11:27):
individual versus the good of society. Right.
And, you know, the understanding of herd immunity and people who can't
get vaccines or who get a vaccine and don't mount an immune
response. We have to protect them by, you know, doing this. And
so we really wanted to come across
combating the information that was both misinformation and
(11:48):
disinformation, things that people just got wrong. But there was no mal intent. But
there was actually a lot of people putting stuff out there with mal intent.
And through research, we found that the most trusted messenger
around healthcare messages isn't NIH or CDC or the
Surgeon General. It's actually your nurse and your doctor. And
so we decided we would do a social media grassroots
(12:11):
campaign talking about, you know, as. As
a provider, you can trust me and get the shot and wear the mask.
And it was amazing because we had only a handful of
people at the table, mostly physicians, two nurses.
And it ended up having 2 billion social media
hits. I mean, we were all over the place. And I got to bring in
(12:33):
national ana, and they did a really touching. This is our
shot video with nurses getting vaccines, including, you know,
some of my former students, some pregnant nurses getting vaccines.
And. And we got to meet, you know, the Surgeon General,
and we got to meet Anthony Fauci, and we sponsored webinars, and we did a
lot of trainings through the California Department of Public
(12:56):
Health. And it was. I felt like it was. I
really wanted to do something for Covid. I wrote personally 94
condolence letters. And so it felt like a way I could be
doing something, taking some action, you know, living the best of
nursing, the heart of nursing, the brain of nursing, to kind of help people
and let them know how to be safe. And
(13:18):
I'm still in touch with these people. We're about to have our five year anniversary
and we're sort of revisiting what this is our shot might look like in this
political climate. But you know, I do think all
us nurses, we really need to, to work on the issues that touch
our patients lives in our lives. Absolutely, absolutely.
Well, bringing it back full circle, so to
(13:41):
speak, when we talk about this as our shot, it sounds
like you guys did an amazing job with COVID Right. And
how about, how do you feel that this all kind of ties
into what's going on now with this administration,
with health care, with DEI being so
weaponized, with so much being dismantled, even,
(14:03):
you know, the injustice of, you know, the health and
Human services. Talk a little bit about that
politically and professionally. Well, I
do think that we're living in very interesting times and I
think we have this sort of perfect storm. So we have low
literacy rates and literacy rates, both math literacy and English
(14:25):
literacy actually went down with the COVID and it hasn't picked up. And
I read a really interesting article in the Atlantic by a Columbia
professor of English literature and that he has students coming to Columbia who've
never read a book in their whole lives. And you know, they're getting into
an Ivy League school and they never read a book. And there was a very
interesting David Brooks editorial about the sort of
(14:48):
waning intellectualism of America is making people not
be able to make as good decisions. And so I think you have this set
of low literacy and then you have low medical literacy and America
has very high, low medical literacy rates. And then you add low
digital literacy. Right. As we all have electronic medical records and
AI is really taking over a lot of health care. So I think people are
(15:10):
a little overwhelmed with what's happening in the world and they're feeling
frustrated. They're feeling frustrated that they have such high co pays when
they carry insurance and pay for insurance and they're frustrated at the
gas tank, how much gas and groceries and
egg prices and people don't want this life
and they want things to be different and they're desperate to make
(15:33):
some changes. I can see the frustration. I see it with my patients, I
see it with my students. I mean, nursing students give up so much to get
through nursing school, you know, give up income, you know, leave their
children and they. And it's a process that takes years
in order to serve. And so people are frustrated. I guess
where I see things is like change can happen in a
(15:55):
kinder and gentler way and it can happen in A way where we
support people and we bring them up. And
so I do think, you know, the policies that
talk about, like, we don't support dei and we don't support
immigrants, and we don't support, you know, science, and we don't
support, you know, our Parks Department, and we don't
(16:18):
support the FDA and we don't support Social Security. For me,
it all. Those are all things that will make America worse, not
better. So I think nurses understand this. Not
all, of course, but I think a lot of nurses understand this.
And, you know, when you have a patient who is depending on Social Security for
their food and medicine, and there are lines and the phone isn't working
(16:40):
and they're being cut off and they have no money at all, you know,
we see how our patients suffer. And I've had patients say it's
food or money. And I don't think. I didn't go into
nursing to treat the social determinants of health. I think everyone should have a
basic income, access to medicine, access to health
care. And, you know, that shouldn't, like, break the bank.
