Pull Up a Chair to the Decision-Making Table: How Nurses Influence Policy, Education, and Technology

Thank you for joining me for another episode of 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 the greatest challenges that the nursing profession faces. My name is Damion Jenkins, and I'm your host for the show. So sit back, relax, and get ready to learn that nurses can do anything. All right, Jody, thank you so much for joining the Nursing Strategies for Success podcast. It's so great to have you here on this Saturday morning. Why don't you take a moment to introduce yourself, introduce yourself to the listeners? Let them know a little bit about who you are, where you started in nursing, and where you are today.

Thanks, Damion Jenkins. Happy to be here. My name is Jodi Long. I am a nurse for almost 30 years. I am currently the Director of Clinical Affairs at PointClickCare, but my journey actually started when I was 18. I worked as a— actually, I didn't actually want to be a nurse, which is actually funny. I wanted to be a surgeon, orthopedic surgeon, and— but my father got sick when I was 16, and so I had to help support our family. So I needed a way— I was already taking healthcare courses, so I needed a way to try and make money a little quicker. So I transitioned to nursing, got a CNA, and I fell in love with the bedside care and how nurses just were able to be there for their patients.

Yeah.

So I did CNA, LPN, RN. I worked as an RN most of my career in the emergency department. I was acute care nurse, worked my way up into leadership, did hospital administration, operations, system administration. And then in 2020, transitioned to healthcare tech, got my informatics degree, and decided I wanted to fix the problem on a bigger level, right? Um, trying to really see how can we advance the profession of nursing from a different angle. I'd done education, I had done leadership, I had done the bedside care, and I was really fascinated with the data and with the technology. So I transitioned to healthcare tech in 2020, and I've been doing that alongside of working bedside side since then. I'm also a nurse regulator. I also look at how can we fix nursing from not only a practice point of view but from regulation, statute, scope of practice. So I am on the Florida Board of Nursing, and I'm also on the National Council for Boards of Nursing, uh, working on committees, uh, there to truly really try to streamline a lot of that— those issues that we see.

Wow, amazing. So you really have done everything, it seems, in the scope of nursing, right? And along your journey, probably constantly seeing things that you want to work towards correcting, correct? Challenges that you're experiencing yourself as a clinician trying to care for residents or patients at the bedside in a probably hectic and under-resourced situation. That happens a lot, right? Correct. And then also coming to terms with our roles and responsibilities facilities, and, and sometimes what we learn in school or what we learn in our training in our facilities isn't really what translates to reality of what our roles and expectations are when we're in the thick of it. So it looks like you constantly pivoted throughout your career to just improve your skill set, improve your knowledge, and gain a better insight of how can you leverage your skill set to make the difference that aligns best with your passion and purpose. Am I correct?

Yeah, I mean, I do believe that in nursing we're lifelong learners. Yeah, we definitely want to figure, figure it out, right? I've heard that my whole career, like, put a nurse in the room, they'll figure it out. They'll figure out how to make that machine work or fix this problem, or if we don't have the supplies, we'll make it work. And we see, even seen that through COVID, it was nursing who figured it out. And I think that it's attributed to our lifelong learning and our ability to see a situation from a different lens. And that's always been my passion, to be an early innovator, an early adopter. How do we move from just being, as people want to call us, you know, status quo bedside nurses, right, to how— to that professional level of what we're doing? And that's just been a real passion of mine.

Amazing. Awesome. So, you know, a lot going on in Florida, right, over the last few years, especially since the pandemic. A lot of interesting things happening, and you have a very unique position that a lot of nurses Unfortunately don't get the opportunity to get to. Um, and it takes a lot of work, as you've demonstrated in your career journey, to get to these positions. Not anyone can be elected to these positions typically, right? You have to have the skill set and knowledge. So amazing. So I'm sure, um, maybe for another show we can talk about the political climate, the regulatory climate, and some of the, of course, you know, issues that have been coming out with Uh, you know, Operation Nightingale and all that stuff. But that's not what this episode is about. This episode is about finding strategies for some issues that we face as a profession so we can, you know, give some nuggets of wisdom to the listeners and have them start immediately implementing those strategies into practice. So let's talk about— you've seen a lot, you've done a lot, you've been exposed to a lot. So what is the thing, right, that you saw as a major challenge that you have either worked towards to find strategies that work or that currently working towards?

