Episode 5 - Geoffrey Roche - Working to advance a more equitable workforce in healthcare!

Thank you for joining me for another episode of the Nursing Strategies for Success podcast with this week's guest, Jeffrey Roche. Jeffrey is a son of a nurse, an advocate for nursing since 2008, and he's working to advance a more equitable workforce in nursing. Jeffrey is an accomplished leader with a steadfast commitment and passion for healthcare innovation, future-focused strategy, transformation, and workforce impact. His professional career has included over 9 years in hospital administration, where he served as a strategic advisor to the president and CEO and department director of various departments. So let's welcome Jeffrey to the show. Welcome to the Nursing Strategies for Success podcast, brought to you by The Nurse Speak. A show where we rally some of our nation's greatest nurse leaders, educators, experts, and advocates to tackle some of our greatest challenges that the nursing profession faces. My name is Damion Jenkins, and I'm your host for this show. So sit back, relax, and get ready to learn that nurses can do anything. Okay, Jeffrey, thank you so much for being on this show with us. So just take a moment to introduce yourself to the listeners. Let them know a little bit about who you are, where you started in your healthcare profession, and what you're doing today.

Great. Well, thank you, Damion, for having me, and, and it's wonderful to be here with you. So I, I started my career in healthcare actually in, in June of 2008. I always say I'm the son of a nurse, and so while I started professionally in June of 2008, healthcare and nursing has obviously been a part of my life as far as I can remember. I have had the privilege of serving in a community hospital for many years, working my way into a director role of multiple functional areas. Actually did have some operational responsibilities as part of that, not over nursing obviously, but ironically over emergency medical services. So I didn't handle the clinical, I had a supervisor that did, but actually again excited, particularly because I worked for a nurse CEO who worked her way up, and it was certainly for me a wonderful benefit to see how a nurse leader would run a healthcare system. And obviously happy to talk more because it was the profound impact not only in my life, but also on my career. And I now have the privilege of serving as the Senior Vice President of Workforce Development here at Dignity Health Global Education, which is part of CommonSpirit Health, which obviously is a very large healthcare system that covers, you know, multiple states.

Very good. And so where are you based right now?

So I'm actually here in Pennsylvania.

Okay.

Uh, our team is spread out, you know, throughout the country, but I'm in Pennsylvania where I've been born and raised and been my whole life pretty much. Awesome.

So we're on the East Coast together. I'm here New York City. All of my nursing experience is mostly Baltimore, Maryland. Just landed in New York City right before the pandemic. Wow, unfortunate timing, but you know, we're making the best of it. So yeah, we have lots of opportunities really across the country, but here on the East Coast, we, we tend to have quite the diverse healthcare system, lots of opportunities. So let's talk a little bit about, you know, your positions and how you've been in these leadership positions in healthcare. And you did mention you're not nurse by trade, but your mother is nurse. And so I'm sure you've been surrounded by all of the wonderful things that nursing has to offer in addition to some of the challenges that we face as a profession. And then also with your positions in workforce development, that's huge. And I actually work with a lot of facilities and workforce development to help them improve their professional development, uh, strategies and processes to get those nursing assistants to become nurses, to get those LPNs to become RNs, to get those RNs to get advanced degrees, um, so that we can prepare them appropriately. And so the facility gets a return on their investment because the facilities are also supporting their ongoing professional development. So let's talk a little bit about some gaps, some issues, problems, or concerns that you've identified And then we'll talk a little bit about the solutions that you've created to deal with those gaps.

