Kym Ali, MSN, RN - We don't need another hero - we NEED more nurses!

Thank you for tuning in to episode 1 of the Nursing Strategies for Success podcast with special guest Kim Ali. Kim supports nurse leaders with retention and engagement by building healthy, resilient, and inclusive teams, enabling nurses to show up as their best selves and provide safe, quality, and culturally competent patient care. Kim has saved facilities over $500,000 to date with staff retention. Retention efforts. Kim is also a content creator for HealthStream's self-care and wellness app for nurses. Within a short amount of time, Kim's work has been featured on NBC, Fox, CBS, the National Student Nurses Association, the Nurse Leader Network, and other digital platforms. So let's welcome Kim Ali 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, thank you so much, Kim, for joining us on the Nursing Strategies for Success podcast. Why don't you take a moment and let the listeners know who you are, where you started off in nursing and where you are today in your career.

Sure. Well, first, Damion, I just want to say thank you so much for inviting me on your podcast. It's a pleasure to be here. And hello to the audience. My name is Kim Ali, and I am a nurse retention consultant. And what I do is I support nurse leaders with rebuilding healthy, resilient, and inclusive teams.

Awesome. So how long ago did you start off as a nurse? Where did you start off as a nurse?

Oh gosh. So I've been a nurse for 16 years. Can't believe that old. Um, but actually started nursing doing telemetry and I automatically knew that was not a fit for me. I'm an introvert. So, um, environments where there's, you know, quick movement, high stress, it just didn't mesh well with my personality. And I've always had an interest in women's health. And so I did about maybe 6 months in telemetry, and I was sprinting off of the unit when I had the chance to do mother-baby. And so, um, I did mother-baby for a while, for about 5 or 6 years, and, um, got to do travel nursing as a mother-baby nurse. Great experience. And then, um, ventured into other areas of nursing, um, such as school nurse. I did that for a little bit. Education, leadership, informatics. And then about maybe 7 or 8 years ago, I had a really great opportunity to go abroad to a country called Qatar. And I was an activation consultant. I was responsible, along with a team, for opening a women and children's hospital. So that was a really rewarding experience. But however, I'm sure everyone can relate, nursing is very stressful. And eventually most of us experience burnout. And so just through my own personal experiences, um, with trauma and burnout, um, I started researching resilience, you know, what makes people more resilient than others. You know, there's some people, if they break a nail, it's the end of the world, but other people, they can go through hell and come out stronger. And so I became a certified behavior change specialist and also a first aid mental health responder. And so through those methodologies, um, I started seeing results in my life within a matter of weeks. And then I started, you know, testing on friends, other nurses who were in similar situations, and they started getting results. And I said, you know what, this might be a business. And, um, started doing a B2C model originally, which is business to client. And, um, after that I received several requests to come on board to work at healthcare facilities. And then coincidentally, eventually that's when the pandemic started.

Yeah.

And so yeah, that's my career, um, in a nutshell.

Yeah.

Wow.

So it sounds like you've done quite a lot to gain a world of knowledge and experience under your belt. That seems like you're really taking advantage of all of your experiences to now help organizations and other nurses build that resilience, um, and those retention efforts that are so essential for our healthcare system. Because nurses are leaving the bedside at alarming rates. The pandemic definitely did not help anything, and I can see, you know, here in New York City where I'm stationed, hospitals are still in dire need of nurses even though the numbers aren't that bad right now, things like that. They're still severely short-staffed. So, okay, so you've identified the issue you mentioned as the burnout was kind of the issue and people leaving the bedside and, you know, individuals not having the resiliency that they need to keep going forward. So you've identified that as an issue and then you went on and developed some additional training and expertise in that field. So talk about how you decided to do that. What led you to seeking out those additional credentials so that you could help, solve this problem?

Sure. Uh, well, I'm a gym rat. I've always been very physically active, physically strong. Um, but when I was going through a certain period in my life, um, just going to the gym wasn't working.

Mm-hmm.

And that's when I realized I needed to work on my mindset and my perception of what was happening around me. And, um, cognitive behavioral therapy is what I teach in my programming. And so that involves, um, reframing your thought process. Or disputing negative thoughts that are in your head. And once I started to work on my mindset, um, it's when I knew I had something powerful and that, you know, I wanted to share it with the world.

Very good. So you saw that mindset alone was kind of the key to focusing on the positivity that we have before us, you know, maybe living in the light of gratitude, which is what I like to you know, teach a lot of my clients and people I work with. There's, you know, human nature has designed us to focus on the negative, right? So, you know, you can call it even evolution. Evolutionary processes have gotten us to focus on the negative because if we are afraid of bad things, then we remain safe. We, you know, kind of pull in and don't put ourselves at risk. But we know in order to overcome certain barriers and to grow and evolve ourselves, we have to face those fears and then find ways to get around that. So, you know, let's talk a little bit more about that because this is very interesting, and I think everyone could benefit from having these strategies to be able to change their mindset about things. And, you know, I'm a nurse writer and public speaker, and I get a lot of people who come to me and say You know, why is everything I read about nursing so negative? Why is it that I try to bring up a conversation about changing the way we do things or improving the process, I get met with a lot of negative resistance about, oh, you're just wasting your time because nurses are just numbers and healthcare doesn't care about us, and you know, we're helpless in the situation. So either you leave nursing altogether or you just have to deal with it. You know, let's talk about how people can immediately start to change the way that they think about these. Can you give us like an easy tip to start that process?