So I have a— I always call it my tagline, right? Like, what makes me wake up every single day? And so that is unburdening the bedside provider, whether that's a nurse, a CNA, an LPN.

Amazing.

And that is— and reducing the friction. And whether that's between each other, whether that's between me and a computer, whether that's between me and another unit, it's how do we really unify and get get the work done. And so my everyday role that I do is really trying to unburden the bedside provider and nurses. I really want to talk more about that because I think that we have a— it's this compounding issue in nursing where nurses just continually take on tasks and work because decisions are being made in rooms on how things should be done, and nurses aren't nurses aren't present. And the reason why nurses aren't present is because we're at the bedside caring. And so I, I flip tables, I push my way into those rooms to really get that voice heard because we can't keep doing that. We have an epidemic of nurses leaving our workforce, and with the wave of, you know, older adults coming into that kind of needing the care, that long-term care, we're going to have an even worse, worse shortage. So It really does impact my work that I do every day. So working in technology is how do we do that? How do we really make this a more seamless effort, giving nurses the tools they need to do their job efficiently, giving them the ability to be more clinically accurate, but spending more time with the patients and the residents at the bedside? And that's my drive, is really looking at that and how we do that. And I want to give nurses the strength and the ability to say, I can do this. It takes a lot, but sometimes it's understanding the why. And we don't really understand the why sometimes because we're so busy doing those tasks. And then that's why we're just stuck in these continual cycles of just doing either other people's work, other people's documentation, other people's, you know, things that need to get done. And it really becomes that burdensome that we don't need to be putting on an already strained workforce.

Yeah, absolutely. And I'm so glad that you said that because I know that every single person from nursing student all the way to executives nodding their head saying yes, how can we streamline workflows? How can we reduce the burden? How can we better support while still functioning within a lean budget model, which we know all organizations run by, um, with a lot of the changes with regulations, laws, policies, reimbursements. Yeah, ever-changing. Um, it's really— yeah, to keep up. Rules change every day, and it does— it creates a burden. So let's talk about some of those strategies. So one thing that you mentioned that I want to maybe have you elaborate a little bit more on is pushing your way through to flip tables and get into those rooms, because a lot of nurses now in their career, whether they've been doing it for just a few months or they've been doing it for years, they don't know how to make that next step. They don't know what it takes to get there. And it doesn't always mean more degrees, right? But what are some of the strategies that nurses need to do to get their voices heard and to get a seat at the table?

So I 1,000% agree with that. The amount of letters behind someone's name doesn't dictate their seat at that table. So to be able to get, get your voice heard is you have to understand and speak their language. Unfortunately, that's how it is. We in nursing are to adapt, and that's what we do. We change every single day. And so understanding what they're talking about and being able to present the problem in a way that they understand it. We do this every day with our patients. We understand the clinical part, what's wrong. We are educating them, but we now have to educate those who are making decisions for us of how that's going to impact us. Our patients, and our workforce. And so you just have to learn that, that lingo. If that means sitting in those meetings, asking to be part of them. I know many board meetings, CEOs, those types of, you know, executive meetings, you just ask. That's what I started doing. I'm like, can I— I want to know more about this. It's educating yourself, learning what it means, because we believe people are sitting in silos making these decisions, which sometimes they are.

Absolutely.

But they don't intend to be making those silos. And so it's because they don't understand what we're doing or our lingo, and they think they're making the right decisions when they're not. And so it just becomes making yourself available, listening, understanding what they're saying, and then really being able to come back and translate that to your peers as the WIFM, like, what's in it for us? What's in it for me? Why does this matter? And really making them see that. I mean, we might not agree with everything, right? Like, I don't agree with everything, but I know that sometimes things are out of our control.