(17:03):
So what I'm hearing is you. You don't agree with
what's happening, but what if you had to share
three things to make nurses understand
what's happening? Because in some parts of the world, healthcare
is under attack, and I think some, in some parts
where people's, you know, nurses, POC books
(17:25):
probably aren't really being affected, they may not understand
the severity of what's happening. So how
can nurse ship change the movement? And
just from your understanding, politically, like, what should we
be doing to help them to understand that we need to
move and we need to move now because this is definitely. We're.
(17:47):
We're in a crisis. And I don't know if there's recognition of
that before it goes any farther. That's a great question. I
do think that the kind of nurse I want to be with my patients and
the kind of nurse I want to be with my students is the kind of
nurse I want to be, like, when I'm talking politics. And I
think, you know, nurses can make a pretty good salary and
(18:08):
you can kind of live in the bubble of, you know, I. With my
nursing salary, I can still get gas and groceries. But I
think it's not true that you won't feel the
effects because, you know, for example, I have a
friend who works in geriatric policy, and they have
predicted that with the removal of immigrants under Trump policies, we are
(18:30):
losing a third third of the workforce who take care of our elderly
that's both at home doing home health work and in,
like, SNFs and nursing homes. So what is it like for the nurse
who's used to doing the meds and overseeing, to lose a third of the
hands on, who are, you know, changing the adult briefs and doing the bathing and
bringing meal trees? I think, I think our lives as nurses will get
(18:52):
harder. And I think as our patients are upset and feeling like
the system isn't working for them, we're going to have
more incivility and more probably physical
assaults. And already one in three nurses is going to be assaulted in their
professional career. So I think, you know,
nursing is a hard job, and if you go to the hospital and you take
(19:14):
care of one patient, you are a hero in my book, a total hero in
my book. But if you can look at the experience of your
work as a nurse or your patients lived reality and say
there's more to it than this one story, you know, there's,
this is happening to many people, and it goes back to some, some
root cause, you know, that have some policy
(19:36):
ramifications. And we know when we, you know, changed,
when we overturned Roe v. Wade, in many states, we are seeing women
die waiting for a therapeutic abortion because they're having a
miscarriage, and they're dying because, you know, providers are scared of
performing an abortion. I just don't think in this day and age,
women should be dying, waiting at the hospital while they're
(19:58):
miscarrying and then bleed out or develop an infection. To me,
that's like something that happened in the Middle Ages. It shouldn't be happening in
2025. So those, those patients dying affect
nurses. And I can tell you, every patient I've had who've died, I
remember everything about them. I could sit here and tell hours of stories of
patients I've lost. And that's where the frustration
(20:20):
comes from. You bring up a great example of Roe v. Wade.
That's where the frustration comes from. It's frustrating when you
have to, your loved one, your wife, you're waiting and watching for
her, watching her basically become septic, watching her
basically be at the bridge of death before someone can actually do
something. And it's unfortunate when we have
(20:42):
incidences like the UnitedHealthcare CEO, right,
that it's, it's very unfortunate. But these are people who are becoming
so frustrated with health care. So by
dismantling Health and Human Services, you are
perpetuating and adding to the problem. This is
not helping, not helping the country. When you do Things like
(21:04):
this. And that's what I want
nurses to understand. Healthcare professionals, we need to understand
that it's all of our problem. It really, really is. Because.
But it's not until it's like you said, we start seeing it at the staffing
level is when, and that's at the front line is
when we really start to hurt or when we start to see hospitals close
(21:27):
down and now they're messing with Medicare and Medicaid. Where do
you see health care going in the next, I was
going to say five years, but the way things are going, such a rapid rate,
like where, where, where do you see it going? Well, I
think, you know, just because I do do work at free clinics,
I see people who often don't come to the doctor until it's too late. Like
(21:49):
I had a 38 year old man walk into my clinic with his two
small daughters in each hand and he came in and he's like, I can't see.
And it turns out his hemoglobin A1C was 13.
His blood sugar was like, couldn't even register on the glucometer
we had. And he had already lost most of his vision from untreated
diabetes, you know, and he was a construction worker supporting
(22:11):
two children. Like it shouldn't get to that point. And I think
it's just kind of getting to that point. And I think, you know, it's very
interesting. Historically, nurses stood for Social Security,
nurses supported Medicare, nurses supported Medicaid, doctors
did not. They were scared of their bottom line, of what this would do
to what they earned. So I think nurses have shown up again and
(22:34):
again in a way that says we're here for our patients, we're here for
the good of our communities. And I think we're at that time
now. So with these tremendous cuts, which ironically are not. The
government is still spending more money than they're just changing
priorities like billions of dollars for
SpaceX and money away from, you know,
(22:56):
health care and you know, things that I think are important.
And so I do think what's going to happen is that.
