Empowered Ease
Welcome to Empowered Ease, hosted by Jenn Ohlinger—a holistic coach,
& founder of The Moonflower Collective. Join us each week as we delve into the transformative stories of healers, health practitioners, and everyday women like you, challenging the patriarchal framework through empowerment and holistic healing. Through engaging storytelling, our podcast highlights each woman's unique journey toward embracing their feminine gifts, trusting their body, and prioritizing their mind, body, and soul. Discover how by empowering ourselves, we can pave the way for stronger relationships and a more balanced world. Women heal in community come find yours.
Empowered Ease
Nursing's Powerhouse: Leanne Meier’s Mission to Transform Healthcare
Hi!! I would love to hear from you!
What happens when nurses take healthcare into their own hands? The answer might just revolutionize medicine as we know it.
Leanne Meier has spent nearly five decades as a nurse, witnessing firsthand how our profit-driven healthcare system continues to fail both patients and providers. Rather than accepting this broken reality, she's pioneered two groundbreaking organizations that are creating tangible alternatives to traditional healthcare delivery.
Through Nurses Transforming Healthcare, Leanne and her colleagues have developed a community-based model inspired by public utilities. Instead of treating symptoms after they've become severe, this approach focuses on prevention, education, and holistic wellbeing tailored to each community's specific needs. The results speak for themselves – in pilot programs across the country, nurse practitioners are dramatically reducing hospital readmissions while improving patient satisfaction and outcomes.
Meanwhile, with Power Up Nursing, Leanne is tackling another critical aspect of healthcare transformation: the wellbeing of nurses themselves. "We determine what we're going to educate nurses on. We determine what work nurses are going to do," she explains, highlighting how nurses must reclaim control of their profession. This initiative is already making waves, with major hospital systems implementing innovative approaches to nurse self-care, including health-tracking technology that helps nurses monitor and improve their own wellbeing.
Perhaps most exciting is how these concepts are already working in the real world. Her Self Help clinics in Minnesota embody this patient-centered approach, offering 90-minute consultations focused on understanding the whole person. With five locations already operating and exponential growth of 400 new clients monthly, the hunger for this alternative model is undeniable.
For nurses feeling burnt out or disillusioned, Leanne offers both hope and practical advice. Through connecting with like-minded colleagues and prioritizing self-nurture, nurses can rediscover their purpose and power. As she powerfully states, "Imagine if nurses could infect the entire world" with their compassion and care-focused approach.
Ready to be part of healthcare's transformation? Visit powerupnursing.com to learn how you can join this growing movement of nurses creating the future of healthcare.
Currently connecting and influencing nurses and healthcare providers to collaborate on creating a Nurse-Led Integrative Medicine Model to revolutionize healthcare by focusing on creating and maintaining patient Holistic health from cradle to grave. Check out https://NursesTransformingHealthcare.org
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Welcome back to Empowered Ease. Today. I am beyond excited to introduce you to a woman I deeply admire Leanne Meyer. Leanne is quite simply who I aspire to be a true force for good in the nursing community and beyond. Leanne's dedication to transforming healthcare and supporting nurses around the globe is nothing short of inspiring. She is a powerhouse in the world of nursing and a true advocate for holistic healthcare. As the host of Once a Nurse, always a Nurse podcast and a driving force behind nurses transforming healthcare, leanne is connecting and empowering nurses worldwide to revolutionize patient care. Join us as we explore her decades of experience, her vision for the future of healthcare and the impact work she's doing to make a difference in the lives of so many. Get ready to be motivated and enlightened as we dive into her journey and learn from her incredible wisdom.
Speaker 2:Okay, so, yeah. So, leanne Meyer, I grew up in Minnesota. I backed into nursing in 1973 because it was the middle of the Vietnam War. I had two brothers that were conscientious objectors. I thought that going to college had, you know, warped their minds or something. My dad, it was like.
Speaker 2:Our household was sort of like a war zone, with my brothers on one side, my parents on the other, and I was sort of the messenger behind enemy lines, trying to communicate to each side. And it took me years to figure out I wasn't helping, I was making it worse. They just needed to, you know, figure out how to talk to each other. And once I got out of there they worked it out. So, at any rate, I backed into nursing, thinking that it was a more protected environment, and I went there thinking there's no way I'm ever going to be able to make it through this. So I bought the cheapest of everything shoes, stethoscope, scissor, everything and then I discovered, hey, you know, this is kind of really interesting to me and it's sort of a good match with who I am and my personality, and so I have now been a nurse for almost 50 years.
Speaker 1:I love that the peacekeeper you sound like you're the peacekeeper, the one that wants to always help out. I can relate to that Always trying to fix things and help everyone out.
Speaker 2:That's always been it, and now I understand its personality, with Myers-Briggs ENFJ Feeling very, very high, so yeah, so it was almost like I can't take credit for it, because it's sort of you know in my genes.
Speaker 1:I love, I love taking those personnel. I haven't taken that test in probably 15 years but mine was ENFT, if I remember correctly.
Speaker 2:I have to retake it and see if it's still the same.
Speaker 1:I have to remember that I thought it was T. Maybe it was P, then if the T is coming out, I'll have to look at it.
Speaker 2:F and T are on the same scale.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'll have to look it up again and then see.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay, interesting. I love that. I love taking those tests and understanding a little bit more about it. It helps me operate in the world.
Speaker 2:I just took what was it called the disc assessment? And have you taken that one before? Yeah, I just took it recently. I had taken it years ago and then I did it in connection with emotional what is it? Eq, emotional quantification or whatever, and that was with oh, I've forgotten her name, but that's basically what she's doing now is stuff like that Emotional quotient? I guess it is IQ, eq, and it was very interesting.
