Episode 8 - Leanne Meier - Nurses Transforming Healthcare

Thank you for joining me for another episode of the Nursing Strategies for Success podcast with this week's guest, Leanne Meyer. Leanne is an international talk show host of Once a Nurse, Always a Nurse with over 120,000 listeners in over 70 countries. Leanne is currently working hard for nurses' mental health access and support, and she's speaking to CNOs and CEOs to recognize and promote the value of valuing nurses. So let's welcome Leanne 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. OK, thank you so much, Leanne, for joining me on the Nursing Strategies for Success podcast. I want you to just take a moment to introduce yourself to the listeners. Let them know a little bit about who you are, where you've been throughout your nursing journey, and where you are today.

Well, thank you very much. This could take an hour. We won't do that. So my name is Leanne Meyer, and I have been a nurse for almost 48 years and love nursing, love nurses, and that has been kind of, uh, what has nurtured me along the way. I, uh, worked, as I said, 48 years.

I also want to say, you know, first of all, thank you for 48 years worth of service. Truly, um, um, I appreciate it. I've been in it for 11 years and I'm already wondering how I've been keeping my head above water this entire time. So thank you for that.

Well, I think at least the first half of my 48 years were probably a whole lot better than your first 11.

Gotcha.

So that is definitely— and, and I know even when we started working, we thought, oh my gosh, you know, what we're doing compared to what people have been doing 20 or 30 years before us, no comparison. Yeah. And I know that has just doubled or quadrupled for all of the new people coming in.

Yeah.

So I basically worked in all areas of hospital nursing up until the more recent new things that are coming on. I was disabled in 2014, and so I started teaching an RN refresher course. I did that for 5 years, absolutely loved it, and I had to quit because of the disability, which just about killed me. Uh, I then started creating jobs for myself and found that again the disability kept coming in and being a problem. So in 2017, I got a cold call from a company called voiceamerica.com, and they're an international talk show. They called, wanted to know if I wanted to do a nursing program once a week live for an international audience. And I hung up on them. I thought, yeah, right, this is real.

This is a scam, right?

This is a scam, has to be. Couldn't believe it. So a year later, they gave me a different producer, and within 3 weeks she had me on the air. And so that was July 31st, 2017. I've been on the air since then, and it has been an amazing journey to be able to talk to nurses all over the world and realize how much similarity there is. I thought there would be much more dissimilarity and there wasn't. So as I have been doing that work, you know, as I started it, I knew nothing of what I was doing other than I love nurses and I love talking to nurses about nurse things.

Yeah.

When COVID hit in 2020, A bell went off for me that I had a platform that was going to be perfect for nurses' stories to be able to get out. And what I was clear about was that nobody had a clue, including people that were in administration and other areas in hospitals and in healthcare, about what nurses do, what we do, what we contribute, um, our, our passion for patients and to do the very best that we can. So that's what I did. And also, I very quickly had a determination to try and get help, particularly mental health care, uh, available to nurses 24/7, um, any— at any point when they're on the unit, whatever, um, but not connected to their own hospitals, because I realized that that was not safe in a lot of places for nurses to actually say what was happening for them.

Right.

So while I was trying to get that to happen and walking the floors many, many, many nights because I knew exactly what nurses were going through, I'd had enough experiences, multiply that by about 100 for COVID, and I was pretty clear what was happening and I was desperate to feel like, what can I do to help? So in the course of doing that, um, I actually, um, started working with 4 of my previous guests, and I'll go into that for a minute, but in a minute. But what I wanted to start with is you had asked about, um, the, uh, the problem that I'm wanting to address.

So, so just so the listeners are keeping track, you know, you've done a tremendous amount in your career, and I'm so sorry that the disability took you out of the scene sooner than you anticipated. But it sounds like you've pivoted, like we all do as nurses, to still utilize our skill set and contribute and still be a nurse and still take care of people, maybe in an indirect way by sharing knowledge or training or whatever the case may be. And so, so thank you. You have contributed a tremendous amount to the nursing profession and you continue to do so. And so now I want to get into the problem. This podcast is to identify problems and then to talk about how we can fix those problems or how can we contribute to the solution. So what is the problem that you have identified that you have been working towards fixing?