Yep.

So how do we now make this better? How do we do this right? And then how do we continue to have our focus where it needs to be? And that's that patient care and those outcomes, and while protecting our clinical ability to practice.

Amazing. And you're right, and, and a lot of those reasons is why I've become an educator, a mentor, uh, you know, coach, so that way I can learn this information and then translate it back to those folks at the bedside, right, or who coming up and trying to get to the next step. So they do understand what's in it for them and to kind of unpack what it means from the administration level to the operations level to the workflow.

Right.

And you know, you're right about people sitting in the boardrooms not necessarily knowing everything. You're absolutely right. And we all know the best nursing leader, for instance, is the one who's out on the floors. Right? The ones who's rounding regularly, the one who jumps in in emergencies, the one who does a shadow shift on a quarter basis with their charge nurses or the nurses on the floor to see the ins and outs of the workflows so they can help streamline and unburden the workflows. Because that's often what's happening is they're like, oh, this needs to be done and this transfer needs to be done and these assessments need to be done and this transfer. From this room to that room needs to be done, and the patient needs to be bathed, and the patient needs to be taken out for their outside appointment, and right, bom bom bom bom bom. Before you know it, they have literally laid out about 27 hours worth of tasks that they want to be done in a 7-hour shift. And that's considering somebody gets a break, right?

So correct.

Yeah, then when you have leaders like myself or yourself who have been there and can easily return there to collect that data and say this workflow is impossible. So let's talk about the things that are absolutely crucial that must be done, that are regulatory and for safety purposes. Then it helps them to better understand, oh wait, we don't have the workforce we really need, or we don't have the resources we really need to be successful. And then it really helps to kind of improve that process and then bring that back once to discuss, which is excellent. Yeah, great point, right?

Yeah, I mean, I always tell— like, I mentor also. I mentor for ANA and HIMSS as well. And I do believe, and I tell my mentees, you know, I bet the best leaders get their hands dirty in many ways, right? They get their hands dirty by working alongside their staff, but also being a leader and showing the right way to do things, even reacting in ways that we don't want to. And then also getting our hands dirty by being involved in those difficult conversations in those meetings where we might not understand, but also asking the questions, right? It's okay. You know, people say there's no stupid questions. I do believe that's correct, but it's also how you present it so that you're not shut down, you know? So it's definitely a way that you have to kind of balance that getting your hands dirty, getting your work done, and really representing the people who either report to you or that you're working with so that you can make sure that that, that's heard in a respectful and professional way.

Absolutely. And timing, tact, and approach, right? Timing, tact, and approach is something that we don't learn in nursing school. We learn about concepts like therapeutic communication, which is great, but they don't teach us necessarily how to choose—

correct—

the right time to use therapeutic communication, right?

Well, you make a great point because they don't teach nursing leadership in nursing school.

They don't, right?

So you have bedside nurses who are right out of school. My daughter's in nursing school right now. And, you know, they come right out of school, they're very clinically driven, task-oriented, let's get this stuff done. Um, but they, they don't teach that in nursing school until you get like BSN, maybe MSN, right? And you have to elect to take some of those classes in that leadership role. So you're really having that kind of struggle of you're seeing a problem as a new nurse or 4 or 5 years in, but you don't have the skills or the ability to— how do I take care of this, right? So you just roll with it, and then it just becomes a— you can start getting that resentment and burnout and that anger because you don't know how to take care of it because they didn't teach you that skill set of what to do when you're— when these things impact you.

Correct. And that trickles even to middle management, right? I mean, and correct, you've been in middle management positions before, it sounds like. So it's like, you know, there is no real onboarding or training or transition from bedside to middle management. It's like they want you to be a nurse but a manager now. And so now you're dealing with budgets, you're dealing with hiring and firing, you're dealing with plans of correction, you're dealing with, yep, you know, operational issues, equipment issues, grievances, all the things that you didn't really have to follow through to a T as a bedside nurse with no additional training. It's like training by trial, right?