And there it's this way. Anyway. It used to be like you could go to
the doctor and it was free or it was a very low copay. Now co
pays are prohibitive and drug costs can be prohibited.
And I was talking to this guy, he's a savvy businessman and he went to
(23:17):
the hospital, he needed some surgery, the hospital took his insurance,
the surgeon took his insurance, he went on surgery, was successful,
recovering well, and he gets a bill for $10,000.
Well, it turns out the anesthesiologist was not covered by his
insurance. You know, there's nothing transparent about the
costs. And you know, when your loved one is suffering
(23:40):
or may die, you will do anything. But we shouldn't have to break
the bank. There are models all over the world. You know,
you could do Medicare for all or universal health care
where we don't do this. And it will get worse because
you're talking about 880 billion dollar cut. You know,
maybe as many as 75 million children not having health insurance
(24:02):
anymore. You know, and I think it's like this, there's this
perfect storm. The number one cause of death is gun violence to
children. Sometimes it's self inflicted, sometimes it's
accidental, sometimes it's school shootings. But it's like if
you don't do gun control legislation, you
know, how many children do we bury before we say this is enough? You
(24:24):
know, so. Well, that's a good point because you,
you, you, you actually bring up something we have. We're paying to send
people to space, right? You see the women who just went to space
and we're paying for that, but yet
we're cutting healthy human services and we have all of
these plants, planes falling out of the sky. And
(24:46):
you can't tell me that this is not related
to some type of staffing crisis or some type of cut that took
place somewhere in the government, right? You just can't tell me that
because we have never had this many planes falling out the sky unless they
were happening and it just wasn't making the news. So. But
yet we have money to send people to space. Well, I think there's
(25:08):
this, this energy behind our current administration which is
like the answer lies in privatization and we'll just
let private places take over that. But we have seen this with the
whole development of AI. It used to be that all the AI was done in
universities and there were checks and balances about universities and it was
about the academic pursuit, not about the bottom line of how rich can
(25:30):
we get. And there were ways you had to like vet before you could do
studies at universities. You know, you have to, you have to apply and show it's
not going to hurt anyone. Well, AI has totally moved into the private sector
and the AI for public good is changed to AI
for profit. And so, you know, when things
privatize, that doesn't make them better and it doesn't even save the government
(25:52):
money necessarily. So I think it would be really great if
nurses kind of said like we demand
policies that support our patients health and whether
it's environmental stuff, reproductive stuff, gun controls,
you know, AI that's fair and equitable
because it's not. Right now I have a friend whose husband like bought an
(26:15):
iWatch to check his physical training and he's dark skinned and the
iWatch doesn't read his metrics. You know, we know
that a lot of racism built in AI so we can either say like we
don't have to deal with racism and too bad for a bunch of people or
we say no. Like we have done research and we know diverse
workforce, good patient care or whatever, race, class,
(26:37):
gender makes the world a better place. Rising tides lift all
boats. And so I want to put the energy there and I hope
more nurses do. Absolutely. And I can appreciate
how you mentioned that, how the bias in
AI and it's so funny and
I probably even shouldn't even mention this because there's a gentleman who has
(27:00):
created his own AI and I think it's
called Joe. And I may have to go back and correct
myself, but it's an AI version that is non biased
and this is actually a gentle. It's an African American gentleman who
created his own AI system to combat,
to your point, the systemic racism, the systemic bias that is in
(27:22):
our everyday chatgpt. I say that to say you're right, it's,
it's interesting how, and I don't think people really think about that either
because it wasn't something I thought about until I read, you know,
until I was introduced to this gentleman about how he
created this, his own AI system. And I actually thought about having him
as a guest at my upcoming summit, the Health and well, that's all on May
(27:45):
15 and 16. Because I was like this is so interesting, like people need
to hear about this. I would recommend, if you're interested in that, there's out of
Yale professor named Dr. Rupa
Benjamin and she has founded the Ida B. Wells center
for Digital Equity and she's written several books
on digital equity and her work is super important. She just won
(28:07):
the MacArthur genius grant. Her work is so important. I love
it. I love it. And this is important. So and this is what I mean.
And this is how we shift change. And that's why like you
said, we have the perfect title for the movement, Nurse Shift
Change. And I want to hear your opinion. How can nurses get
involved more politically? How can nurses
(28:29):
be a part of the movement? And what, what three
strategies would you give them to empower them to be a part of
the movement? That we're trying to build. Oh, that's a great question.
Well, I would say that, that nurses have to
be brave. We have to be brave all the time. And if being
involved in politics feels scary, it's okay because you can
(28:52):
be brave. And we are here to help and support. And this is a really
powerful movement. So Please show up May 24th for our
March on Washington or in your local state.