I'm going to go right to the heart of it. Health care is— what's the word I'm looking for? Health care is—

There's so many words to use.

I know. I know. I don't even know which way to go with it. I think that healthcare is falling apart. And COVID, it has been for 30 to 40+ years. Yes, we have been getting more and more and more into a very business-type model. And that business model, you know, we need to have good businesses within healthcare, but they need to be run focused around healthcare and health maintenance. And the people that do that the best and the most are really nurses.

Yeah.

Um, when you think about it, even the doctors have tremendous passion many times, but all of their incentives in the last 20 to 30 years have all been toward making lots of money. And that is a very difficult thing to say, I'm going to undermine all the money I'm making in order to make this really what healthcare should be, right? Whereas nurses are basically a line item under boardroom, uh, in any hospital structure. And what that means is, from a businessman's perspective, um, they do not see the value of what we offer. And I'm sure that they don't really recognize that we are the product that they are selling, that it is the work that nurses do every day, day in, day out, hour after hour with their patients, worrying about them, thinking about them. When do I call the doctor? Is this the place that I need to do that? What are all the pieces of information they're going to need? Doing— we had talked about creative thinking previously and on my show. And that is exactly what we're doing, constantly looking at what, what is the data that I have, what is the data that I need, asking doctors for what we need, watching patients and bringing— if the doctor needs to come in, bringing them in at just the right moment, not too soon, not too late. And that's kind of what we do. But nobody really recognizes what an art and a science that is to do that. And so nurses have not been particularly good at advocating for ourselves. And that's part of the problem. We like to come in and just do our best in for every minute of those hours that we were, we are at the bedside working. And at the end of 2 weeks, somebody gives us a check for what they think were worth and say, this is not acceptable. COVID has changed all of that. For me, the last 50, 40, 50 years, healthcare has been a house of cards and nobody wanted to pull a card here or there because they were afraid the whole thing would fall flat. Well, healthcare has fallen flat. COVID has pulled all the cards. And so it's now very, visible to just about anybody who wants to look. But the amazing thing is that those people who are still running these companies are still trying to maintain what has been in the past. In fact, I spoke with a doctor who was a director of his, um, of a department in a very large hospital that has been dealing a lot with COVID And he said that after a year plus of dealing with administration, etc., it finally dawned on him that they really don't care that these patients get better. And in fact, the unspoken word seems to be, why don't they just die so we can go back to business as usual, what it was before, not have to deal with all these problems. Wow. And that was sort of when— yeah, so that was when he did a step back and said, is this really the work I want to be doing? And he— I had talked to him about, um, oh, about a year before, I think, maybe not quite that long, and he had talked about how it dawned on him that when COVID started, there was like the barrier whether that's the wall or the door, the window, or whatever it was in the ICUs, that everybody stood behind except for the nurses. The nurses went into the bedside and they were the ones that were doing whatever needed to happen. Doctors were standing behind the barrier giving orders, maybe writing orders, um, you know, whatever it is that they were doing. But when the crisis was over, they left.

Right.

The nurse stayed there with that patient just barely out of crisis, or perhaps, you know, died, and trying to deal with whatever emotions were going on there. And then almost immediately being taken from that right into the next crisis situation.

Yep.

With no time to, you know, think about it, to deal with it, to talk to somebody about it, to just debrief or you know, calm down a little bit, just right into the next situation.

Right.

And so what that does is it demoralizes nurses. It actually goes against our moral code of taking care of people. I remember one nurse talking about how it was the hardest thing for her was to walk away from a dead patient and not do those cares that she'd always done before when she had a patient that died. You know, to groom the patient, to prepare the patient for the family to come in, prepare the family to come in and meet, you know, their relative. And those things weren't happening anymore. And she found that that was her way of coming to terms with that death of that human being, that person. And when she could do all of that, that was what allowed her then to be able to come back another day and do it again. Does this ring any bells for you? Yeah, I feel like I'm rambling on.