Correct.

Yeah, you're going through it. And I've found that that is one of the reasons why our, our profession is so disorganized sometimes.

Correct.

Yeah, because there are no formal transition plans, and sometimes the people in the executive suite who are making these decisions— let's promote this charge nurse to be a unit manager— without any real objective qualifications, right? Other than, oh, they have a good demeanor, oh, they follow instructions, and we never have a problem with them. That doesn't make them necessarily a good manager, right?

Right.

Yeah.

And it's— that's so true. I, you know, sometimes they'll just look at experience. Oh, they've been here for 2 years, like, let's go ahead and promote them. And it's just, you know, sometimes, um, you just have to look at things from a different lens and making sure that you're doing the right thing for the people in your area, but also like understanding what that entails, right? I always look at this from I read this on LinkedIn a while back, and it's really resonated with me, is nursing— and you're right, our profession hasn't really perfected this— but nursing is very different from physicians. However, if you ever look at physician leadership, they're able to be a leader in these organizations but still practice at the same time.

Correct.

And because they don't, they don't put as much of the administrative burden on them because they're leaders and they want them to practice. But it's not the same for nursing, but they want them to get all of these things done. I I remember the first time I was a director of an emergency department, my CFO called me, he's like, "You haven't completed your budget for March." It was like a month. And I'm like, "I have no idea what you're talking about. Like, what do you mean? Like, I don't, what do you want? How do you want me to, I don't even know how to access that," right? And then you open up this Excel spreadsheet, like, what? So I went back and I got a business degree because I needed to understand what they were talking about. But if you look back at that, like, we're not set up for success the way physicians are and the way that physician leadership is. Because they're able to still do that clinical practice, be leaders, but they don't carry the administrative burden that nursing leadership does.

Correct. And, you know, and it just kind of always goes down to the— one of the biggest issues with the burden of the nurse is that we do so much administrative stuff, and it just keeps pulling us away from the clinical. It keeps pulling us away from our assessments, right, from our education with our patients, from catching those subtle, right, of, you know, vital signs shifting adopting and trending in the wrong direction, from checking the lab values, updating the care plans, right, really spending time with those patients who are going through a hard time, which is what we all got into nursing for in the first place. But unfortunately, yes, with the system we work in, it's, it's been that nurses have one, allowed to keep adopting these administrative tasks instead of saying absolutely not, I need to focus on my patient care first. If I can't, right, If I can't perfect my assessments, manage the administration of doctor's orders to make sure that we're keeping our patients safe and stable, and if I can't do the documentation that is required for me to reflect all of the work that I've done, my assessments, my teachings, my discussions, my administration of medications and treatments, then I cannot do that documentation for the facility. Right. And so that's one strategy that I would like to just throw out there for all the nurses listening, is you have every right to professionally push back. Don't be a jerk. Absolutely professionally push back and say, I can't effectively manage my patient assignment and do all of those other things. Yes, I have a right to say so. And if it, if it doesn't work out, if it's an organization who's not going to work with you to help you either adopt skill set to where you can manage that, because sometimes it's just a matter of perspective and showing you that it can be done, but maybe helping you prioritize or manage time a little bit better or delegate more effectively, then fine. But that's not always the answer. Time management, appropriate delegation, and prioritization is not always the go-to to fix those situations. Sometimes it's just unrealistic.

Correct. And we have to say, you know, Correct. And I think that that's where, you know, I, I was talking, um, to one of my friends, is, and she made a point. She's like, I feel like nursing has become like one of the most religious or professions. And I'm like, why do you say that? She's like, you walk down any hallway and everyone's head is down in that computer. No one's looking up, no one's seeing anything. And so I did some research, and statistics show 75 to 80% of a nursing is spent documenting.

Correct.