Speaker 2:It came out exactly how most of the you know the tests that I take come out, because I'm very, very clear about those things and I found out in training for Myers-Briggs myself. I found out that I am pretty unique. Only 3% of women and 1% of men have my type. Really, yeah, so we, you know my whole life I felt like I was this odd duck out and you know, my brothers thought I was nuts. And you know where'd you come from? You know, milkman mailman couldn't have been from our dad. So I, until I really started to study personality assessments, I was like, oh my goodness, now I get it my goodness, now I get it.
Speaker 1:I love that. I love that Mine was. I came out the. The disc one was inspirational, but I loved reading about it because I was like, oh, that doesn't sound like me. But then, when you dig deeper, it's like this is about control. Like you want everyone to be happy, so you're trying to control everyone, how everyone feels, by helping them change to feel better. And I was like, oh, because everything has a good and a bad. But I was like, oh, yep, all that's true.
Speaker 2:I came out inspirational on that one too, and previously, when I had taken it like 20, 30 years ago, it was um director oh, that was my second.
Speaker 1:That was like a little below it, but the eye was real high, which my all my co-workers fell on the bottom of that scale. They were nowhere near that. They're all on that. I think it's c and yeah, they're all C and S. So I was like that's so weird.
Speaker 2:I'm the old BDI. That's more of the sensing and the doers. Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 1:Well, I know you are highly involved in some organizations now that I definitely want to talk about because I try to. So you're you're involved in power up nursing, which you're going to have to educate me a little. Well, you have to educate me about all this, but you're also involved in nurses transforming healthcare, um, and, and many other things. Not to at all cut you short, or yeah, so, but I try to explain nurses transforming to health healthcare to people a lot, because I know, you know, as a working with so many nurses and in healthcare people we're always talking about the healthcare system is failing. I think it's known by most people out there.
Speaker 1:We've talked about this on this show and this is an alternative because you know, there's this view that it's not going to get fixed from the inside. It's a system that is full on course and there's not a whole lot of redirecting. We're going to be able to do so. Nurses, transforming Healthcare is an alternative, kind of side-by-side idea for healthcare. That's different and I'm not skilled enough to explain it, so would you tell us a little bit about it? I think it's amazing and I just wish more people knew about it.
Speaker 2:So, nurses, transforming Healthcare came out of my talk show international talk show for nurses that I started in 2017. Actually, I got pushed into that too. I had no idea that I could do anything to do with something as technological as you know doing an international podcast. So, at any rate, I did that for a number of years, and so I was talking to people all over the world and I just started learning so much about what was happening in healthcare around the world, but also what was happening in nursing, and I was amazed how much the similarities are to both of them, to those things. So one of the first people that I had interviewed was Dr John Silver, and he came on. He's a very low key, laid back kind of guy, but he spent about 20 years, went through hospitals by starting out as a respiratory tech, and then liked what nurses were doing, did the AD and the BSN, msn, and then started asking why is healthcare so screwed up and why are nurses not in charge of their own profession? And those were his two questions. He thought, okay, I'll do an independent PhD and I'll answer that question and maybe come up with an economic plan that could change how all of this is running. So in the meantime he thought oh boy, you know I don't know much about economics. I probably should get an MBA also so that I can speak to people. So he did all of that and in the course of it he came up with a plan.
Speaker 2:In the 1930s they had the same problem with electricity that we've had with things like the internet and you know other aspects like that. It's like those big companies were happy to bring it to the cities you know lots of money there but they didn't want to bring them to the rural areas and individual farms. So my grandfather was actually a recipient of electricity through the Rural Electric Association, which was a public utility model we know it now in the United States probably most closely by sewer and water and in some places electricity. And so what he started to think is could this model fit with health care? And with some you know various tweaks he was able to get it to match exactly the seven goals that he had started out with, and so he spent 20 years tweaking it, working on it, talking to everybody he could talk to doctors, economists, nurses, you know anybody and everybody and was getting nowhere. And so when I had him on, it was like these light bulbs are going off in my head and thinking, oh my gosh, why aren't people knocking down your door? So I started trying to promote him and realized how difficult it was to do.
Speaker 2:And then, a couple of years later, in 2020, I interviewed Kim Evans, who had been in an ICU. She was sick and tired of seeing all these chronic people coming back and back and back again and feeling like all of these things could have been prevented. Things could have been prevented and she decided to go off on her own, got an APRN, she trained with some amazing people on nutrition and all kinds of things and opened up her own integrative medicine clinic about 22 years ago or so. She's been running it herself, has had great success with it, has had opportunities again talking to people, listening to people and working with what worked for them to be able to get people so that they were not having problems with diabetes and they were not having to take medications and were doing very much better by changing the foods they were eating and things like that. So she at some point decided that health care was a mess and she wanted to see what she could do to contribute to making it better. She wrote a book called Transforming Health Care Healing you, me and Our Broken Disease Care System. I found the book had her on and I was like yes, yes, yes. So again, my secret power, I've decided, is connecting people. And so I connected John and Kim and then I was like gee, I'd like to be in the room, a fly on the wall while they're talking. So one was in Florida, one was in Kentucky and I'm in Minnesota. And so we started meeting every Saturday and we're just talking about. You know how this could come together and what could it mean and what could we call it.
Speaker 2:And in the meantime, in January of 2021, I interviewed Kathleen Bartholomew, who was most known for lecturing and talking about nurse-to-nurse hostility, poor communication between nurses and doctors, all of that kind of stuff, and just really had done very well, a very successful career doing that. And then COVID hit in March of 2020, or at least hit here in the United States, and she for about nine months until 2021, she had been knocked out of the lecture circuit and she started thinking so what have I accomplished? I've done a lot of training, I have talked all over the country and in many places around the world. What has changed and she got really depressed, feeling like nothing's changed. Nothing has changed. All of this talking for 20-some years and nothing has changed. So I introduced her to Kim and John and she was the same way. She was like, yes, this is what I want to do with the rest of my life.