No, no, no, no, no. I mean, this is truly the problem in our healthcare system. Um, and you're right, and it, it does greatly affect nurses more so than some other disciplines, but it does— the— our system as it stands is affecting everyone across the board. Yes, but because nurses are always there constantly on duty, we don't have nice offices or suites that we can retreat to, to gather our thoughts and prepare our documentation. We don't have the niceties that hospitals or healthcare organizations spend to make those other clinicians feel comforted or taken care of or appreciated. And you're right, COVID has been an extraordinary situation that we were not prepared to manage. And we saw plenty of opportunity to prepare for it over the last 20 years, but just didn't do what we should have been doing. Even way back in, what was it, 2015 or '14 with the Ebola kind of thing, remember the national marching of every hospital system in the country training for PPE? Training for how to manage Ebola. That was a very organized effort. And I felt prepared that if we received patients with Ebola, we would know how to care for them. We did not get that same kind of response for COVID.

Yeah.

And then it's, it's just a continuation of the fact that it's a business model. And why do we have to spend this money when we don't know that we need to spend the money? And it's, it's reactive instead of proactive. And You know, it's, it's a— when we decide how many patients can be on the unit with how many nurses we have, it's not based on skill set, it's not based on skill mix, it's not based on the competence levels of the nursing staff. It's based on money.

Exactly.

Based on how much money can we make. And then if, if they have to throw one back—

on the backs of whom?

Yeah, of the nurses. Because again, the doctors keep the same load typically. And I do have friends who are doctors, and I've worked with doctors for over 11 years on a professional level, and sometimes they do pick up extra patients, but typically they don't pick up more than what they consider to be safe, and they have full autonomy over the decision-making. Nurses generally don't get a choice in the matter.

Not at all, and less so in some states than other states.

Correct.

Um, and I think that has to change too.

Absolutely.

Um, while you're talking about, you know, what they're spending, going back to that line item of bed and board, if you look at nurses as part of a line item, when you need to make cuts, that's a beautiful place to go to because there's a big chunk of money in there and we'll just cut here and we'll just cut there and it'll be fine. And this has been happening, you know, I'm like I said, 48 years of nursing. And I remember in my earliest years where they'd come around and say, oh, we're gonna cut the nutrition services bringing up trays, or maybe they can bring them up, but the nurses can hand them out, pick them up and do all of that. Yeah. Always they would keep the nurses, no extra pay and certainly no extra help. And so you are required to do jobs that don't even belong to you for nothing extra.

Correct.

And nurses would say, we can't do it, it's impossible. And every time we would say that, I would think, surely they must hear us. They can see how hard we're working. How can they not hear us? And then I overheard a conversation between two leaders that I'm sure didn't know I was there listening. The one was saying, well, they said they can't do it. And the other one said, they always say that and then they do it. And my eyes opened up and I was like, that's exactly right.

Yeah. I mean, they're not wrong. Yeah.

And then we do it at our expense. So there's lots of problems and I'm not telling nurses anything they don't already know.

Right.

So what it comes down to for me is that when you look at this dysfunctional system that we've got set up, we have at, at best, we have people in the organization itself who are making determinations about things like patient-staff ratios who probably have no background in healthcare whatsoever. At worst, you've got legislators who really know absolutely nothing about healthcare, much less what nurses do, making decisions about staffing levels. It's not appropriate. My personal feeling is that nurses are the only people who truly manage patients. And they're the people that on that shift, in that hospital, on that department, on that day, they need to be the people who say, Based on the acuity of these patients, based on the abilities, knowledge, and experience of the nurses that I have that are coming here to work today, I decide what is appropriate patient nurse staffing, right? And I'd like to go even further. I think that anybody in the C-suites, or I don't care if they're the financial officer or whoever else it is that that is doing decision-making, they need to have some background of what nursing is about, what decisions nurses make, and nurses have got to be at every decision-making table that is related to managing patients and what decision is it.

Absolutely.

So that's one of the things that I feel really strongly about. As far as solutions, For people that are in an organization— well, I'll step back just a minute. This whole healthcare system that we have developed over the last 20 or 30 years is the— I keep losing words here.

It's okay. It's truly— there's so many complexities and just things that are dysfunctional, it's hard to figure out where to start. So the structure that we have—

structure is the one that I wanted to address. Um, structure is a mess.

Yeah.

And we can change all the policies we want, we can do nice little things here and there for nurses. It's like moving deck chairs on the Titanic. It's going down. And it's not going to help.

Right.