Yeah, so, you know, I think across the board, I mean, let me just say, you know, one of the things that I think is important as, and things that I saw oftentimes as an administrator in healthcare was, you know, leaders in all levels of healthcare, whether clinical or non-clinical, not only have a duty, but we must actively listen to all members of the team. That's something that I learned early on. And, you know, again, I had the privilege of being mentored by a CEO who, you know, to this day still is a nurse as well, but during her entire time never gave up nursing. I always tell people that, you know, I would round with her and she would always put on her lab coat. We would round as if she was still, you know, because she was, she, you know, would regularly go into patients and it didn't matter to her whether she was the CEO she would still be there to support them. And, you know, that was something that I'll never forget because it was clear to me as I worked with other leaders of the difference between a clinical leader like herself and how she would handle that versus more of a quote-unquote administrator. You know, when I look at the work that I did in the healthcare system, you know, to me it was always clear that nothing would ever be done without the support of the nurses. We were a union environment, and, you know, I had a lot of exposure with our nursing team. In fact, you know, at one point in time, I was also the hospital spokesperson and had to navigate during some heavy union situations while they were doing negotiations. And what always resonated to me was effective communication, speaking in a way that was authentic, hearing of their concerns, because you know what, we as administrators, we're not there 24/7. You know, we weren't there to see the tough shifts, you know, throughout the morning, throughout the early morning, throughout the late night. The other thing that always comes to mind, and I've seen this, you know, not just as a leader, but then also even as a professor now, where I teach and oftentimes have nurse practitioner students and nursing students who are going for their MHA or even their MSN in some of my classes is we don't debrief enough. We just do not give nurses, but also every member of a clinical team, and at times even non-clinical, the opportunity to debrief and really think about how hard that situation is. We expect them to go right back in, And I understand that, I get that. But you know what? We've gotta remember that trauma is real. And if we don't deal with the trauma, then that patient safety issue or that communication gap or whatever it may be isn't gonna go as well. The situation isn't gonna go as well 'cause we're dealing with trauma. And I think we as leaders in healthcare have to remember that everyone has to deal with trauma in a way that they deal with it. And if we don't give an opportunity to deal with that emotional or that mental or whatever trauma that is, then we're actually setting them up to fail as far as I'm concerned.

Yeah, that's, that's, that's so important that you've identified that. So let's talk a little bit about how you saw that need. And so what have you done to help address that need? Because that is a big thing. This is probably the number one reason for burnout. And turnover. It's not because we don't like our job. It's not because we get tired of doing the work. It's because we're not seen, we're not heard, we're not valued as, you know, uh, really a profit margin. Like, we, we're, we're really viewed as an over— like an oversight or a cost, a whole overhead type thing, right? We cost the hospital or the system money because there's no other way for the money to come out for nursing services. The hospital or the private institution has to pay our salary. So oftentimes we're just viewed as the bottom dollar. So let's talk about how you've identified that and what strategies you've implemented to help with that.

Absolutely. So, you know, throughout my career, there were definitely a lot of traumatic situations that warranted quick actions. You know, I served in the Poconos, which, you know, Obviously, you're in New York City, not that far from New York City. And, you know, the Poconos being a high tourist area had its share of significant trauma situations. What became clear to me as a nurse advocate was always thinking about how do we plan and prepare as a team together. And so in situations where I was well aware of what the team was interfacing And what, what I mean by that was that during my time as an administrator, while I was non-clinical, I had the privilege of working in a very strong interdisciplinary fashion with clinical leaders, but it was never good enough for me to just talk to my fellow directors who were clinical. I also wanted, and it was clear to me, and again, I had the privilege of serving in a hospital that my mother had served in as a nurse. And so a lot of the people she worked with remembered young Jeffrey, And at times, remember me even coming into the hospital on, you know, Take Your Child to Work Day. But for me, it was important to build relationships also with the, with the staff and team at all levels, which I was privileged to do so. And so I was the type of leader that would regularly hear of challenges, regularly hear of issues that were brewing at all different shifts. And sometimes Damion and I would go in, uh, I would go in at 2 in the morning, I would go in at 11 o'clock, um, because I felt that it was important that I'd be the eyes and ears of the health system and at the same time be able to hear from the staff what their challenges were, and then advocate with whomever it was to ensure that their voices weren't just lost. And I'll give you a couple examples. There were certainly times where we dealt with traumatic situations. And again, our CEO being a nurse believed that all hands on deck meant everyone. So she was clear that if our nurses were dealing and our team was dealing with a traumatic situation, and we needed to relieve them at times. We needed to give them a break. And that meant, you know what, I would be sitting instead of a patient tech greeting people in the emergency room. Other leaders would be cleaning, other leaders would be helping with, you know, we couldn't obviously do triage, but we could help at least with navigating. I can remember one situation that had a lot of trauma actually in a situation where an individual patient actually committed suicide outside the emergency room, had a connection to a staff member. And I can remember at that time that, you know, everyone wanted to, you know, everyone was kind of in a tough spot. And I specifically said to our chief nursing officer, who I adored, I said, we've gotta get them into briefing. We've gotta get psychology, psychiatry, we've gotta get pastoral care. We've gotta give everyone that they would want to talk to the opportunity. And we've got to give them a break. Bring, bring other members from the team from other units, give them a break. We cannot expect to send them in there when they know the connection that was, was in place here. And, and we did. And there were other situations. And so to your point, what I learned was that my role as an advocate that was not non-clinical was that my job was to speak up. My job was to challenge those who, to your point, saw nursing, um, as, you know, a drain on the budget and say, no, no, no, they're not a drain on the budget. They're part not only of the core team, but if you think of it in the correct manner, they're part of the value aspect of clinical care.