Speaker 2:And so the four of us started meeting every Saturday and just talking and connecting with other people, and it grew in 2022. We incorporated as an organization, a nonprofit, and what we began to, and then one of the first things that happened was Kathleen let's see now it actually goes through me again a nurse practitioner who was just finishing her training had to do a community service and she had connected with a church in the area, kind of Spicewood and she got together with them. She said you know, would you be willing to let me grow a garden here and have people come in that need food? We'll have a food bank one day a week. And so that started happening and as people were coming in, she realized, oh my goodness, these people need a lot more than food. And it turned out Spicewood was kind of a community of very, very wealthy and very, very poor, and that particular summer was when I know they're having it again now and it's sort of becoming a common thing.
Speaker 2:But 120 degree days, and some of these people were homeless, or if they had, you know, maybe they're living in a trailer that had maybe electricity but no running water, just things like that. They were in and out of hospitals, some of them having to stay as long as you know, a couple months, so you can imagine the bill on that. Then they would discharge them and give them 32 pages of post-discharge notes which they didn't understand any of, and maybe three or four very important medications stuck in the middle which they had no place to go and no money to buy them. So anyway, she started working with them and the church was gracious enough to pay her to do assessments nurse practitioner assessments on these people and to come up with care plan, individualized care plan. And then they did hire an RN who had three months to be able to work with them and try and meet all the things on the care plan. Well, the outcome of that in just three months was mind-boggling and she even figured out how much money she had saved you know, the county and the hospitals by helping these people not to have to go back into the system. It was just so exciting, it's so interesting.
Speaker 2:So we decided that what if we took, like a zip code, this was a small little community of actually it was a fairly large area, but it was the Zip. What if we took a small zip code of, say, 3,000 to 5,000 people and we did an assessment based on what they think they want in their community and what they see as the needs, go back and work with the people who are interested in working with a nurse practitioner, be able to show to Medicare and Medicaid how much we can save and how satisfied, you know, the clients can be. And so that's what we've started in New Hampshire, university of New Hampshire. Our current president is Emily Spensky and she works at the University of New Hampshire. Our current president is Emily Spensky and she works at the University of New Hampshire and she was teaching, nursing and working with the public health department, and that woman who was in the public health department teaching knew a community that she was connected and was working with that she thought would be perfect for it. So that's what we're doing.
Speaker 2:The assessment was put together partly by John and then combining some of what Jean Watson had come up with. We ran it by her to get her permission and approval, and that happened last fall. Excuse me, I start talking and I start coughing. And then, the spring, they went through the data to see what they had found. They went back to the community and said here's what we learned. What would you like us to do? And now in the fall this fall the nurse practitioners and public health students will be doing that work. Public health students will be doing that work. So I don't know if I answered your question or not but that's no.
Speaker 1:You added so much depth to it and I want to simplify what I understand from the program to be, which is kind of how I try to explain to people and then you correct me if I'm wrong a little bit.
Speaker 1:But what it sounds like to start with is kind of where we have this huge lack of care in rural areas and smaller communities, of just family health, like just primary care we're lacking in small communities.
Speaker 1:So this is like a community-based program that would be like a utility, like people pay, like a utility bill to their area.
Speaker 1:So it would be like your water bill or something like that that people pay into and this service would kind of assess the area, assess the community for the community's needs and then allow the community to decide how to spend that money.
Speaker 1:So from what I remember when we talked about this before, it could be as simple as like a park or or a place for for the elderly. There's not like elderly care for people to go to work or childcare, or it could be rides to a medication drop-offs or rides to doctor's appointments or whatever the community's need is not. Those are the limited things that I can think of that communities need, but it would be. What the community needs is what they would decide to invest their money and which is preventative type care, which is what our health care system is really lacking, and we touch on this in this podcast a lot, but we, we spend a lot treating symptoms and investing in care and how to treat all these new things and new medications, but we spend very little time educating people on how to prevent and turn around what's going on with them.
Speaker 1:We just treat what it is and keep rolling.
Speaker 2:There's so many basic things too. You assume you go into your grocery store and the food that's there is good for you, and it turns out, surprise, surprise, it's. You know, the whole center part of it is probably not only not good for you but bad for you and designed that way. And so you know teaching people what else can they do? Maybe if they do realize that what they're eating or what they're doing is not working for them, they don't know what else to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, education, which is a free thing, a part of this. Yeah, I forgot about that, even mentioning that, how big that is. Yeah, having someone to educate each person on their specific needs.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so essentially it's holistic. Is holistic care from a nurse practice, nurse theory, preface or you know a model and the idea that this could be expanded if we could. Instead of you know we see, the problem with healthcare as it is now over the last 30 years is that it was designed to make money off of sick people. That's how it was designed. It is working perfectly well in that manner. The problem is it is not sustainable. They know it's not sustainable.
Speaker 1:Infinite growth is not a sustainable healthcare model. Right which?
Speaker 2:is business growth, yeah, so I mean, you know they're just wanting to take as much out of it as they can until it collapses, and then, I don't know, they go to Mars, I guess. So what we're realizing is that there needs to be something that isn't just trying to move the deck chairs on the Titanic. This health care that we have as it is is going to collapse. It's just a matter of what are going to be the factors that you know are the final blow, but ultimately it will collapse because it's not designed to continue. So we started thinking in terms of okay, let's think ahead. What could be? You know, let's just take off where we are now and what we have known for the last 30, 40 years. Let's think about, completely out of the box, what could it be From a nursing point of view, from doctor's points of view, where would be the kind of healthcare we would want to work within?
Speaker 1:So I'm assuming that your organization is looking for people who think like this right now to help you with that correct Like looking, because I'm not an outside the box thinker but I am. I'll do what you tell me to do. So but I'm sure you guys are looking for people to like help you with these like outside the box how to implement this stuff too. I wanted to put that in there because if you're interested in getting involved, they are looking for people to help.