So nurses seem to be the ones and other, you know, I keep talking about nurses mainly because this show is about nurses and the show that I do is about nurses. So I'm more interested in referring to it from that point of view. Sure. What we need to do is change the entire structure of healthcare. And right now we have The entire country is on such opposite planes of understanding about you name it, not to mention healthcare. Most individuals in our country, I think, still think we have an excellent kind of healthcare. We don't. We are so focused on the end stages and the most expensive parts of a person's life. That we are not paying almost any attention to the front part, which would be keeping them healthy, maintaining their health, and, and teaching them and, and guiding them along to continue to be healthy.

Correct.

We don't get to that, you know, end stage. So knowing that, um, if you are somebody who's in an organization that you believe does respect you, does listen to you, but is just really struggling with COVID I would say, if you can stay there, but make sure that your opinion is being heard. I would make a plan with all the other nurses that will talk with you, come up with what is it that nurses really want and need in your organization. The people at the head think it's all about money and bonuses. That is not going to work in the long run. You cannot run people to death and tell them, well, we'll give you this magnificent bonus. Who cares? I'm going to be dead. I won't be able to use it.

Exactly.

So it's not a long-term plan, right? And it doesn't really work very well short-term because everybody knows what that happens. You pay only the people who are coming in for a minute and a half the bonus and the extra pay, but you're not paying the people who have been there for 30 years striving to keep your hospital going.

Correct.

Um, so that is a big problem. But if you are in an organization you trust and you feel you're trusted, then make your voice heard. And what I think is happening to a lot of these C-suite, uh, places is They don't know what to do. They are at a total and complete loss. And what they know to do is cut, cut, cut, cut on every area. And of course, that doesn't work either. Right. So what we need to do is we need to tell them what it means to support a nurse to do her job. And the way I've always learned it is manager and everybody behind that person. It's all about making sure the nurse has every supply they need, every means of support that they need so they can just focus on taking care of that patient to the best of their ability.

Right.

That's what it takes. And pizza isn't going to do it. Cookies isn't going to do it. Um, I've, I've talked to so many nurses who said that they're in full gear for COVID and they're standing at the door waiting for a body to walk by and, and tell them, I need a bedpan. I needed this, I needed that. And the other piece of that was I had talked to one nurse who told me that the thing that really put her into PTSD was when they were putting— paralyzing patients and they did not have any medications for pain or dealing with, you know, the patients paralyzed. And seemingly unconscious, but probably feeling and experiencing everything.

Right.

And that just put her right over the edge because they didn't have med— some of these medications they were running out of and the supplies were such they weren't getting them.

Right. And so I just want to elaborate for those listening that, you know, yes, COVID exacerbated a lot of the preexisting complications or problems that you're mentioning. And so COVID really was the straw that broke the camel's back, right? There is no going back to what we thought was status quo. We cannot go backwards. It will not work. We will crumble. We will be like the other countries we see on the news that are having full collapse if we don't get this together. But be— with that being said, I've dealt with similar complications at the bedside with my patients way before COVID was the a thing. We never had a pandemic on our hands, but yet I'm still having similar situations. COVID only just made everyone's eyes wide open.

Pull the curtain back.

There's no getting around the fact that our healthcare facilities are being run by businessmen and women who have very little to no clinical experience or insight, nor do they have the people who are on the front lines at the tables making those decisions. And so that's exactly where you're saying this is the solution. So we've identified what the solution is, is, you know, so if you're working in a healthcare facility, definitely make your voice heard. And so get organized, organize with your colleagues, write these things down, send them to an email to your manager, you know, pester your manager in a professional way because they're overwhelmed as well and can easily get burned out as well. But pester them and encourage them to escalate your concerns. Managers typically do want to have the staff's back. That's why they get into management positions. But I've also been in that position, and it's a very hard place to be because you're the bad guy from the administration standpoint because it's all about the money and regulations. And then you're the bad guy from the staffing standpoint because you can't give them the resources they need to do their job well. So, and you know that. Yeah. And you, and most managers know that going in. So it's kind of a game where they put themselves in the position where they're going to get the most advancement or the most money, or it's most convenient for them because of their family dynamics. And so they just accept the fact that they're going to have those challenges, but we shouldn't have to accept these challenges because it seems like there's an easy solution for a lot of these. Get nurses more involved. And give us the resources that we need to take care of our patients appropriately and to take care of ourselves, because we also have to be taken care of as well, right? So, go ahead.

