Season 2: Episode 14: Kristy Anne - Battling Nurse Burnout by Leaving the Bedside & Becoming a Behavioral Scientist!

Thank you for joining me for another episode of the Nursing Strategies for Success podcast with this week's guest, Christy Ian. Christy is a nurse, behavioral scientist, podcaster, bestselling author, and founder of Project In Between. She designs and delivers health and wellness change programs for professionals to help reduce burnout, stress, and emotional trauma. You see, Christy was also a victim of nurse burnout, and as a result, she she decided to leave the bedside and pursue a career path as a behavioral scientist. With her newfound understanding of behavioral science and her nursing background, she is now on a mission to help bring to an end nurse burnout and help others align with what is best for them so that they can thrive in both their personal and professional careers.. So let's welcome Christy-Ann 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, Christy, for being on the Nursing Strategies for Success podcast. Why don't you just take a moment and introduce yourself to the listeners? Let them know a little bit about yourself, where you started in nursing, and where you are today.

Yeah, thank you, Damion, for having me on. Um, yeah, so my name is Christy. I am in Brisbane, Australia. Um, I had my start out in nursing over 12 years ago, and I started out and pretty much specialized within acute and chronic medicine. General medicine. General medicine. I sort of— I've done a few different things, but yeah, mostly palliative care, dementia, mental health, acute, like the whole gamut basically. So I really learnt, yeah, I learnt pretty much everything, which, you know, in hindsight I think was an amazing sort of gift, even though it was pretty full-on. Medical nursing isn't for the faint of heart. Yeah, so that was about 12 years ago. In 2018, I decided to leave the industry. At the time, I was incredibly burnt out. Yeah, didn't know it was burnout though. Didn't even know what burnout was, funnily enough, which is quite strange now that I think about it. But yeah, got really incredibly burnt out, took 6 months off. Retrained and became a behavioral scientist. Um, the reason why I did that, I guess, was because it was more, it was more health economics based. It was sort of understanding health behaviors. Um, yeah, and that sort of thing. So it actually, I ended up uncovering a lot about, you know, psychology and the human brain and health. Oh, it was just fascinating. So yeah, so I'm still within the health industry, but, um, just did a bit of a reroute.

Okay, a little bit of rerouting. Um, and honestly, um, it sounds like you said you left the nursing industry, um, but isn't a lot of the behavioral modifications kind of really identifying the barriers that are keeping people from, you know, doing the things that are going to get them to the goals that they truly do want for themselves, but they just get lost in the process. They don't want to face their discomfort. They don't want to face, you know, having to move away from something that's given them so much pleasure before, and now there's going to be a period of unsettledness before they get to where they need to be. We do all of that as nurses anyway, right? But yeah, understandably so, with that burnout that— which again, to your surprise, you didn't even know what it was. And I, I'm a nurse educator and I teach in academia and have had a lot of education experiences. And you're right, we don't really teach about burnout to the extent that we should, because we really should be putting things in place to prevent that from happening. But when you're in that space, in the way our healthcare system is, even all the way in Australia, right, you can't do that kind of work as a nurse with the system that we have set in place right now, right? That's the problem, right?

100%.

Yeah.

Um, I did get, um, I got cycle— I got help through psychology, etc., through the EAP, all the employee assistance programs, but it wasn't enough, Damion. And I just— I didn't even know, you know, the system sets you up to, you know, honestly, only the strongest survive.

Really, the people who can toughen up and kind of become jaded and maybe not care as much that they're not delivering the level of care that we all set out to deliver because it is what it is. This is the way it's always been. You just toughen up, buttercup. Those are the types I've heard. When I hit the floor running and I was like, whoa, none of this is what it should be. Of course, you know, there's the standard of like safe care, infection control, doing procedures correctly, documenting appropriately, collaborating. We still do all of those things and we do those things well. But when we really want to elicit the change that we're trying to, which we know we're— we can within our abilities, we're not allowed to.

Yes, 100%. I 100% agree. I do remember Electra saying to me once, you know, once you start going to work and you lose your empathy and you start getting pessimistic and like the toughen up, you know that it's probably time to look elsewhere. And I remember that was— I remember I took that with me and I held on to it. And I was like— and I remember thinking, wow, I I love this, but I am at this point where I just have lost all empathy for human— well, for people who are whinging and whining about things, you know. I just was like, whoa, this isn't— it's not okay. There's got to be something else underneath why these people are representing and why they're not getting healthier. And there was a behavioral— there's a— as you know, there's a behavioral component to all this stuff. Yes, but there's also an emotional component.

Yes.

And the health system doesn't— unfortunately, there is no emergence. I mean, it's just a very strange separation. I don't think it's, it's required, you know. I think nurses and the preventative measures are definitely not for nurses.

No, right. So we know that to be true because there's not a lot of prevention in medicine, period.

Right.

Prevention doesn't pay the bills. Prevention doesn't make hospitals rich. Prevention doesn't make doctors rich.

Yeah.

So unfortunate— or pharmaceutical companies, right? Or insurance companies. Well, maybe insurance companies would benefit from prevention, so they really should be spending more money into preventative measures. Yeah. But, but we know acute issues or chronic issues pay the bills. That's what gets the money in. And so historically, we can see that there's been purposeful avoidance of preventative measures in many ways. And a lot of the preventative things we have are because they've been enacted into law. Like, it had to be passed through legislation for it to even come in the first place, which just tells you all you need to know about humans as a collective. We don't really want to do the right thing as a collective. We want to do the easy thing, the fastest thing, and the thing that's going to make us the most money.

Get all the dopamine hits and, right, you know, yeah, right.