Speaker 2:And this is really a ground zero. I mean, we are really starting from the basement and working our way up. So when we first started talking about this, people would tell us it's impossible. Healthcare is too big, you can't take on healthcare. And we said we're not trying to take on healthcare. We want to start something that can show what it could be, and that's what we're trying to do is creating little communities where we can create data, where we can show what it could be and how much people love it, and so that's kind of what we've been working toward. Let's see, where was I so?
Speaker 1:yeah, are there places that this oh go ahead? Sorry.
Speaker 2:So what we were, you know, recognizing is that it doesn't really matter what other people are saying. You know, some people said, well, it could take 25 years to get this going, and I said, sure might, but what if we don't start trying to do something? Then you're another few.
Speaker 1:Where will we be? Nowhere.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So we just said, okay, well, we're going to play around with it. And now those same people that were naysaying are coming back and saying go for it.
Speaker 1:I love that I love that, yeah.
Speaker 2:So as far as is this already out there? That was a miracle I just found out recently. In the last year or so. It turns out that at exactly the same time we were saying what could we do, what could health care look like, Another group of people who had money were thinking the same thing in 2020 and 2021. And in the winter of 2022, they actually started the first clinic in Minnesota, where I live in the Twin Cities, called Herself Help, and it's based on basically the nursing theory, but using doctors, nurses, PAs, so nurse practitioners and nurses, I guess, techs and various other people in the thing, and it's women, 60 years old and older, and it is pretty much what we wanted.
Speaker 2:So you go in for your very first meeting with a provider. It's 90 minutes long and it's only to find out who you are, what you are looking for, all of your background, all of your history, your emotional, mental, emotional, physical, spiritual and then, if you decide you want to continue, you would have your first physical, which is another 90 minutes long, where they actually go through everything with you. They do the lab test, they, you know, look at what has worked, what hasn't worked, where have you been. What have you done? And then determine from there okay, here are the issues, which of these you want to work on first and then going forward. I absolutely am in love with it. I mean, it's like this is my dream and it's already here. They now have since the winter of 2022, they now have five clinics in Minnesota, with three more planned next year. Oh, I love it. They are getting I just heard this last week. They're getting 400 new clients every month, and so every one of the clinics are growing exponentially.
Speaker 1:So it's very encouraging and it uses this model, this, like they pay, kind of like a. That's. The only difference is it's not the public utility model.
Speaker 2:So they are using Medicare and Medicaid and now people are asking them to take some of the other insurances too. So they're looking at how they can make that happen. But essentially, whoever is your clinician is your clinician. You can go back to that same person you know, time after time after time. You can go back to that same person you know, time after time after time. If you need something more, they will help you find who is that next person, the specialist, and they're not bonded to any one group of people as far as any specialty.
Speaker 2:So it's sort of a combination of what have you used before? What did you like, what did you not? Or people that they have been working with that they felt worked under the same kind of system, that are similar to the thinking, anyway, of her self-help. And then you come back to them and get a complete in-context understanding of what were the testing that was done. What did they find? How did that fit in with other testing you might have had done? Where do we go from here? And the plan is done with the patient.
Speaker 1:That's like the kind of appointments you have when something very serious happens, and so I love like cause I've sat in that, like with family members, you know with like it's like cancer diagnosis is, you know, kidney failure, you know you sit in these, you go for all day and you sit in these long appointments where they overload, where they educate you and but if we can, start that when you before you have the problem right, like if you could go to the beginning spend that time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just love that Because I think how much I learned in all those like you're talking about. I'm like man, you know I have good friends. They record them for me because I'm a nurse you know they're like.
Speaker 1:What do you think about this? You know we go to specialty centers. I have a good friend that has cancer and she flies to Texas and records all of the long meetings and we listen. And you know I had an ex go through kidney transplant. We sat through these long educational things and there's so much you take away from that. And the one on one time with the doctor is so invaluable, also for building trust too. Because that's another thing I think as a nurse I've experienced is it's hard for people to open up and be honest when they don't necessarily have trust. So that time is so valuable. So to put that to, to start there, like you matter right now as you are, how can we help you? Just what difference that would make going forward.
Speaker 2:So at this point, we are about to, in the fall, start forward. We have set up a business, we have committees, we have a new board. We're looking for people who would be excited to be able to take this forward into fruition.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so what kind of people are you looking for?
Speaker 2:Well, we're looking for people with academic backgrounds that could help us understand the education portion of it, even educating the people who are coming into it, even educating the people who are coming into it. We are looking for marketing, which is something that I don't know if it's just being a nurse, or I've always had a really hard time asking people for money. I'm just used to going in and working my ass off and doing whatever I can and then in two weeks somebody gives me a paycheck for what they think I'm worth. Yeah, so asking people for money has just really been horrendously difficult. So, people who can do that wonderful People who can do marketing, who can help us get out to the we think, the public to say you don't have to be putting up with what you're putting up with. You know there could be something else and here's what it could look like.
Speaker 2:What do you think about that? So it may come to the point where it's pressure from the public to whether that would be politicians or other people who are trying to make money to be able to say this is a better product, this actually works. It costs less to keep people well than it does to try and fix them after they're desperately ill. All the things we as nurses and doctors and the rest of us in healthcare already know, and in a very healthy environment. I love walking into this clinic because everybody is all smiles, they're happy to see you, they know who you are, they offer you something to drink. Would you like some water? Would you like some snacks? It's just a completely different atmosphere from stand back here. Don't talk to me until I tell you to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, your quick 15 minutes. Get it out before I have to go because there's so many patients and nothing more than one problem.
Speaker 2:Don't bring up any more than one problem, because right.