One thing that we don't utilize enough is nurses that are in organizations. I found out there's 100 or 807 organizations in the United States for nurses, and some of those— it's such a big number because There's 50 states, and the overall organization has an organization in each state. But how much are we going back to them and saying, what are you doing for us? What have you done for us in the last 19 months?

Exactly.

Or more. And that is a big problem. Um, I have talked to some organizations, and what they're doing is exactly what they were doing before COVID and they don't seem to have any concept of what nurses really do need and believe that the nurses think that they are working for them. I said, the nurses don't think you know they're alive, right? And they were shocked, absolutely shocked.

Yeah, I'll, I'll be very blunt and honest here. I've stopped renewing all of my, um, my fees and my memberships with these professional organizations because in my time of professional crisis I haven't had the support I needed. And when I reached out to them for clarification or consultation, I get nothing. Or I get a snapshot of a resource page that has nothing on it. And I'm like, this doesn't help me. You know, if we're, if we're paying, you know, these memberships to have these resources, to have this experience, to have this representation, then there should be a task force or a group of people who reach out to us when we're reaching out to them. That's just not happening. And again, I think that's a lot about they're just kind of accepting the status quo of how our healthcare system is. And nurses are one of the most regulated, you know, of all the healthcare professions as far as the organizations, the certifications, the CEs that are required, the hoops we have to go through to maintain our comp, the amount of ongoing learning that we have to do on a regular basis, plus we're one of the only health professions that actually has certified programs for like coaching, for instance, for like nurse coaching. We're the only healthcare profession that actually has a certifying process for you to even become a nurse coach. So if we have so much of this regulation on us and so much of what CMS and Joint Commission and OSHA and all these people— basically nurses are the ones who manage all of those regulations and make sure that our facilities maintain compliance.

While you're on that topic, it's like, it wasn't gonna—

wow.

Yeah, I wasn't gonna bring this up, but I think it fits in here. And that is that, um, the Boards of Nursing— we have been in a battlefield, um, arena for the, for the whole time that COVID has been going on. But the Boards of Nursing are holding nurses accountable as though it was the supreme perfect situation and they had every resource at their beck and call at any moment. And, uh, so I used to think that the Board of Nursing was there to support nurses. Wrong. They are there to protect the public, period.

Right.

And so they actually see nurses as an enemy. In some ways. And this was a big eye-opener for me in the last couple of years to realize— I thought, well, maybe it was a state here and there. It is all across the nation. And I also learned that there is no regulating body over the top of the Board of Nursing. They basically can do whatever they want, uh, and however they want to. So that's a whole nother piece I'm not going to go into anymore, but I just want to be for a separate show. That would be another show. Probably not with me. So anyway, people who are working at a place where you just can't take it anymore, or it's a place where you either have not ever felt respected or appreciated, um, or have been abused, that you have truly been abused in working in this situation, I say care for yourself. Yeah, you did not sign up to go down with this a ship that's being run, mismanaged by, you know, people at the top. And if they won't listen to you, then walk with your feet, vote with your feet, do your research, find out where there are hospitals. And there are hospitals in this country that are doing their very best to do right by nurses. And it's hard to find. I wish it was easier. I keep asking, where are these places? Who are these people? How do I promote you know, these places to go. But there has never been a more opportune time for nurses to negotiate our true wants and needs than there is right now. But we have got to be clear about what those wants and needs are, and we have got to speak up and say it, not as an individual person, because it's, it's a whack-a-mole. They just, you know, whack whatever head is sticking up. But if you've got an entire group of nurses from your organization that are saying the same thing and saying it professionally and appropriately and determinedly and continuously, they have to listen at some point, especially if what you're saying is, we will leave. And there are some nurses who don't want to leave their friends on their unit. Great, have the whole unit move to another unit.

Absolutely.

There isn't a place in the country that wouldn't love to have great nurses come.

Exactly. So, you know, do you have any tips for how to get organized, or do you know of any resources that are out there for nurses to kind of learn about the organization process? Because not a lot of people know how to rally the troops or get organized or network or even submit these types of concerns to their leadership? Do you know of any resources that people can—

You know, that isn't an area of expertise for me because I never worked in a unionized organization. Sure.

