The Gritty Nurse
The Gritty Nurse is back, and NO TOPIC is off-limits! Launching in September 2025 with host Amie Archibald Varley, this podcast is dedicated to amplifying the voices of nurses and others who work in healthcare to explore the most pressing issues they face. Join Amie as she continues to take a deep dive into powerful and often uncomfortable topics. Though shared experriences, storytelling and the discussions surrounding the intersection of power, we will navigate the challenges facing healthcare nationally and internationally--as of course--challenge the status quo. The show's core belief remains unwavering: that compassion is the through understanding diverse narratives and perspectives is KEY. Amie will continue to explore hot-button issues like mental health, social justice, women's health, and the daily challenges within the nursing profession. The Gritty Nurse is more than just a podcast—it's a community where nurses and healthcare workers can feel heard, empowered, and recognized as the community leaders they truly are. Change is HERE.
Episodes
Nursing students in Canada and the U.S. can rack up 800–1,400+ mandatory clinical hours before they graduate — and not one of them is paid.
In this episode, The Gritty Nurse Amie Archibald-Varley, traces that unpaid-labour model back to its actual origin: Florence Nightingale's 1860s training school and the 2,000+ hospital "training schools" that turned her vision into free ward staff within a generation. From there, Am...
This week, grief was impossible to avoid — Hayden Panettiere, Dolly Parton, Tim Curry, and Peter Cullen all left us within days of each other, and the collective mourning was loud, public, and completely normal. But what happens when the person who dies isn't a celebrity — it's your patient, your coworker, or someone in your own family, and you're the healthcare provider who's supposed to hold it together a...
Would your hospital admit that staff get assaulted on the job — in public, with real numbers?
St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton just did. And it's exposing a crisis most hospitals would rather not talk about.
In this new episode on The Gritty Nurse Podcast with Amie Archibald-Varley, we examine the case of Lindsay Clancy through the lens of postpartum psychosis and the catastrophic gaps in mental health care that allowed it to go unrecognized and untreated. I start with the question that should be asked before every postpartum antidepressant prescription: has t...
Frontline pressures have reached a boiling point. In this swapcast episode, nurses Erica and Amie tackle the wave of nursing strikes across Massachusetts (MNA) and British Columbia (BCNU), exploring what these recent labor actions reveal about the true state of healthcare.
Together, they dive into the harsh...
How do we reclaim the narrative of modern nursing across generations?
In this episode of The Gritty Nurse Podcast, host Amie Archibald-Varley sits down with ext...
Content note: this episode discusses workplace violence, suicidal ideation and psychological harm in a clinical/workplace setting.
This week, almost seven years to the day since I walked out of a role where I once hid under my ...
With a growing mental health crisis and a system bogged down by waitlists and rigid silos, a powerful paradigm shift is happening across Canada: the rise of nurse-led psychotherapy. In this educational episode, we sit down with
How do we move from a healthcare system that only reacts to illness, to one that actively empowers patients?
In this episode of The Gritty Nurse Podcast, host Amie Archibald-Varley sits down with Mike Serbinis, the visionary CEO and founder of League,...
What happens when a nurse picks up a pen and refuses to stay quiet? She becomes Tilda Shalof — ICU nurse, bestselling author, patient advocate, and one of Canada's most powerful voices for the nursing profession.
In this episode of The Gritty Nurse Podcast, host Amie Archibald-Varley sits dow...
Do you actually know your rights as a nurse?
What does it take to go from the operating room to the courtroom — and why should every nurse care?
In this episode of The Gritty Nurse Podcast, host Amie Archibald-Varley sits down with the remarkable Dr. Cambria Nwosu, RN — a nurse whose career has taken her from high-stakes surgical suites to the frontlines of legal nursing consulting and healthcare policy advocacy....
Women's health needs a ton of work, and it is a hill we are willing to die on. In this powerful episode of The Gritty Nurse Podcast, host Amie Archibald-Varley sits down with Tina Bitangcol—widely known as Mama Nurse Tina—for an urgent, unfiltered conversation about the realities of women's healthcare, maternal mortality, and systemic disparitie...
In this urgent episode, host Amie Archibald-Varley sits down with Dr. Michelle Acorn, CEO of the Nurse Practitioners' Association of Ontario (NPAO), to rip the band-aid off a system that refuses to evolve.
Dr. Acorn pulls no punches: Nurse Practitioners are trained, capa...
What does Florence Nightingale have to do with authoritarianism? More than nursing wants to admit.
In this episode of The Gritty Nurse Podcast, host Amie Archibald-Varley and guest Meg Lambrych, RN tackles one of nursing's most uncomfortable questions: why can't nur...
The healthcare system is flatlining, and it's time for a professional resuscitation.
This Nursing Week, join Dr. Danielle McCamey and Gloria E. Barrera for a heavy-hitting breakdown of the HESS framework—Humanity, Ethics, Social Justice, and Science—as the ultimate toolkit for systemic reform. From the grassroots power of Nurses Shift Change to the national Report for Duty call to action, we explore how to move beyond t...
In this episode on The Gritty Nurse, host Amie Archibald-Varley sits down with Dr. William Berk as he shares his transformative journey from a traditional emergency medicine career to exploring the depths of mental health and emotional well-being. After graduating from Brown University and completing his residency at Mount Sinai, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Berk faced the overwhelming challenges of working in a high-pressure ...
"Normal is a setting on your dryer—not a standard for your health."
In this episode of The Gritty Nurse, we're joined by Shirley Weir, the "Vagina Health Evangelist" and founder of Menopause Chicks. Shirley didn't just s...
Nursing is not a destination; it is a foundation. For too long, we have been told that leaving the bedside is 'leaving nursing,' but the truth is the exact opposite. By stepping into nontraditional roles—in tech, policy, research, and entrepreneurship—we aren't abandoning our profession; we are expanding its power. The future of healthcare depends on nurses who are brave enough to redefine where...
Nursing and the arts are both built on the raw, unspoken language of the human soul; one heals the body through rhythm and care, the other heals the spirit through melody and expression—but both require a radical empathy that can only be sustained when we protect our own light, because you cannot pour from an empty vessel when you've given the very best of yourself away to your work
In this powerhouse episode of The Gritty Nu...
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