Speaker 1:I recently my friend told me she took her son. Oh no, no, no, it was her sorry she went to her OBG. I think she had to get. She had two different things going on. I think she had to get, like, her IUD removed and then something else, and they told her she had to make separate appointments for both. They would not address both in the same issue because of billing issues, which you're backed up for three months to get an appointment and then, no, you have to come for a second one which you know that's their way of pregnant and intended thing you wanted.
Speaker 1:Right, which I'm like you. Like you know, I I'm not blaming these individuals. That's the regulations they have, but what a sick system that. That's where what we're doing to people. I hate it. Okay, I love that, um, so are there any other? So we're looking for people pretty much with all skills that can be applicable to this, like marketing nurses, people to put it into practice. Are you looking for people with communities to try to like kind of yeah?
Speaker 2:People who feel like they've got a community, that maybe they've tried various different things. We have come up with a playbook. Here's how you can do it. The other thing is the University of New Hampshire. As they're doing this, they're also creating a template for it, so that any other school in the country could, you know, replicate that template.
Speaker 1:Oh, I love that. I love that, okay, awesome, um, what else? We could talk forever about this, really honestly, and I feel like at some point, I'll probably have to have you back on and talk more in depth about these things, especially as people ask me more questions and as you grow and have more successes. So is there anything I want to make sure we touch on more than just this issue? Well, I've got you here. There's more than just this thing you're in into. So what anything else you want to leave us with about nurses, transforming health care, before I ask you about power up nursing, I think we've covered that pretty well.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I would like to get to the power of nursing, which started in a snowstorm in Minneapolis in January of 2020. We were at a conference and the person who was putting on the conference and her friend who happens to be the doctor of neuro research. We met there and, because it was a snowstorm, some people hadn't come and some people were leaving early because they were afraid they wouldn't be able to get out of the airport. And we were just talking and Tanya Abreu said to me so if there was any message you could give to nurses, what would it be? And after having you know, seven years of doing my international talk show, I said I want nurses to know that they have much more power than they think they do. And so Power Up Nursing was born, weren't?
Speaker 2:We know that in March of 2020, covid hit and everything came to a standstill in healthcare, especially with coming up with new ideas or whatever. Everybody was floundering, so just trying to maintain. So we kind of put everything not on hold. We were still trying to reach out to people and talk to people, but it was the usual startup thing very difficult to get things off the ground. And then we had our first conference in June of 2023. We had, I think we had about 75 people nurses, cnos, various different people who were selling products in the room, people who were selling products in the room and it was such a high atmosphere of joy and, oh, this is so different. This could, you know, really be something amazing. And so we worked with one of the major CNOs, dr Carol oh, lost her name here for a second. Well, let's just not have her name. We're working with a CNO, carol Biggs. Dr Carol Biggs, who is running the seven hospitals for the Miami-Jackson hospital system, and you know them.
Speaker 1:No, yeah, you were telling me about this earlier. I was getting excited, Sorry. I was like yes, this is what we're getting to.
Speaker 2:So after that conference, tanya and Alba were overwhelmed and and burned out. Is that we allow other people to decide what we're going to do, when we're going to do it and how much, how long, etc.
Speaker 1:So it comes up on the show a lot is how nurses are actually one of the hardest people to help and treat. Because I also think somewhat we have like a victim mentality and then we feel a little owed by the system. And it's like when I talk to nurses like yeah, you are, but the truth is you're the only one that is going to be able to show up for yourself and make the difference, because nobody's coming. You are, oh, you're amazing, but you have to make the difference.
Speaker 2:We keep waiting for the knight in shining armor and they're not coming Right, if anything, covid convinced me of that that, yeah, I thought that would be the thing that would open everybody's eyes. Oh my gosh, look what nurses do. Look how incredible they are. Look how we, how many people we save. You know, just because of what nurses were willing to do.
Speaker 1:And you know, keep doing so we're going to be the ones that have to save it. I think, think it's going to have to be the nurses.
Speaker 2:But look at this in healthcare, you know, healthcare is probably has maybe I don't know for sure, but I would think it would be right near the top of how many employees that are nurses or nurse related, and just in our country we think it's between 4.6 million and 5 million.
Speaker 1:I would think we're the majority, wouldn't you think we're the majority?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I don't know that 100%, but I think that is true and it would make sense so if even we could bring together just this group of people to be working together. When we started this, we realized there are 800 different organizations for nurses in this country that do not talk to each other If you're looking at main organizations, because 800 includes the 50 states for each organization.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the boards and all that.
Speaker 2:They don't even talk to each other Rarely. I mean, it's, you know, very little connection with each other. They all have their own little fiefdom, and so that's my trade of that. So anyway, if you're just talking about the main ones, it's probably Kathleen has been saying now about 250 different organizations. But what if we came together with the idea that nurses are now going to be in charge of their own profession? So we determine what Like the doctors have taken right, how about that? So we determine what we're going to educate nurses on. We determine what the work is that nurses are going to do. We determined, say, in a hospital setting. I think that nurses should be in charge of anything that has to do with patient management, which is just about everything. So that takes out all of the issues of, you know, nurse-patient ratios we've been yelling about for 20, 30 years. It puts it into the hands of the nurses who are on that unit with those patients on that day, that shift, that whatever.
Speaker 2:Looking at what is the acuity of the patients we have here, what is the experience and abilities of the different nurses? Do we have what we need? And you go from there, you develop the support of that based on that. Not, you've got five nurses, you know, work with it. If they're the wrong nurses, if they, you know, are in orientation, it doesn't matter. You're going to take, you know, a new patient. You discharge somebody, you're going to get a new patient and immediately, probably, somebody that was much higher acuity than the one you just discharged. So those are the things. Nurses have to be the ones that are making that decision, because we're the only ones that are with the patient, 24-7, 365. It makes sense. Yeah, agreed. So, at any rate, that's kind of what we're working on.