We really want to have the voice. And I think there are so many ways
to get politically active. I think you can take to social media
and you can get to know who are your legislative representatives
(29:14):
and comment on their social media page. You can
download the app called five calls, and it
literally like, what issues are important to you? And here's the letter you
can write, here's the phone call you can make with the script,
and it tells you who to reach out to. I think you know,
showing up for hearings, even your, like, board of
(29:35):
nursing hearings, often policy is discussed there. And
really like getting involved either with a political campaign, your
League of women Voters with voter. There are so many
organizations that really are committed to,
like, making politics for the people. And
nurses know people like nobody else's business. And so if we just
(29:57):
show up, if we write some letters, if we make some calls. I wrote 9,000
postcards during the campaign for Harris.
I what was the name of the organization I bought the postcards for? But I
literally had people come to my house, ordered pizza, and I was like, we're
writing postcards all day long, postcards
(30:18):
to a lot of swing states. And everyone had a little
sticker or a little smiley face. We tried to personalize it. So
I think there are a lot of ways to do it. And, you know, there
are clubs and groups and you can join, you know, your
Democratic or Republican
national Committee and just get involved. I mean, the thing is,
(30:39):
is I cannot stress enough that we nurses, like, we understand
policy politics in a way that no one else does. And if our voice
is not there, our patients won't get what they need.
Absolutely, absolutely. And something that I've always said
is because I think nurses
sometimes feel that we're the most trusted, but I feel like we're not the
(31:01):
most respect expected. And because of that, a lot
of times nurses may not feel, and this is my opinion,
may not feel that they have a voice, hence nurses with
voices. But in order to affect change,
we really have to have a voice at the legislative level. And
to your point, we are the perfect people to answer
(31:24):
questions, especially for someone who doesn't know
Anything about health care, to be in certain roles and
make certain decisions about vaccines, I think is absurd.
Right. Where we can speak to that. Right. And we can
speak to the importance of these things. And I think, you know, historically,
nurses have been socialized to be nice and helpful and kind. And
(31:46):
I think, you know, a lot of people choose nursing who have
those personality traits. And I would just push back and say, sometimes
the nicest thing you can do is like, scream and shout
and make a stink. And if it's patient's life on the line,
you can't be nice. You might have to, like, really make stink. And
I mean, I heard a story by a colleague of mine who, you know,
(32:10):
this pediatric patient was about to go home, and the vital
signs look good and the, you know, the clinical indicators look good, but she
had the gut feeling that this patient should not go home.
She said to the doctor, don't release this patient. This doctor actually really
trusted her and knew her. She was well seasoned and said, okay. And certainly
what happened in the middle of the night, the kid had coded. Had the kid
(32:32):
been home, they might not have survived. But I think if you have that conversation
with a doctor and they're like, no, they're going home, you might have to say,
no, I really don't want them to go home. And maybe I'm not going to
be the nice person because I so passionately believe
in saving this patient's life. Absolutely. And I think
that's a part of the nursing frustration. Nurses
(32:54):
are tired and nurses are exhausted because there's a
huge push for
profit, right? So when we talk about profit over
patients, there's a huge push forward to your point.
Some may discharge the patient because guess what? Well, guess what?
Their stay is not going to be covered. Whether or not you can look at
(33:15):
this patient and clearly tell they don't need to go home.
Not every doctor would have done that, right? Or.
Or you have the press. Ganey. Let's talk about
press. Kaney, for a second. Our center for, you know, our cms,
where hospitals get reimbursed according to how nice
we are or how responsive we are or our patient experience.
(33:37):
So what happens is there's a huge push, right, for
nurses to not only be nice, yes, we are taught to be nice. We're supposed
to be respectful. We're supposed to provide customer service. But
above that, we supposed to make sure that we're answering that call bell
in a timely fashion. Right? We got to make sure that our patients don't fall,
even though we're short Staffed. Right. We got to make sure
(33:59):
that there's so many things that we got to make sure, make sure that patient
doesn't get pressure, injury, but yet we have all of the people who
are taking certain positions. They're being deported. Right. So
I'm saying all of this loosely, but the point
is there's a pressure on nurses
to. Even though we know what we should be doing, there's also
(34:22):
a pressure of what we have to do. And there's no
in between. We need our patient experience scores to
be 99 or above or 95 and above. And
it's all about patient experience. It's all about. But you're not teaching
the nurses. You're teaching them to a patient experience score, but
you're not teaching them how to be nurses. And in the middle, they're being
(34:45):
frustrated and you're just giving them, making them do more with
less, with less resources. We're taking away
more resources that we need for health care. And it's not
just health care being affected. So many different industries
are being affected, and nurses have always been the champions,
to your point. They're very nurturing. We're caring. We're taught to be respectful.