Absolutely. And thank you so much for saying that because nurses basically get those good scores, right? We're the ones who satisfy the Joint Commission. We're the ones who satisfy CMS. We're the ones who satisfy your infection control policies, your competencies, your onboarding, your training. We partner with all of the departments all the way up to the top. You know, my director for institution I work for part-time as a nurse educator and staff development— she's a nurse, but she is basically in charge of all of education and clinical services for the entire system. So she deals with the system's the president on a regular basis. So nurses really do provide that value factor. And it's really bewildered me all these years, 11 years as a nurse, that it very far and few people in between say that or demonstrate that. Um, they look at us as being expendable. And if, if we don't want to fall in line and yes sir, yes ma'am, then we're gone. Because it's easier just to get rid of us and get someone else who's ready to fall in line. So there's a lot of shifting that's happening. There's going to be a lot of amazing transformations. Obviously, the pandemic has opened up a lot of scary things that the general public is now privy to. So hospital systems, administrators, and maybe some of the poor decision makers out there can no longer hide behind fancy titles or good scores. So I really appreciate you saying that nurses do bring the value because we do. We are on the front lines. We are the first and last impression of a healthcare institution. So if we're provided with all of the appropriate resources and the appropriate advocacy from leaders in positions of power, we can really do so much to achieve all of those missions, goals, and even budget. We're so smart and so talented, we can calculate money too. So if we're sat at the table and provided with a little bit more information about why certain budgetary restraints are being enforced, then maybe we can put on our thinking caps, get creative, and make do with a little bit less because that's what we do anyway. And if we're at the table making those decisions, assisting with the decision-making process, I think things would be a lot smoother than what they are today. So awesome, thank you so much for that. So in your position as a workforce development, you say you're in charge of workforce development? Yeah. So I mean, that's a big department and they're responsible for so much, especially that professional development, getting your existing clinicians to improve on their skillset, get better degrees, get higher credentials. The more training your staff have, the safer the outcomes, the better the outcomes. You can put them in managerial positions, leadership positions, and we always have to have those kinds of nurturing systems in place because everyone's eventually going to leave, right? Whether by choice or not, we all eventually leave our roles. So what kind of— and I understand you might not be able to disclose everything, but what kind of strategies have you implemented in workforce development to elevate, promote, and advocate for the nursing department?

Sure. Well, I think that, you know, the, the first component is— and I'll give you an example back in my time, you know, even in healthcare administration— was, um, you know, even when I was a healthcare administrator, we were, um, we were noticing that as it related to, um, at that time, you know, we, we had two major nursing school feeders into our healthcare system. One was a community college and one was a 4-year college or 4-year university. And what we were noticing that is there was a profound difference. It wasn't that one was necessarily providing more quality over another. It was that one was providing more better prepared, practically clinically trained nurses. And it actually was the community college at that time. And so we, you know, immediately worked with the university and I was at the table with our chief nursing officer and our CEO. And we worked with the nursing faculty to say what it was that we were seeing and what we needed to do to address it. And we actually redid parts of their curriculum. They, and, and, you know, sometimes it's not easy in academic academia to do that, but we worked together. We established rapport. We showed data. And, and what was profound is that we actually brought staff nurses who also could share what was the difference because we couldn't sit there and just talk about all the differences. We needed to engage the staff. And so that was an example. And so as I've continued my work, I've always been a big believer in that you have to think of it through all the different levels and recognize that everyone comes at education, everyone comes at training with a very different mindset. And so we have to be building programs with the idea, to your earlier point, that some people want to upskill, Some people want to reskill. Some people may want to ascertain, uh, or obtain a degree, and they know that may mean they just want to get out of that current organization. Yeah, because they've tried it and you know what, it's not going anywhere. And so we've always had to be thinking about that. And I think, as you know too, I mean, in the nursing profession, you know, it's been pretty well defined. Uh, you know, you gotta— if you're an LPN, you gotta eventually get your RN. If you're an RN, you gotta get your RN to BSN. But here's the thing that I think is really still interesting within nursing, and I have this conversation with my mom all the time. You know, my mom was a community college-educated nurse, went on to serve over 30 years in nursing. And I think this pandemic has reminded us that nurses, regardless of where they sit in terms of their education, whether they have a master's, whether they have advanced level degrees, I don't ever say anything negative about that because it's important, but we still also have to remember that our nurses who have been trained at community colleges, our nurses that have been trained at hospital diploma programs, that's not in any way ever should be viewed as lesser.