So that means only 20% is with patients or with family. What if we could flip that? That would make such a difference in our outcomes, the health of our patients, what we are doing, our health as clinicians, right? Like how we're, we're approaching our work. And so I believe you're right, we have that ability, we have our voice to push back, and then the next step is how do we fix Let us fix this together and work on those workflows, work with organizations. You know, documentation is your number one administrative burden. Number one, which is why I got into tech, right? AI came out, you know, we're trying to like use that. Do we use that to help with our efficiency, right? But you also have the worrisomes that we all have as clinicians. And so, we have to just kind of look at it from a very objective way and saying like, Well, how do we do this? There's a lot of emotions that go into it, but it's really looking at, if I make this change here, how does that affect downstream? And that's really where it can become, you know, you're just starting to dig into those holes, but that's where in technology we're starting to see that, right? People started, you know, bringing in all these EHRs and all of these apps and all of this technology, and they weren't really seeing what was happening to the frontline staff with it. Of course, we're collecting all of that data for reimbursement. We're collecting all the data for billing. We're collecting all the data for, you know, these outcome measures or for 5-star ratings or all of this stuff. And then they come back, they're like, but what really happened with the patient or the resident? And we're like, well, we can't tell that story now because you made this document in a flow sheet, right? Like, you know, we can't really tell that story anymore. And I think we have to get back to the basics of that, which is a passion of mine. One of the things I work on But how do we also clinically upskill ourselves to understand what it means to use tools that are AI-driven or tools that give us that efficiency? Because they don't teach that in nursing school either, right? And so they come out, they're nervous. We have multi-generational nursing going on right now where you have older nurses who are terrified of it. We have new nurses who are over-reliant on AI, so they can't even send an email without doing auto rewrite. Right, you know, so we have to figure out how do we make this balanced and we still have that clinical ability to trust our gut, do the right thing, but still get rid of some of this administrative burden so that we can flip the script and spend more time with our patients and residents.

Absolutely. And, you know, to kind of summarize, one of the biggest challenges on how we accomplish all of what you just mentioned is I can go back to my senior semester of my nursing program when I had to do my project, right? What is the theme that you want to improve to make nursing better for everyone, and that's the standardization of processes, right? Yeah, we don't have a standard. It's like wild to me. We have standards of care, right? We have standards of, you know, rules and regulations, at least on a state level and then federal level. Each state can wildly vary, which is still frustrating to but there's no real standard for EHR systems or for workflows or for training programs or for certification programs, degree programs. It's so wildly different that from even within the same organization, one educator can teach and expect completely opposite from the other. Yeah, and that's been such a frustrating factor for me, for someone who is very much a rule follower. But at the same time, when I see that the rules are not setting me up for success, I then start to push back on those rules and challenge it and say, why is this even a rule in the first place? Because it doesn't seem to be coming to the outcomes that we all want. It seems to just have us running in circles. So for standardization, you know, you mentioned earlier Point Click Care. Now we know, a lot of us listening knows Point Click Care. I'm very familiar with Point Click Care. I've been using it for many, many years. And I think something timely that you just mentioned is when you make changes to Point Click Care, how does it affect the clinicians? And part of that standardization that I'm speaking of here is is, you know, the company that I work for put notice that the, the MAR and TAR physical view is going to change. Like what it looks like is going to change. It's going to change colors. And some of the icons are going to change, like where they're located. But even as a standard for like a big organization, I think they gave us like a week or two heads up that it was happening. And so, and they posted it on like the facility bulletin board when you first log in. And it's like, click this video so you can see what it looks like. But the video has no sound. There's no instruction. It's just a clicker pointing to different things. And the video is like 7 seconds or something like that. And I'm just like, I'm looking at this and I'm like, as an educator, I'm like, how am I going to go through this huge building that we have, 409-bed building, in all 3 shifts, right? So we have hundreds and hundreds of nursing staff, clinicians that use this. How am I going to disseminate this message so that way when it goes live, everyone's not calling me saying, what the hell is going on, right? Um, unfortunately, right, I didn't have much time to prepare, so I spent pretty much the whole day of the initial change going to everybody and saying, hey, are you comfortable with it? Have you figured it out? Did you. And then even, even just this morning, on Saturday morning, I got a call from a nurse who only works weekends, and they're like, hey, what happened to, uh, you know, the MAR and the TAR? Why does it look different? And I'm like, yeah, unfortunately we don't have control of those changes. When big companies make changes and they roll them out to their vendors, whoever is using their service, they hope that they give them the proper training, but then it's up to the individual organizations to disseminate that training as effectively as it should. So yeah.