But we do have a lot of nursing unions across the country. So a lot of states do have unions, not all, but some.

Mm-hmm. And I have to say, I have not had in the past good feelings about the National Nurses Union, but they're the only ones I've seen over the last year and a half who have been out there constantly speaking up for nurses, speaking for nurses, trying to get changes made. I've noticed that a lot— they've been helping quite a few different hospitals to unionize and to get things like adequate staffing or being able to make their own decisions about staffing. You know, having PPE, having the things that they need. And especially right now, nurses need mental health support.

Yeah.

Anytime, day or night. And they cannot rely on nurses to, you know, to staff things just at the bare minimum, and then when a crisis comes, expect nurses to pick up that slack for as long as it's needed. Yeah. It's not going to work.

Okay, so are there any websites or blogs or podcasts that you know that kind of talk along these lines that you've just come across in your own experience that we might be able to direct people to?

Um, I would say that there are a lot of nursing podcasts and blogs probably out there that are very good. Um, that has not been— probably, um, Nurse Keith is the one that I have followed most. Yeah, I've also been on his show, and other people that I work with have been on the show, and I really do admire the way that he works and how he thinks. And he has a big following, so that can be very, very helpful.

Awesome. So for those of you who aren't familiar with Nurse Keith, you can find him at nursekeith.com. He's also—

I believe so.

Yeah, yeah, he's also, um, Nurse You can find him under Nurse Keith Coaching. You can find him on LinkedIn under Keith Carlson. Um, he and I have been working together for several years. We met at the National Nurses in Business Association several years ago, and he's been an amazing resource for me as I also navigate my own professional nursing career. Um, so definitely check him out. He has blogs, he has podcasts, lots of things. Podcast is called The Nurse Keith Show, and he does touch on a lot of these topics. He speaks to people from all over the place, and sometimes their conversations go very, very deep. And so now, you and I have spoken in the past, and so you mentioned structure earlier about how nurses are compensated, because currently we're being considered a bottom— bottom line, we are room and board for healthcare facilities. Facilities. And so understandably, from a business perspective— I'm a business owner myself, so I understand there's a bottom line. We have to make sure that we have enough money for our operations. And if nurses are getting paid from the healthcare institutions, then I can see why nurses are the first things to get cut, whether it's staffing, whether it's resources, whether it's niceties, whatever the case may be, education even. Nurses are the first to get cut. So I know that you and some colleagues, which you mentioned earlier, have been working to maybe change that or do something about that. So let's just take a few minutes to talk about that.

I want to scrap the whole thinking ship of healthcare, and what we want to do is start fresh with a whole new, brand new idea. And the, and the thought being that because there's so much, uh, people cannot come to any center conclusion. Maybe we need to just scrap everything that's out there and start with something fresh where people can put input into what— how do we make this be what it, what it needs to be. So ultimately, I say we cannot keep going with this business model, this fee-for-service thing. I think we have to start with the main goals of how do we keep— get people healthy, keep people healthy, and educate and encourage them. How do we support at the community level, uh, so that, that all aspects of community, uh, health— and that can be things like, um, poverty, food deserts, um, do— is there safe places for children to play? Are there enough jobs, good jobs? Housing— is housing adequate for people? Mental health assistance, what kind of support for the community, not just to keep down violence, but to actually raise up the community efforts to create a wonderful community.

Right.

That's what a lot of—

Right. So I want to just put you on pause real quick, because something just dawned on me. Now, all of these services you're listing out seem to be pretty much covered by people who are in public health, right? Pretty much, right? Public health. But here, here's the caveat, and not knocking anyone in public health. Obviously they do tremendous amount of work for our communities and we need you. But when public health isn't enough and those people hit crisis, where do they go? Where do they wind up?

There still will have to be these crisis hospitals, but they go to nurses.

That's my point. So they go to nurses. So when people hit crisis, when they don't have enough food and they're starving, they go to a hospital. When they are housing— you know, they don't have enough money to pay for housing and they're homeless, where do they wind up? In the hospital. When people are having domestic violence and they get beat up, where do they go? The hospital. So why aren't the nurses out in the community? Why are public— why are public workers who are not nurse trained out there running these programs?