Correct.

They come trained and clinically ready just the same.

Yeah.

And, and I, and, and it bothers me when I see in our healthcare system And I get it because I understand with Magnet and things, you gotta, you know, you gotta be moving the needle. But we have to still remember that for some of those folks, they may not. My mom never wanted to. She just didn't have it in her because she was raising a family. She wasn't, you know, at that point in her life. But that's not to say she didn't have a desire for continued education. She went on and became a case manager. She got her CCM, you know, she did a bunch of other things, you know, to further education. And so The mindset that I try to always think about is that we've got to develop education training to reach people where their needs are at today and in the future. At the same time, we've got to do that from an enterprise end. And so what we obviously think about is that you have to have degree programs, but you also have to have certificate programs that an individual may want to think about this and then this and then take this track. And so it has to be in my opinion, more inclusive than exclusive. And I'm never a fan of saying this is better than another. I'm very much of a fan of saying, you know what, your experience, why you chose that, is profound. Because I'll tell you, again, working with hundreds of nurses throughout my career, uh, everyone brings something. And we can't just assume that just because you have an advanced level degree that you're the better one. That's not always the case. In fact, I would often argue that those that have been trained at other types of programs sometimes actually may have been trained with different levels of skills and things that actually are really beneficial in our nursing workforce still today.

Yeah, so I can speak for hours about all of what you just said. I agree 1,000%. As a nurse educator for many years, as starting off as a nursing student, like everyone else who goes through the process. I was also a community college trained nurse. I got my RN from a community college in Baltimore, and, um, I came out clinically able and ready to do the work. And alongside BSN prepared nurses, master's prepared nurses, and we were all starting at the same level of competency. So it doesn't really matter what degree, diploma, or certificate you come out with. Nursing is one of the few professions that the degree really doesn't matter when you first start because you have to get your hands dirty. You have to do the work. You have to learn how to prioritize, manage your time. You have to learn how to do the assessments, speak with the interdisciplinary team, do that management of care. And so you're right, whether you're a nursing assistant, whether you're an LPN, whether you're an RN, and no matter what degrees or additional certifications you have, we all have something to contribute. And so instead of focusing on credentials— and understandably, we have to have licenses and certificates to satisfy legal requirements— but if institutions adopted a strengths-based model for assigning staff to take on different assignments, That's what they do in leadership. That's exactly how leadership models are run. So it's really been wild to me that nursing leadership specifically don't really embrace that. Or when you have a hiring panel and you're looking to see if someone is eligible for the job, instead of just looking at, do they have the license? Do they have the experience? No, they really should be challenged to see what they can do and what they can't do. So then they can be placed appropriately. You know, my experience as a travel nurse also, travel nurses typically have it a lot harder for getting jobs than staff nurses because I guess when you're a staff nurse, the understanding is, is you're going to have an orientation, you're going to have a preceptor, you're going to have kind of that hand-guided process and you have more time to learn. But there's really no competencies that come out of it. It's kind of an ongoing learning process. But for travel assignments, you have to prove your ability before they even sign you on. You have to take tests, you have to go in and do skills, you have to do several phone interviews. Um, so I've just always wondered, why didn't we do that from the beginning and get the nursing staff kind of used to that process? I think that would be really helpful.

Like, to your point about preceptors, I mean, and I'm sure you've seen this in your career, and this is always something that bothers me, is, is again, who picks the preceptors? Oftentimes, yeah, you know, oftentimes it's the leaders of the organization that identify these folks who are going to be the preceptors. And then guess what? Those preceptors end up being the same ones who don't treat the student nurse respectfully, don't empower them, don't encourage them. And I saw this oftentimes, and there were times where I would literally go right to the CEO and say, do you know that person's a preceptor? I mean, have you spent time with that person in a room? Because I wouldn't want that person talking to me if I was a peer, right? Like, I feel bad for the patients, first of all, but that's not the person to be empowering our next nursing leader.

Yeah, absolutely.

So, you know, the whole model needs to be flipped.

Yeah, definitely. And, you know, to piggyback on what you just said, this really comes from leveraging the nurse educators in your institution, because the nurse educators are the ones who should be validating the competence of a preceptor, not the nurse manager who likes someone or thinks that the someone knows the job. Just because you know the job doesn't mean you have all of the tools or characteristics to be a good preceptor. And so the educators really should be in charge of selecting preceptors, obviously with managerial approval, because we're not always privy to disciplinary actions or anything like that., and we don't want to assign someone who's on their way out the door.