Yeah, I mean, that is, that's one of the challenges we have as a technology company is you're sometimes at the mercy of other people, right? And then you also have to look at everyone's workflow in, to your point, in each individual facility or organization is different. So when you're trying to make a change for the better, it's, you know, you're going to disrupt something, or you're going to disrupt someone's workflow. And you have to get to a point of understanding in technology, or even it's like, how do we— to, to the educator side of your brain is, how do we get that education out? It's not so much showing them what the change is, but why. Number one, because people will accept change so much better if they just know why. And I— that is something I preach all the time, right? And, and two is, are we overwhelming them? With change, you know, like role-based access is so huge. I 100% believe in technology that if a change isn't affecting somebody, like a CNA's documentation, I shouldn't be alerting them on it, right? Like, let's just do alerts and education to the people that it matters to so that we're not overwhelming these and burdening the bedside providers. Because if something pops up in my face, I'm going to either try and read it it, or sometimes I might be busy, it might be an emergency, I'm going to click it off of it, and now I've completely disrupted what I'm supposed to do in that workflow. And we're— technology, sometimes things are helping when they're not. They're actually adding on to that. So it's really having people's voices heard and understanding what is the best method, how do we do that, and also knowing it's like kind of the 80/20 rule, right? Like, we can all— we have to, we have to make changes. 80% might understand it, 20% still might be mad, but we have to still follow the rules and regulations of the backend, right? You know, the standardization is coming. We have USCDI, we have our ONC certifications, those types of things are really starting to hone in on that standardization of the data, understanding where it's at, how it flows. I like to call it more of like, we shouldn't be so focused on standardizing, we should be focused on simplifying, right?

Yeah, that works too.

And AI in healthcare is hard.

Yeah.

Documentation in healthcare is hard. And if we could just go back to simplifying, the standardization will follow.

Yeah.

Right? Because we have overcomplicated sometimes the easiest task with the documentation. And so I always go back to, everyone's like, let's standardize this and let's standardize that. I said, okay, let's start with step one. Let's simplify it and then we'll standardize it. Standardizing is the acceptance of a simplified process. And so I really wanna make sure or that people understand that, that I work with as we're rolling these things out and under and pushing out new solutions and documentation because it needs to be easier for people to do and understand rather than, okay, I documented here and now I have to document this fall 5 other places, right? Like why isn't this mapped on the backend for them? And so those are the things we're working on, really looking at streamlining that documentation the transitions, those risk analytics, so that, you know, nurses aren't data digging. I mean, that's one thing that drives me crazy is when I'm trying to make a decision and I'm data digging because I have to flip through 9 tabs to find information to make a decision when I should be able to just look at something, make that decision, and then act on it, right? Because we want to make sure we're doing timely tasks as well. So It's a lot of work, but I do believe that we're getting there. And, but the education piece is huge and we really just need to focus on the why and how we get people to accept it. You know, I know we, again, we might not agree with all of it. I was working in the ER. I remember tons of times my favorites, my, you would save like your favorite documents or your templates and then the next day, like one day they'd be gone.

Gone.

I'd be like, well, why are they gone? And they would just be like, you know, the EHR was like, well, we had to change stuff, so we had to delete that. We're not using that template anymore. And I was like, oh. So now I'm angry for 22 seconds, and I'm like, okay, well, I gotta— I still have to document, so I guess I'm using this.