Speaker 2:The newest thing is, um, I'm not much into tech at all. Um, since we've been doing this power up nursing, uh, tanya abrayo is loves any kind of tech, so she's been trying to have me try all these things out and I'm like they don't work. I don't like them. No, you know, not going to do it. And then she sent me this ultra human ring Okay, kind of like the R and some of the other ones there's a bunch of them out there but for me it is fantastic because it not only tells me the normal things that the others tell you about how is your sleep and you know, that kind of thing but it also tells you what can you do to improve it. Here are some things to try, and it's all very positive. It's like it doesn't say well, you didn't sleep again last night and now you're you low and whatever.
Speaker 2:I'm going to take another off, drop here, yeah, but it will tell you. Here are some suggestions, here are some things. Here's what you're doing better. We're not doing very well on this, and now that is consistently better, congratulations. You get lots of kudos, and what do nurses love but kudos, right. And then now they're starting a new pilot. I guess it would be with these nurses. That will include lab work. So I don't know exactly all of the different things, but quite a few different things that can be tested right through the ring and we'll tell us.
Speaker 1:So nurses are wearing the ring. Right now, nurses are wearing the ring. They're doing this on nurses, oh cool.
Speaker 2:So every nurse in the Jackson hospitals in Miami are wearing these rings. Really, they are so excited about it. What kind of data are they looking to pull from these? Like, where are they trying rings? Really, they are so excited about it.
Speaker 1:What kind of data are they looking to pull from these, Like? Where are they trying to find it? Or is this a focus on nurse health and nurse wellbeing. Oh how cool.
Speaker 2:Taking care of themselves, feeling empowered themselves, feeling like, oh, I haven't slept in three days. I probably shouldn't take an extra shift. I maybe have to tell my friends that I can't go out partying or whatever, because I really need to work on whatever it is walking more or sleeping more or eating better or whatever it is that I need to do. It gives them permission to say this is important, that I am taking care of myself. And so many times you know we put ourselves last.
Speaker 1:We've been trained.
Speaker 2:That's the socialization that we've had, as women is women, give their all Women, you know, our mothers and women, you know, do everything that is requested from anybody in the neighborhood.
Speaker 1:Yeah, our role is to make them read the room and make everyone happy and content. Yeah, I love that. And nurses, I think, are people that take that a little further. In my experience, even the males that do it, they're caretakers, they're givers. They're guilt. Usually they're guilt Like they're the kind of person that feels guilty for things they didn't do. For the most part, you know, these are people that genuinely care and I feel like they're more apt Well, I think healthcare actually intentionally praise on this about them. Is there people that don't want to see people suffer, including their health, their co workers, so they'll pick up extra? They'll what I mean? I think we can't health care kind of push uses that like that personality type to get a lot done that necessarily about creating a health system.
Speaker 2:That was about, um, a healthy environment. What if we thought about starting with patients or, even better yet, starting with making sure nurses are doing well? If the nurses are doing well, everybody else will be also.
Speaker 1:I wonder how you can say you're a healthcare organization and that you care about people and that you, because where I work, I work for a large healthcare system, so we are their patients as well. We don't have anywhere else. Most of us are getting care there. So if you don't care about the people that work for you, how can you convince anyone that you care about the ones you take care of that you're making money from? To me, that is really hard for me in my head, because you have to care about the people that work for you. That's partly why I'm back in healthcare is I'm trying to convince all these brand new nurses like you have to take care of you or this will make you miserable, unfortunately that's the reality.
Speaker 2:That's the new word in a lot of nurses' vocabulary and it starts in nursing schools. We need to change that too, I agree.
Speaker 1:I wish there was more education in nursing school from the get-go of the toll that this job can take on your nervous system. I mean there's a lot of ways this job can affect you, but just in general, if you take away all the trauma and all that, the nature of the job is hard on your nervous system in the most ideal conditions and the reality is we're never in the most ideal conditions.
Speaker 2:And what are the things you can do? You know, we never knew that there was something you could do to deal with it other than medication, which a lot of us ended up taking. Yeah, so, yeah. So that's kind of what that is about, and that's. I believe that we have a large number of hospitals who are hearing about this now and are like you know, we want to be on the wait list, you know, as soon as you're, we want to see if this can be something that can really happen.
Speaker 1:That is so cool. So if people want to get involved in Power Up Nursing or learn more about it or is Power Up Nursing looking for people or what Sure powerupnursingcom and we are sponsoring a number of conferences.
Speaker 2:We just did one in June that was a nurse think tank. A number of conferences we just did one in June. That was a nurse think tank. We had about 50 people, I believe that came from not just nursing but from all different areas and also people who are looking to innovate in health care, and so we had some of those people there and again the energy in that room was just like electric. And again the energy in that room was just like electric. Everybody was so happy to be there and just taking everything in, and from the minute we met each other, people were immediately excited and talking. And here's what I'm doing and here's.
Speaker 2:Then we're having another one like that in October, the end of October. I don't have the dates right in front of me, but it is on the website. So powerupnursingcom and go to see what the events are. It's going to be a similar type thing a nurse think tank in Arizona, in um. That will be in October, the end of October, and then in November they're going to do like um, um, a dude ranch in Florida, wow, with you know living, uh, staying in um, uh, railroad cars and uh, I think there's some glam tents and there's a lodge, that all kinds of different places and then just having opportunities to talk, brainstorm with other nurses, have some fun, kick up the heels, wear some cowboy stuff and just have a really fun time. And that's going to be the beginning of November. I think it's like the 5th to the 7th or something.
Speaker 1:Are you going? Yeah, yeah, that's exciting. Yay, I love that you mentioned this and I want to kind of like put a little shout out to this to any nurses that are listening that may be burnt out, because Leanne and I talked about this a little bit before we started. Recording is like how much inspiration that each of us have gotten just from connecting with other people who care, who are involved in things like this.