Exactly.

But it should be up to the educators to determine competence. And so the leadership teams really need to tap into nurse educators more for those decision-making, for sure.

I agree with you.

Put them through a piece after workshop, make sure they're competent before they're even assigned to train someone.

And I agree with you. And you know, Damion, it's an interesting point you bring up because in overseeing all of our community work, in my role in our healthcare system, I actually partner with, with the nurse education staff because I always wanted to ensure that whoever, whatever, and whomever went out with us when we did health screenings, when we did flu and, you know, influenza checks and, and, you know, vaccine, when we did anything in the community, I would always partner with the nurse education team because I wanted to make sure whomever went out was truly the best of the best, not only from a clinical end but also from a communication end. And it was a perfect example where I could tell this, the team that went out with us were awesome. They were, to your point, they were validated, not just for quote unquote, their clinical skills, but also their communication skills, which is, you know, when you go out and do a community type of event, sometimes you're gonna see a very different audience than what you may see even in your clinical practice. Right, right.

So, and that's the thing, like nursing in general is just so comprehensive. It's holistic. It considers all aspects of the being. On, you know, the human experience. And so educators also consider that. We consider their communication skills, their professionalism, their ability to handle stressful situations, their ability to critically think, their ability to adapt their teaching style based on the needs of their preceptor. And again, you know, if, you know, individuals who are running the administrative side of things and not necessarily the clinical side of things, they may not see that. Their interactions with the individual might be perfect because that person even puts on a facade for them. And we know we always do that. We code switch when we're in different kind of situations. You catch me on the street, I'm a very different person than on this podcast. You know, so it's one of those things that we have to really get to know the people, build those relationships like you said, and then tap into the strengths of the individual to assign them a appropriately. Because we've had— the other thing about preceptorship is not a lot of institutions give their staff the opportunity to say no. They kind of just say, oh, it's part of the job, you have to train this new person, sorry. And then they expect awesome outcomes. I don't understand how that's ever been the thought process, but I, I've been victim of that myself. I love to teach and I love to train, but I was never given a choice. And I've worked with colleagues who resented having to train other individuals because they could barely keep up with their assignments and now they have to train someone else. So that should also be part of— we should be pulling people who want to do it and then give them some incentives to give them a little bit of a pay bump, give them some fringe benefits, make them feel like they're part of the growth of the organization rather than it's part of the job.

It all comes down to inclusive leadership. Absolutely. And really thinking about it from the vantage point that, you know, it's never an us versus them.

Absolutely.

It's always we. And, you know, I get why titles are in healthcare systems, but, but we can never let our titles dominate how we think of things.

Yeah.

And so, you know, everyone makes it work.

If we're not all rowing in the same direction, we see—

and this pandemic has shown that— that we fail. And so, you know, I think we've got to learn from this, and we've got to do— we got to think very innately around these concepts, to your point. If we don't build inclusive models of leadership, if we don't welcome nurses to the table, and not just welcome, we need to integrate in every aspect. I always talk to people about even at the board level, you know, come on, I mean, how many healthcare systems have, you know, and even if it's retired nurses, how many healthcare systems have retired nurses on boards?

Not that many. Nope.

Um, and you know, we've got to be thinking about these things around, you know, and, and I've even heard some people suggest, well, you know, the president of the medical staff is on the board. Well, maybe, you know, quote unquote, the leader of the nurses should be on the board. You know, we've got to be thinking about these things in an inclusive model, because if you have the president of medical staff on the board, why not the nurse? Because you know what, the nurse is just as important. Guess who the patient thinks of first? As you know, the nurse, not the doctor, the nurse.

Yeah.

And we need them at the decision-making table.

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, with all of these amazing insights and, you know, really advocating for the nursing profession and seeing how we can empower nurses to be able to have more of a seat at the table, more of the decision-making process to govern our healthcare system, and like I said you said earlier, there's lots of transformation happening in this country that hopefully in the next 5 to 10 years, we should see some radical change in how we're doing things. Let's talk a little bit about what else you have done or are doing to help with that mission. Sure.