Figure it out, right?

You figure it out. But it would be nice if we didn't have to get to that point where we weren't always just figuring it out, right? Like, it's that we have to get to a better place where there's just not so much fast change. Change is fine, change is good, change is hard.

Change is necessary, yeah.

Right. And, you know, because we learn, and that means that we learn something and now we have to change for, you know, that. But we don't have to do so much fast iteration of change that it now starts to impact our clinical care.

Absolutely. And I'm so glad you said that because one of the things I was going to mention earlier, but I wanted to let you have another opportunity to jump in. Sorry. It's okay. Is that that changing things is inevitable, but it doesn't have to be done like yesterday. And that is another burden to our healthcare workers or frontline folks, is that administration oftentimes wants to change everything all at once. And I'm like, can't do that. And plus, we have to always consider how much time is it going to actually take to effectively roll out a change right, test that change, collect the data, it's working, come back to the table with what we found, make the tweaks that are necessary, roll that change out and evaluate it again to determine if it's effective. And unfortunately, they don't often give anyone that much time to do it, you know. Yeah, you've worked in all these different roles in the healthcare setting. So QAPIs and plans of correction and state reports and all of the infection surveillance that we have to do and all all these administrative things. It's impossible to do them all 100% effectively. So oftentimes we're relying on— over time as leaders, we build these systems that work for us to collect this data, store this data, retrieve this data. So then when it comes time to doing our reports, it's easier for us to pull it in, and we can at the 11th hour generate that report. But it's always high stress, fast-paced, gotta do it now because Because if you take the time to be proactive and do it ahead of time, you're leaving 47 other tasks undone.

Correct. Yeah.

And that is one of the biggest frustrations that I know even bedside nurses feel when it comes to just doing things the right way.

Yeah, I mean, I definitely agree with that change. I understand the purpose of change. One of the things I would— I applaud an organization I worked for was when we did change, they— we followed the Lean methodology. I think Lean methodology has got a lot of great ways for people to handle change and do that. And Kaizen events are amazing for like those types of things, right? Being able to, okay, we're gonna take this week to make this change, and by the end of the week, we're gonna probably have reiterated this change 5 times because every day we're meeting, every day we're understanding, and leaders are involved in that rather than, okay, we're just, we're gonna rewrite this policy, make the change, and now you guys handle it, right? So, you know, I do believe that there is a lot of opportunity opportunity for us in nursing to learn more about the business side, understand how, how do we get that embedded into maybe our nursing schools? Is that continuing education? How do we really look at that? And then how do we support our leaders in understanding that and the impacts that it makes when they make those kind of decisions? And so I think those are some great ways that we can, we can strategize for sure.

Absolutely. And say that methodology again.

Oh, so the Lean methodology or Kaizen events. So Kaizen events are when you, um, do things in a very quick manner, and every day you meet. So you put a change in place, it usually happens over a week, but you meet every day and it's very outlined. You can go onto their website, you can get that methodology, the documentation, but it allows you to make a change, reinforce it, and make sure it's correct. So that it's not just, here's the change and okay, everybody deal with it. But the leaders are involved in that, so it's great.

Can you spell Kaizen? Yeah, it's K-A-I-Z-E-N. Ah, and then Lean, just L-E-A-N?

Yeah, so L-E-A-N is capital letters, but it's Lean methodology, um, and you can get certifications in it. I mean, I have a— I have a yellow belt in it. But it is definitely ways that you can understand how to make change, standardize those processes, simplify things, but understanding the why and getting that message out. Excellent.

Well, I'll definitely include that resource on the show notes of this show as well. All right, so just one more thing I want to ask you about the change with the EMR recently, the look. What's the why? Because I didn't get I don't know that information. What's the why? Because a lot of people ask me, why did they change the colors? It was fine the way it was. And I'm like, I don't know. I can't speak to that. I wasn't informed.