Speaker 1:And if you're feeling burnt out, you're feeling very disconnected or just overwhelmed by, like, what's happening in healthcare and the world, getting involved in organizations like this, or even just getting involved in LinkedIn, which is where I met Leanne there's so many positive nurse voices on there looking, trying to change all different kinds of things about healthcare. There's so many nurses out there that care. They're taking this proactive look. And if you're feeling really burnt out or really just like disenchanted, just disheartened by the healthcare system, getting involved in an organization like this, seeing people working with people like Leanne who care, is so reinvigorating and it's so like for me, it like I need to see people that care like that to you know for me to be like, okay, we're still here, we're still out. There's still people out there looking for the good, making real change, and it's just hard to see when you're in the system sometimes that there is good going on around you Exactly, and people who have ideas.
Speaker 2:You know four o'clock in the morning and if first time you put your feet up and you know you just start talking, you're saying you know I've been thinking about this and what if that happened, but who do I talk to about it? These are the places where people talk about this. Where do I take these ideas to?
Speaker 1:Yes, I love that. I love that. It's great. Well, Leanne, you're okay. So your podcast is no longer. You're no longer filming your podcast, correct? But is it still somewhere to be found?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is on. Many people are finding it on the usual podcast site.
Speaker 1:Anywhere you find it, I guess Right, and it's called Once a Nurse, always a Nurse.
Speaker 2:Once a nurse, always a nurse. Yeah, it's once a nurse, always a nurse, exploring the world of nursing, but I think most places just list it as once a nurse, always a nurse and that seems to really resonate for nurses. So I had a marketing group work with me when I was first trying to come up with a name and I said, well, I think I want to call it once a nurse, always a nurse. And they said that's the dumbest name you could come up with.
Speaker 1:And it doesn't indicate who your real audience is and it's too broad and they must not know nurses and know how much pride we take in being.
Speaker 2:At the peak I had 120,000 listeners in 70 plus countries, so I think it caught on.
Speaker 1:I think it did too.
Speaker 2:I ended up having to stop, partly because of the cost, but also I was taking care of my mother in the final years of her life and that was something I'd always promised her I would do, and I was determined that I would do that. So it got to a point where it wasn't really possible to do both.
Speaker 1:But look what was beautifully born of it. I love it. Yeah, so beautiful.
Speaker 2:It really is. I absolutely love doing it and never dreamed I could. Oh, one other thing that kind of has happened since then. I never think that anything I'm doing is all that you know.
Speaker 1:I was just going to ask you about this.
Speaker 2:Thank you, I was just, I was like.
Speaker 1:Okay, we've talked a lot about what you're doing, what you're into, but let's talk about you.
Speaker 2:This is where I was going to go Tell us about this award you recently won this award is called America's one of I'm America, one of America's top nurses from nursing today, the non-line magazine, and I was completely flummoxed by it. When they sent it to me I was like you must have the wrong person. You know, I don't see myself anywhere in that. I do. And it's kind of funny. You say that too, because shortly after that I got some of you may know Jennifer Johnson and she wrote this book called Nursing Intuition and had asked if she could send me the book, wrote this book called Nursing Intuition and had asked if she could send me the book, and then when I got it, the front she wrote inside words can't express my gratitude for your support and, well, everything you've done for nursing. In case you don't know, everyone refers to you as the OG, the original nurse for nurses. Thank you for everything and, as always, trust your gut for nurses. Thank you for everything and, as always, trust your gut. You know.
Speaker 2:Again I was like really I just, you know, I don't think we ever see ourselves. I'm just putting one foot in front of the other and doing the best I can with the person in front of me, and that's kind of my philosophy is how can I help you feel good about yourself and recognize that you have unique ideas and abilities and capability that no one else has, and somebody helped me to learn that and I'm just trying to connect people that have the same kinds of things. I love that. It made me so happy. I love that it made me so happy Even in this really difficult time. I feel like I'm creating the joy that wouldn't be there.
Speaker 1:Otherwise I love it. I think it's a true inspiration. I really have goals to connect people the way you do, to have a successful show. That means something Really. You are my ultimate mentor in the nursing world, so I absolutely love that you came on my show, but I want to ask you some things about you Like. So who inspires you nowadays or who has inspired you in the past? Your biggest inspirations.
Speaker 2:That's a good question. I started practicing Buddhism with the Soka Gakkai International about 43 years ago and that has changed my life because it taught me a whole different way of looking at the world and interacting. I kind of saw myself as the perpetual victim. Everybody was picking on me and nothing was going my way and et cetera, and this practice really helps me to understand. I'm in charge. I will create. Back to the we talked before about.
Speaker 2:The perception is reality. Yes, the perception I choose is the one that I'm going to work off of, and if my perception is, everything is screwed, there's no good here, it's all going to be a disaster. That's what I will probably work toward. I mean, I'll make that happen. But if my belief is, well, that may be true around me. But what can I do right here in my little puddle, to see what I can do? That's maybe positive. And then I start getting these responses from people that blow me away and make me feel like, well, maybe I'm on the right track. Maybe I should keep going and just keep encouraging other people to do the same. On the right track, maybe I should keep going and just keep encouraging other people to do the same. That's beautiful, very exciting, and it encourages me to realize how many different people from different cultures and different parts of our country and the world are also doing something similar. Yeah, we all hear about those people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's kind of my show. I'm trying to just highlight that there are people out there like in the smallest ways making a difference in big ways, making a difference in the smallest communities. And you know people who live in some tiny I think the last girl, the woman I had on right before you, she lives in a little itty bitty village in the UK but she gets on, her, she reaches people all over the world, over zoom and helps people with a specific thing. So I just think it's beautiful. There's people out there. You know, if you're looking, there's people out there trying to help, and so to me that's so powerful.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:Do you? Okay. So what is your I refer to Dr Lori laws is all about? Instead of saying self care, saying self nurture. What isnurture practices that keep you sane?