Well, yeah, I definitely want to share with you and everyone else that one of the things that Dignity Health Global Education is doing is currently we are running an Equity Impact Scholarship. Which actually the $3 million for the scholarship came from CommonSpirit. It's not for CommonSpirit though. This is literally for everyone in the United States as well as territories to really support. And again, there's a focus as well on nurses and as well as other, you know, healthcare professionals. But for here, we're talking about nurses that, you know, we've gotta also diversify our workforce. We've gotta ensure that our clinicians look like the patients that they serve. We've got to ensure that they continue to be culturally aware and, and thoughtful around how they meet different patient needs. And so this scholarship is an exciting one because obviously it includes all of the certificates that we, that we offer. And, you know, for nurses, obviously we have a certificate in nurse leadership through Duke, which is a phenomenal program, but there's also other programs in the certificate arena too. You know, you know, nurses like innovation too. I often have to remind people, you know, they like transformation. We have an awesome certificate in innovation with Arizona State. And, you know, the other thing I should just mention too is we were talking a little bit earlier about the RN to BSN. We have an RN to BSN fully online accredited with Mercy College of Health Sciences, which has been a health professions, you know, our college forever. Awesome opportunity with the scholarship that a nurse, you know, could receive up to $7,500 towards a $10,000 RN to BSN, which You know, if they work for an organization, that organization should and probably could pick up the remainder and make it a zero out of pocket RNP-BSN, right? That's the power of this scholarship, is that we're trying to knock down barriers, provide access to education, do it in a way that will help further diversify not just our nursing workforce but all of our workforce. And it's, it's an awesome opportunity when we think about, you know, a time when individuals aren't going to be able to go in person, all of these programs are fully online. They are all built with healthcare at the table— nurses, even at times physicians, but other inclusive leaders at the table throughout the process. It's not your traditional academics build. It's academics with healthcare professionals at all different levels.

Awesome. So if individuals wanted to learn more about that, how could they— find out more information?

Yeah, all they would have to do is go to dhge.org, and literally when they get to the home page, they're going to get a tab right at the top that says announcing the Equity Impact Scholarship. It's really simple. All they have to do is they choose the programs that— the program that's of interest to them. They have to just write a personal statement. It's 800 to 2,000 words, not that much, that really speaks to, you know, them as an individual What do they want to achieve in leadership? And how, how do they believe this education will allow them to further advance the causes of diversity, equity, and inclusion? We leave that to them. And really the personal statement is the only driver as to whether a student gets a partial or a full scholarship. Even if they get a partial, it's an awesome opportunity, but many are getting full, which obviously, you know, who, who's gonna ever say no to a a zero out-of-pocket educational program. But that's the power of this. It's simple. We've knocked down barriers, and we're trying to really lift up individuals and make people think about diversity, equity, and inclusion at a time when we've got to within healthcare.

Awesome. And one more time with the website, just because you said it a little fast. I can imagine my listeners writing frantically. So just one more time, the website.

Yeah, it's just dhge.org.

Awesome. And this will be listed in the show notes. I will make sure it's there as well. And so if individuals wanted to contact you and, you know, collaborate with you or pick your brain or, or see how they can maybe take some of the strategies that you've implemented and implemented into their system, how could they get in touch with you?

Yeah, so I'd be happy to talk to anybody, particularly as it relates to any of these topics or anything in healthcare. All they have to do is send me an email and I'll spell it out because it may get confusing. It's just, it's geoffrey.roche@dhg.org. So just G-E-O-F-F-R-E-Y.R-O-C-H-E@dhg.org. You can also find me on LinkedIn as well, just under Geoffrey M. Roche. Happy to, happy to talk, like I said.

Awesome. Very good. So all of the ways to get in touch with you will also be included in the show notes.. And so I thank you so much for being on the show and discussing how you have been advocating for nursing and what you're gonna continue to do for the nursing profession and other healthcare professions. Um, any of you guys, you know, go check out Jeffrey. I'm sure he's gonna have lots of resources for you. Take full advantage of this scholarship opportunity. And, um, I look forward to collaborating with you in the near future. Thanks so much for being on the show today.

You're very welcome. Thanks for having me.

My pleasure. Take care.

You too. Take care.

And that concludes episode 5 of the Nursing Strategies for Success podcast with this week's guest, Jeffrey Roche. We hope that all of the strategies shared will help you to develop strategies for nursing success. You can get in touch with Jeffrey and all of his links in the show notes of this podcast. If you have any questions for me, feel free to visit thenursespeak.com and get in touch with me today. I would love to have a conversation with you. If you're interested in being a guest on the show, I have a link that you can click on, on the podcast page and go ahead and fill that out. And I would love to have you on the show. So until next episode, take care, be well, and remember that nurses can do anything.