So the color piece, you know, I don't work in marketing, but I can understand. I do know that they put out a statement on it. We were looking to change ourselves away from the other markets. If you look at other healthcare vendors, they're colors, they all kind of were the same, right? Like kind of that light blue. Yeah. And so we wanted to be different, to be able to say we, we're encapsulating a different feeling, a different experience for our users. And so we, it's our refresh. That's what we're doing. Actually on LinkedIn, Sage Carpenter, who's part of our marketing, she put out a great podcast on that and some resources. But, you know, we do understand like it changed now, the workflows and the pieces of the MAR and the tar and things like that, that probably came from some revisions and some updates that we're doing on the back end, you know, working with, you know, as we change, we have to also, as we're working on that interoperability, we have to update code, technology foundations, things like that. So sometimes things are going to change because maybe in the next month or two you'll see the impact of that because now we can bring other things in because we have the right APIs UIs in place when before we might have been working off an old code and we couldn't do that. So there's sometimes that's some of the why, but the colors with a marketing piece, we wanted to be refreshed and give people a different experience. And then, um, some of the workflows and some of those pieces are probably that backend was changed so that we can now improve upon the experience for our end users.

Got it. Excellent. So yeah, I, I always knew that colors were kind of a combination of marketing but also functionality, usability, right? So yeah, accessibility can draw your attention, right? The color could like make you kind of relaxed a little bit. Yeah, psychology behind it, which I understand. Um, and sometimes trying to explain this to bedside staff who are limited on time to really engage—

exactly—

as a conversation, they're like, I don't care, I just need to know where, where did the assignment button go because I'm stuck on this cart and I need to go to this other cart. To get my VAsions, and I'm like, it's still the same icon. It's just, it's here now instead of there. They're like, oh my gosh, why did they move it? You know that kind of thing.

It's just prettier.

They're just like, oh, just turn it back. Just turn it back. And I'm like, I can't do that. It's a global change that—

Global, yeah.

It started with the company. So we can't fix that. It's not our facility thing.

It's the VA.

So we have to go with it. And they're like, oh.

Yeah. And we also updated to comply with accessibility laws. And rules to really make sure people who have, you know, disabilities could still see and understand where things are at. So icons might change based on that too, because we just want to make sure— because again, multi-generational nursing is out there. We want to make sure that we are, um, you know, working with everybody and making sure that they can use our product correctly as well.

Absolutely awesome. Well, thank you so much for sharing all of that incredible information. Um, we left some really great nuggets of wisdom for those folks out there. Jody, if people want to get in touch with you, how could they go about doing so?

So I'm on LinkedIn, um, so it's just Jody Long, um, with a bunch of initials. But, uh, you can reach out to me on LinkedIn, um, or you can email me at jody.long@pointclickcare.com. Always happy to jump on a call or walk through or answer questions. Again, I work on the clinical team, so if I don't know the answer, if a tech question, you know, I can always get you guys to the right place. But always happy to answer questions, whether it's related to PCC or nursing or regulations. You know, I think that's our, you know, mission as nurses is to continually educate and be there for our peers.

Excellent. Thank you so much, Jodi, for joining us.

Of course.

All of the listeners on the Nursing Strategies for Success podcast, I will be probably calling you in the near future to pick your brain about a few things.. Sure, of course. Thanks for being on the show.

We'll be— thank you for having me. I really enjoyed today. Thank you.

All right, take care.

Bye-bye.

And that concludes episode 9 of season 4 of the Nursing Strategies for Success podcast with this week's guest, Jodi Long. We hope that everything that we shared for you in today's episode will help you to develop strategies energies so you can position yourself into places so you can have a seat at the table to make the change that you want and deserve. All of the ways to connect with Jodi will be in the show notes of this episode. And as always, if you have any questions about anything shared, please visit thenursespeak.com and get in touch with me. I would love to have a conversation with you. So until next episode, take care, be well, and remember Remember that nurses can do anything.