Absolutely. And you bring up a good point, um, because I do have numerous conversations, um, even with nurse leaders, and a lot of people think that they are in a position to do something, but sometimes they aren't, you know, if they aren't getting the support, um, from their superiors. And so the first tip, um, I would encourage everyone to do is focus on on what you have control over. You know, we can't focus on what our nurse leaders do or what the CEO does of a hospital. Focus on your environment. So what can you control? You know, you have control over when you take your breaks. Um, you have control over who is going to be in your inner circle to support you during these trying times. Um, you have control over the rapport that you develop with your patient, because I think in the midst of the pandemic, people are forgetting about the patients as well. And so focus on the things that you can change, and then you will start to see a dramatic improvement in how you feel and how you process things that are happening around you.

Yeah, that's such really great advice. Um, I've been saying that I'm fortunate enough to have started my adult life quite early, and, um, so I've done a lot of soul searching, a lot of self-reflection over the years. And I remember back in the day when MySpace was still a thing, you could put like your favorite quote kind of at the top of your profile. I had, you know, focus on the things that you can control because the things that you can't don't matter. And, you know, that was kind of my saying to everyone else who would come in always trying to compare themselves to others, always trying to, you know, spend so much time and energy focusing on things that are truly out of their control. And, you know, understandably, this is where a lot of people sink their faith in religion and things like that, or certain practices like exercising or meditation or going and walking around a lake to kind of let some of these things off, because, you know, they're giving into the power of surrender. You know, something that I've done a long time ago, and, you know, just surrendering again, letting go of these things that we have no personal control over. And instead of focusing on those those things. Focus on the things that you do have control over, like you said, taking your breaks, you know, building those relationships that you need so that you have someone that you can count on to get your back when, you know, you're starting to sink at work, you know, things like this, you know, the way that you interact with your patients, you know, the doctors, other nurses. We do have control over those behaviors. Um, so that's really great advice. And so, you know, building resiliency is something that we all kind of either have to learn on our own, or we have amazing people like yourself who are helping people develop these strategies. And it seems like you're helping at the organizational level, right? So you're kind of making sure that the leadership have those tools so then they can trickle them down to the staff, correct?

Yes, that's correct.

Um, and so this is really important because we've all seen that amazing, uh, nursing chief officer and nurse manager and COO who have amazing talent, amazing knowledge, amazing skills go through the same problems that the rest of us go through. They still get burned out, they still get overwhelmed. They also are struggling to find that resiliency. So I think what you're doing is really amazing. Um, so talk a little bit about What would your program look like? Is it invig— is it individualized, or do you have kind of a set process that you go through so that, uh, people know kind of what to expect when they reach out to you?

Right. Um, so the programs are tailored to the organization's needs. Um, for example, believe it or not, some facilities, um, state that they don't have an issue with burnout, that they're fine. I've heard that comment.

Yeah, I hear that they would rather deny that they have a problem, right? Right.

Right. But you know, I can only work off the information I receive. So their priority may be diversity, equity, and inclusion. And so, um, for any program, whether it be that or wellness, mental health coaching, resilience, um, what I do first is an organizational assessment. So come in, what do you have in place? What is the qualitative, quantitative data? And then find out what the organization would like to work on. Is it boosting morale? Is it helping with burnout? Um, Do they need a wellness program in place? And then after that, um, builds out a curriculum. So the curriculum can either be delivered, uh, in person— I do travel— um, or it can be remote. Um, several options for the curriculum delivery could be pre-recorded sessions, so it minimizes time away from the bedside, and then a live follow-up Q&A. Or if the facility can afford to have nurses leave the bedside for a little bit, we can do a lunch and learn workshop.

Nice.

Um, there's also tools. I give my nurses little workbooks, so there's tools that they can do, uh, each week. And then, um, every quarter we do an assessment to see what has been the impact on this program. Um, has the retention changed? Has staff morale changed? Um, has patient satisfaction increased? You know, just little subtle changes can make a huge impact on your KPIs.