So because we went away from it. I mean, all of those public health things were started by nurses. Of course they were. And, you know, we can go back and talk about all the different people that have done that. Too, too long a program to But what happened was when hospitals became, uh, as big as they are and kept growing, they sucked in nurses. And I heard someone say to me that when nurses lost their voices when they went into hospitals. So when we were more autonomous through public health and we were going to people's individual homes, we were seeing what was going on, we were able to, you know, deal with the whole situation. And public health has been cut and cut and cut and cut as being an old and useless thing that is no longer necessary. But 4 of my previous guests, I pulled together around January, and we formed a group called Nurses Transforming Healthcare. And the basis of it is an economic model that is built around public health and all of it, it already has the structure for healthcare that is wobbly because they don't have the money and they don't have the people. We would need to reinforce all of that that's been taken away. But the good point about it is that their structure is set up from a broad level to the community level, and at the— for sure, at the community level, using data, using looking at the community and dealing with the needs of the community. That's what we need to do. And we would— the way we see it happening would be nurse-led integrative medicine clinics at the community level, and they would be funded by what we're calling a public utility model. So think in terms of in the '30s when electricity kind of like internet now. People who had those things wanted to sell them to large cities and where there were a lot of people, so it was worth it for them to do the infrastructure to make it happen, right? But they didn't want to send that out to the small communities, to farmers, to all of those places. That would cost a lot of money and there would be very little payback for it. So Roosevelt came up with the Rural Electric Association, which was a public utility model. And since then, we have things like electricity, water, sewer, all of those things that we pay as an individual a small amount into so that an organization can run that. So that's what it would be. We would be paying nothing to insurance companies, nothing to, you know, some of the other things that we're having to pay out of pocket. We would be paying a small amount that would allow every single citizen of the United States and anybody within our borders, illegal aliens or not. The real reality, and I think nurses get this, is if you don't keep everyone healthy, no one stays healthy.

I mean, we can see that with the COVID pandemic, right? Exactly.

If you're denying care to people who are spreading horrible infections, we are not at an advantage. It is a disadvantage for everyone. So we would be caring for everyone. We would be focusing on what is the need of that community at that time and focusing on those needs. As far as who would be working there, I'm saying nurse-led, but it would be any provider. And we're going to need health care, mental health. We're going to need RT, PT, OT, whatever else that it is that people need services. We would need all of that. But the way that the clinic would be set up would be on an egalitarian, not hierarchical model. And the model would focus around what provides the best health outcomes to people. You would not be paying those individuals for each little different thing they did. You put a Band-Aid on, gave them a shot, you did an X-ray. All of those little things, you would be paying for the health, the overall health of individuals. That's what would be paid for. And then the scientists, the artists that we are would be deciding what is the best way for this individual to be able to actually meet those needs.

Yeah.

So that's what we're looking at. We have been talking to people all over the country, and as this COVID has gone on, more and more and more people are saying, Yes, that sounds like where I want to work. Again, it's not about the huge paychecks. Sure, it's about being—

nurses aren't making huge pay cuts now, so—

exactly.

I think people— I think I can't speak for every nurse out there because I'm sure some people are in it for the, for the cash, but, um, I would much rather have a lower salary and be very satisfied with the work I'm doing than be forced to accept a low salary and not have any control or satisfaction in my place of employment.

Yeah, I agree. And I think that nurses are, uh, in the best position right now because literally everybody else has had some level of corruption.

Yeah.

Uh, with that money aspect of it. Yeah. That to give that up when you're making mucho bucks to be able to take care of patients in a healthy way. I still think those people who are now committing suicide, those people who are walking away from healthcare because they— it just hurts their moral souls that they are not doing what they came to healthcare to do.

And it's not even that. It's not even that we're not living the idealistic expectations of nursing. That's not the problem. The problem is, is all the trauma, all of the trauma that nurses are facing, whether it's being catty, whether it's having people in positions of power abuse their power, whether it's the fact that nurses hold their bladder for 13 hours a day, whether you have people who make sly comments about you needing to go to college to measure urine, whatever the case may be, we're constantly being, you know, exposed to trauma. And we have no resources to help us recover.