(35:07):
We're taught to be nice. And then when we put our foot down, sometimes that
can put us in jeopardy. I say all this to say, where
is the. Where's the bottom line? And this is why it's important for
nurses to come out and be a part of a movement that we're really trying
to shift all of this, because when we talk about social justice,
sciences, humanities, the ethics, all of
(35:29):
this, this is what we stand for. We're standing for the
staffing, were standing for the workplace violence. Because you
also made a good point in saying how now we're putting our healthcare workers
to be even more under attack, because so many
people, Americans or community, they're frustrated.
We're frustrated, too. This is why it's so important to come out
(35:51):
and be a part of this movement. This is how we shift change
collectively. We have to have a voice. I know we're tired, but we really
have to come together in order to shift. We have to. We have to
shift. We have to shift the pendulum, because right now what's happening isn't working
right. And I would say that nurses getting so tired and what I would
really call, like moral outrage is. Is really a political
(36:13):
issue and a policy issue, too, because no one should have a
job that's so hard that they feel burnt out. And I think there are so
many structural issues. Nurses are not paid for what we do. We're
part of the room rate in the hospital. So if you're the kind of nurse
who your patient gets their meal tray right away, their water's always filled, their
IVs changed in time, pain management is done in a timely
(36:35):
manner. You spend time with them, and you're the nurse who never
even shows up, who hides away in the nurses lounge and plays, you
know, a game on your phone the whole time. You're of the same value to
the hospital. You're part of the roommate. And I think that's a problem. And I
think we have to understand that, you know, but the
elephant in the room is we actually get money in hospitals for patients
(36:57):
getting sick. And the best nurses keep people well. So we
actually are in a way, expensive to the system. So
I think, you know, you want. You want nurses to be.
Spend more time so patients have better satisfaction, yet you make
them document, document on an emr and they're looking at the computer and
not the phone, and you're giving them too many patients and you're giving them too
(37:19):
long shifts, and you're requesting and threatening them with patient
abandonment if they don't work overtime, you know, and you
don't, like, they might have children or sick parents, and you're like, no, you have
to stay. And I think we're just not
setting a standard of work for nurses that really lets
us shine and really supports us. And everyone
(37:41):
loses. Right? Doctors like working with really confident nurses.
Patients and families love competent nurses. We love being able
to give the best care to patients. But the system is about money. And the
system is about paying hospital CEOs and
pharmaceutical CEOs and insurance CEOs, and it's not
about the care. It's about. Yeah,
(38:02):
yeah, great point, Great point. And this is again, all the reason
that we want you to come out and Support us on May
24th. It's not just support. Supporting us is supporting a movement. Right. So in
your state. I'm in New Jersey. So if you are in New Jersey, please come
join me. You can log on to nurse shiftchange.com
and you can sign up to be a volunteer. Dr. Danielle McCamey
(38:25):
did a great job at hosting a volunteer
orientation last weekend and over this past weekend,
actually. And this is just. And this is how you shift change. So nurses are
getting involved. We need more. We want more because May
24th is the day. Dr. Sharon, if there's anything
that you'd like to share before we close out. Thank you so much for coming
(38:47):
on. It was such a delight to talk to you and thanks for inviting
me. And I'm just excited because I think the power in nursing
is really going to make important changes and we're going to have
jobs we like better and healthier patients and more quality of life.
So it's worth. This is a flight worth undertaking.
Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, stick around. I'm just going to say
(39:09):
goodbye to everyone and thank you so much for coming on once
again. Hi everyone. Thanks for coming on. Well, there you have it. Thank
you so much for joining us for this special edition Nurse Shift Change
series on Nurses with Voices podcast. Remember to join us
on May 24th. Log on to nurse shiftchange.com and
before May 24th, you can definitely join us at the Health and Wealth
(39:31):
Expo Live Summit that is taking place in Mount Laurel, New
Jersey. And head on over to
healthandwealthexpolife.com to register. This
summit is really addressing the systemic bias in health care.
We are looking at the lack of leadership, the lack of mentorship and
blending and advocating for health, wealth and
(39:52):
wellness. So please log on to
HealthAndWealThexPolive.com and join us. So it's two duties
that you have. Head over to HealthAndWealThexpolive.com for the health
and Wealth Expo and then we'll meet you from there. We'll meet you at
the rally on May 24th and you'll have more information.
Head over to nurse shiftchange.com and I will see
(40:13):
you next time. Thanks for joining. Until next time, stay
inspired, stay educated and stay empowered.
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