Yeah, absolutely. So, um, so I'm— I can't help the nurse educator in me, and also the NCLEX prep expert in me can't help but to identify— and I want to make sure that everyone listening is following along with this— that you are using the same amazing tool that we're all taught in nursing school to find the problem and then create a plan to address the problem, and that's the nursing process. I can hear it in the way that you're approaching the situation, you know, do that assessment. This is what, you know, I set out to do with this podcast, is to really let nurses know that we have all of the tools and capabilities and insight to do whatever we want to do, that we can really do anything we want. And so the title of this podcast is We Don't Need Another Hero, We Need More Nurses, and I titled it that way because of your expertise with being able to build that resiliency, you know, get more nurses to stay into the workforce, work with organizations to attract more nurses. And so that way we're not losing them, because we do really need to drop the whole nurses are heroes, you know, PR campaign, because it's not working. None of us are, are believing the fact that we're superheroes. Yes, we are proud of the work we do. Yes, We take, you know, great pride in what we do. We're very compassionate. This is why we do what we do, because we certainly aren't becoming millionaires at the bedside, and we're certainly not, you know, just having the best lifestyle possible when we're doing such difficult work. So we want to be there. So calling us heroes and just saying, you know, good job, that's not enough anymore. We need, we need to develop systems that truly place value on the work that we're doing. And so talk a little bit about that.

Yeah, actually, I was just going to say, I'm glad you said that because calling us heroes enables the behavior of us not taking care of ourselves, right? Because if you think about it, heroes are these fictitious characters that go out and put their lives on the line to save other people.

Have unlimited resources, unlimited power. Right!

Right. And you never hear superheroes, you know, complain or say they're tired. They just go, go, go, go, go, because that's what is expected of them. And so in order to allow nurses to take off the cape and, you know, let people know, I am tired, I'm burned out, I have PTSD, we have to stop labeling us heroes because it's not realistic. We're not— we're human, right?

Absolutely. So, you know, I just want to say to all of the, you know, chief nurse executives, all the people at the top of the marketing departments, please stop. Stop saying that we're heroes. It's nice for patients, they think it's all amazing and everything, but all of your staff, you know, every nurse I've talked to cringes at being called a hero because we are doing our job. We are coming in to do the work that we set out to do, and we don't really need to be called heroes. We need the support to continue to do our work, to be able to have periods of rest and recovery, to be able to have a living that can support us, our family, pay off our student loan debt, and have, you know, some form of seat at the table to make informed decisions about how the institution is going to continue to meet their mission. Because nurses generally do want a piece of the decision-making because we're so involved in healthcare in this country. We control pretty much every facet of patient care delivery in this country. So we really would like to be supported in a better way. So the work that you're doing sounds like that's exactly what you're doing, is going into organizations and making sure that they have the systems in place for that additional support. So that's awesome. So where can people find you if they're looking for you to reach out for consultation services? Maybe they just have some questions, or maybe they have, um, they're in a position to where they can bring you in to help the organization develop these strategies for success?

Sure. I'm very active on LinkedIn. Feel free to make a connection request or DM me. You can also email me. It's info@kimalee.com. And my website is www.kimalee.com. And I'm also on Facebook as well.

Awesome, very good. And so where are you located, Kim? What part of the country are you in?

I'm in Vienna, Virginia.

Oh, nice. Awesome. You're on the East Coast with me. Yes, so, but you heard that, guys, she will travel to you. So, you know, reach out. Um, and, and again, this is another plea for healthcare executives, um, nursing or non-nursing, um We need to stop ignoring the problems that we have and trying to, you know, do a simple fix with a $5 coupon for a free meal. Those type— because honestly, it's, it's becoming offensive. It's becoming offensive. You're losing your staff faster and faster the more you keep investing into those types of staff appreciation, you know, type things. And really We would rather you bring us and sit us at the table and say, this is why we can't buy those new beds, or this is why we can't buy those new— this is why we can't hire that new nurse. We need to be involved in the decision-making. The more we know, the more we can leverage our strengths to help, because that's what nurses do. We leverage our strengths to get the job done. And oftentimes where we do amazing work with very little. Um, so this is incredible. And so did you have any last minute tips or advices for our listeners?

Um, to the nurses that are listening, and nurse leaders as well, because I do realize you are burned out and stretched thin as well, um, you know, just keep in mind to take care of yourselves first. Um, when your cup is empty there's nothing to pour to anyone else, right? So you have to make sure to replenish your cup so it can overflow to others. And admitting that you need some support with that is not a sign of weakness, it's a sign of strength. So just please keep that, keep that in mind. Please be safe, and I wish everyone a wonderful day.

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much, Kim, uh, for the work that you're doing. It's very much appreciated. I'm sure all of the facilities that you've connected with are feeling the positive impact of the strategies that you're laying down. I know all of the listeners are going to be very appreciative of the work that you're doing as well. Everyone, you know, definitely connect with Kim. She sounds like she's an awesome resource to have and be connected with. So thank you so much, Kim, for being on the show today. I really appreciate appreciate it, and, uh, we will be talking soon. Take care.

Bye.

And that concludes episode 1 of the Nursing Strategies for Success podcast with guest Kim Ali. We hope that all of the strategies we shared for you in today's podcast will help you lead the charge and move your nursing career to the next step. If you have any questions for me, feel feel free to reach out by visiting thenursespeak.com/contact. I would love to have a conversation with you. All of Kim's information and ways to connect with her will be located in the show notes of this episode. So until next time, take care, be well, and remember that nurses can do anything.