Speaker 2:Again, the ring has been very good because I knew what to teach other people for self-nurturing. I just didn't do it myself, and one of the things that happened for me was in taking care of my mom. I put everything into her and I was really, really sick when she finally died last year, and so I spent the whole last year trying to get myself healthy again, and I have been able to do that, and then, just when I felt like I was really getting my feet under me, I had seven people die in six weeks that were significant to me. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:And it was also the anniversary of my mom's death, and so I was prepared for that. I just wasn't prepared for all these others, and some of them were mentors in various different ways to me. They were, you know, friends. They were be careful because I may start to cry. But I realized that I needed to do something to get out of the depths of grief that I was in, and I knew that I needed to feel it and express it and live it for a certain period of time. And then I needed to do what I knew and through my practice, I know to.
Speaker 2:You know, go back to my mandalas that called the Gohonzon, and I strove to get back to chanting every day, to get back to chanting every day Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, and that has, day by day by day, lifted me up again and started to feel healthier, find myself experiencing positive things in my environment again, and now I'm back to that feeling of you know, what can we not do, if we can just imagine it? And so that's really what my main self-care is to really make sure that I get in front of that every day, twice a day, in the morning, to look at what are the challenges I'm going to face and how can I bring my best self to it, knowing that I can't change any other person, but I do have control over myself. Whether I think I do or not, I really do and I can choose a different way.
Speaker 1:I love that. That's beautiful. I think a lot of us hold ourselves back from our biggest limitation and they're all like mental barriers, mental blocks, subconscious beliefs that we can reprogram if we take the time to look at them and spend time with them and tell ourselves differently. So it's powerful words. What would you give me or any of our listeners, any advice? Any nurses listening now? I love.
Speaker 2:I love that really connect to nurses. I love nurses. I have always loved nurses and I find that the happiest days I have are days when I get to do like this talk to a nurse. I was able to have lunch with a couple of nurses and I just walked out of there feeling on air, you know know, just hearing what nurses bring to the world. And as long as we're really taking care of ourselves, we can do that in positive ways.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Some of the best people I've met, like people I. You know that maybe we don't have the relationship to hang out outside of work, but I've, you know, I traveled for five years and I just have met so many powerful, amazing personalities that have stuck with me over the years and they're mostly just nursing a lot of nurses out. There's so many good people out there who care so much, so I love that.
Speaker 2:I think we talked about this earlier too that you know there's somewhere around 5 million nurses in the United States and they's, you know, large numbers in every other country. Even if they're not official nurses, they're nursing capacity and each of them come to it with that idea of wanting to give up themselves to help someone else. That alone. Just imagine if nurses could infect the entire world with that thought, if nurses could infect the entire world with that thought.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I tell the nurses that work for me all the time I'm like it's not the norm to care so much about other people. We need you, so you need to take care of yourself, because the world needs people, more people like you who care about other people. And I think I stole that from Nurse Jackie way back in the day she said that one of the first episodes.
Speaker 1:She was very right, it's true. It's like there's not. Not everybody has the capacity to do what we do, and so we have to take care of each other and ourselves so that there's people like us left.
Speaker 2:And we have to get better about telling people what we do. Until recently, you know, partly because Kathleen Bartholomew thinks of us as an oppressed group and it's almost like you know abused women or you know racial barriers and things like that that nurses have, almost like we got into this group and now we're almost keeping ourselves down. We started to believe what's been told to us. It's not true.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Like healthcare has really made us a number, you know, instead of a profession to them. We're like part of the budget these days, unfortunately, instead of like this what we really are, which is a very vital piece of healthcare.
Speaker 2:If I would argue like you couldn't have healthcare without us, yeah, I absolutely feel like healthcare would have gone down in COVID had it not been for the efforts of nursing and certainly other people too. But nurses are who I know and who I admire and who I want to support.
Speaker 1:Me too. Me too. That's why I'm still in the field. I almost left, but I just love nurses so much that I'm like I can't, because I know we care and you know it. What we do makes a difference, regardless of if other people are seeing that. It makes a huge difference. And yeah, I love that connect with other nurses. Is there anything else you want to leave?
Speaker 2:us with. I just love talking to you so much.
Speaker 1:I could talk forever. I'm like we're getting close to an hour, but I feel like you're going to have to come back and just keep us updated, leanne.
Speaker 2:What just came to mind was my brother, for my birthday I think it was last year or the year before gave me this plaque that said she believed she could do it, so she did.
Speaker 2:I love that. That just I had no idea he had noticed and so it just meant so much coming from him. And sometimes I've had to remind myself when I'm low places and I'm thinking, and sometimes I've had to remind myself when I'm low places and I'm thinking, well, she doesn't think she can do it now. So it helps, you know, reminding myself that okay, if I'm sick enough that I'm not seeing it right now, then I need to take care of whatever needs to happen to get back to that place again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I love that. That's beautiful advice.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you so much. You can call me anytime you want to, jen, I don't, hey, don't.
Speaker 1:I might don't even.
Speaker 2:I love it Okay.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. I'm going to put links to like all these, to Leanne's organizations, the power of nursing and nurses transforming healthcare in the show notes, and I can put your podcast in there too, so people can catch old episodes if they want.
Speaker 2:If anybody has questions about the Buddhist group of Soka Gakkai International, I love to talk about that too, because it's made all the difference in my. I'm alive because of that.
Speaker 1:We should do a different episode where you come on and talk about that. I would love that. That would be wonderful, I'd love it. Okay, let's plan on doing that, all right, take care. Yeah, thank you so much.