Exactly. And that comes directly out of a dysfunctional system.

Absolutely.

So if you, you're somebody who has grown up in a dysfunctional family, you will recognize very easily that this backbiting and sidebiting and all these horrible things that come out of it is exactly each person's way of trying to deal with something that makes absolutely no sense.

Yep.

Crazy-making is what I call it. It's crazy.

Crazy-making. So we've established healthcare is failing. The nursing profession is in crisis as far as maintaining the status quo. We can't maintain the status quo. There is no more status quo. Now we are fighting and fleeing. That's what we're doing. It's fight or flight right now. And so you're making the recommendation to voice your concerns, make sure you organize so that it's not just a singular voice, but everyone, you know, make sure that we're holding our professional organizations and our leadership accountable for what they set out to do, which is to support us in the grand mission of keeping people healthy and safe, and then to also change the system. And all of that's easier said than done, of course, but it's not impossible because look at the amazing things we've done over the decades of being.

Yes.

Right. So, you know, there's a lot of things that we've accomplished as a human race, as a country, you know. So we can do it again. We just have to keep pushing forward and fighting the good fight. So, um, go ahead and give me the website or the name of the organization that you're working with to change the structure again.

Uh, the website is nursestransforminghealthcare.org. And, um, if anybody wants to contact me, it would be leanne@ onceanurse.com, which is my, uh, show. Um, I— yeah, we are in the process of changing a lot of things right now with this organization because we're becoming a 501, so a nonprofit, and we're moving forward with getting grants. And so there's a lot of things that are a little bit on hold. So if you go to the website, um, We are in the process of looking for people who can run websites, develop, design, keep them on top. What we want is people to be able to write in, I want to help, here's what I can do, here's what I contribute, here's my information, contact me, and have somebody that is designated to be able to keep that up every day. And so We're working on that. We're not there right now, but still go in. We have a declaration of nurses' independence, which is based off of the Declaration of Independence, but put it from the standpoint of what nurses are experiencing. And every nurse I've talked to that has read it has said, that's it.

That's it. I've read it. I've read it myself, and I can attest that I agree with everything in there. And I would prefer if that's the way things ran. Absolutely. And so I know I have a lot of listeners who are very savvy with internet website design, things like that. So if you're—

that's what I was hoping for.

If you're looking for that gig, reach out to Leanne again. Leanne, what's your full email address? And I'll have all of this in the show notes of this program so everyone can find it. But go ahead and give your email address one more time.

Leanne@onesanurse.com. And the other thing we're looking for is anybody in a doctoral program that's in business, public health, or nursing. We want to set up 2 teams of 3, so one of each of those in 2 teams, to do research on where are good areas to start these pilot clinics. And so it most programs you have to write something anyway, and most programs would accept this kind of thing. So let us know. We are getting grants available to see if we can pay for the work that you would be doing. Um, let me know.

Absolutely. What a wonderful opportunity. You have lots of opportunities out of crisis. Isn't that amazing how nurses make crisis situations and turn into something positive? So, you know, Well, thank you so much, Leigh Ann, for being on the show today. Lots of very important things that we've discussed. Yes, we have a sinking ship, but we do have an opportunity to fix by making something better. So thank you so much. I'll have all of your contact information, how folks can get in touch with you in the show notes of this program. And I can't wait to have our next conversation. Thank you so much for being on the show.

Yes, thank you so much, and I, I will be having you back on my show again. So anybody who wants to, um, see your show, we are in the process of getting that up soon. So once a nurse, always a nurse.

Yeah, thank you. It was a pleasure being on your show, and I'm so happy to have you online as well. Take care. I'll talk to you later.

Bye-bye.

Bye. And that concludes episode 8 of the Nursing Strategies for for Success podcast with this week's guest, Leanne Meyer. We hope that all of the strategies and information that we've covered in today's episode will help to inspire, motivate, and empower you to lead the charge and help us change our healthcare system for the better. All of Leanne's contact information will be included in the show notes of this episode. And as always, if you have any questions about anything that we've covered, you can go to thenursespeak.com/contact and get in touch with me. I would love to have a conversation with you. So until next episode, I hope that you take care, be well, and remember that nurses can do anything.