So yeah, to speak on the fact that we do learn a lot about validating people's feelings, making sure that they feel, you know, present and respected, um, but yeah, that's only really addressing their emotional side and it's not really addressing the psychological behaviors that they are, you know, really are the catalyst for a lot of their problems. Um, and of course we can refer them to a psychologist or psychiatrist or, you know, a, um, their, uh, social worker who does therapy and things like that. But why can't nurses do those things? Why shouldn't we? Of course we do.

We do. That's the thing. Yeah, like, we are literally— not only are we nurses, we're psychologists, we're social workers, we're patsy doctors sometimes. We are, we are so multifaceted, and we're so undervalued within the industry. I mean, I have to say it, like, we are— like, we, we— I always say, that's why I call it Project Inbetween. We're the healers, we're the inbetweeners, where we help people to We sit and we observe, right? And that's a part of— I don't know if it's in the States the same, but, you know, observation, intuitive observation, or the nurse's intuition, right? We have that ability to tap into somebody's emotional status and know that something's not right intuitively. We have that ability because it's a honed, a deeply honed skill, and it's a very It's actually quite a great skill that we, we all have. Um, it's very undervalued, of course.

And then of course you've learned with your additional training, which unfortunately nurses don't get that deep level training that you get, but you've learned with your training what to call those things. Yeah, you know, you now understand what to call it when someone is kind of hesitant. Are they in the contemplative stage? Pre-contemplated? Are they willful, willlessness, right? All these things, right? You get to name them once you— another additional layer of training. But we don't learn that in nursing school. Even if you go, even if you go all the way from, you know, straight out of high school and then you go all the way through a master's program for entry into practice, which, just so everyone knows, I don't really agree with the MSN into practice. I think it's a waste of time. BSN, sure, I think everyone should be BSN, great. But MSN, to me, is just weird, starting with the master's at the bedside. But if we just focus a little bit more on how to elicit these behavioral changes rather than focusing on the encyclopedia of information you expect us to teach patients, then we would actually create positive change in the way that people approach their diagnoses, their medication regimens, their diet, exercise, their relationships, all of those things.

Yes, I 100% agree. This, um, I noticed, I remember thinking at the time, you know, there's a complete misdirection of, um, of care, um, that some of these patients are getting and A lot of it is psychological and emotional, you know, um, and it is about unmet needs. And behavioral science is all about understanding basic needs and value— people's value systems and stuff like that. And, you know, it is a lot to do with connection and unmet needs, that unmet emotional needs. Meet people, you know, they— there's a, there's a thing called, you know, behind every behavior is an unmet need. And when you meet that need then you'll understand why, you know, the outcome of that particular behavior, you know. Um, so yeah, it's— and it's the same for nurses too. We are so indoctrinated and trained to ignore our own needs.

Yeah.

Um, we're conditioned, right? They conditioned— conditioned—

we are conditioned to feel guilty Oh yeah, if we call out, right? We're conditioned to feel guilty if we say no to that third patient that is already stretching us past our safe limit. We are in the shame, guilt, the shame, guilty when we take a vacation because the unit is short-staffed and our colleagues are going to have to work short when we go and enjoy ourselves. And we better have fun because they're going to suffer while we're away.

Oh yeah, yeah.

And no one does anything to fix that.

No wonder we're burning out so— and faster. Like, um, even grads, Damion, I've been noticing, and I've been watching, grads are not wanting to actually go into it anymore because they're burning out in their, um, pracs and their practicums and their clinicals at school. Yeah, and their clinical practices.

Yeah, like, they don't even get out and they're already ready to give up. I'm— so, you know, my main client, the people that I serve the most, um, are new graduate nurses as they're either trying to pass the NCLEX exam, which, you know, is the entry into practice here in the United States and Canada. You have to pass the NCLEX or you cannot work as a nurse, you cannot get your license. Um, and we have a large percentage of people not passing on the first attempt now. Pandemic definitely put a big hit on that. We're like in the 67th percentile of first-time pass rates right now, which is really awful. We used to be at the lowest, like high 80s, but now we're like high 60s. So a large proportion of people are not even getting their license after they survive the traumas of nursing school. And I can say traumas of nursing school as an experienced nurse educator with my master's degree in nursing education, where I've taught in MSN programs, RN programs, LPN programs, and all of the levels of nursing below, I know the challenges that educators face. So this is not an attack on educators, but it is a systems process. Our schools are not supporting us. They're not allowing to do the work that we are able to do, same as at the bedside. Our organizations are not appropriately leveraging our skill set so we can make the change. So what's happening is we are getting burned out. We're, we're running in circles, doing the same thing over and over again, reinventing the wheel, and it's getting exhausting. And to top it all off, we get paid disproportionately less than the rest of the healthcare team members. So it's time to do things differently.

So it's clearly coming out, like it's coming out everywhere. It's just, it's almost like nobody— people are sick of it. They're sick of hiding. They're sick of— well, they're sick of burning out for a job that will just replace them tomorrow.

Without even batting an eye.

Without batting an eyelid.

Great. So this is, this is what our, our focus is. This is the challenge, right? So we're going to focus on this burnout, um, as the challenge for nurses everywhere. So again, nursing students, new graduate nurses, nurses within their first year of practice, and even professional nurses who have been doing this for many years They have— I know I have for the 12+ years I've been a registered nurse. I also have left several roles because of that exact thing, because of feeling like I am fighting a losing battle. And despite how much amazing stuff I do for people, it's never good enough. And so I have to find my happy place and align myself with my strengths so that I can be happy with the work that I do get to get done each day that I go to work. And so that's what I've done. I've really leaned into nursing education as my happy place, and I don't mind going to the clinical. I still enjoy clinical, but I do always want to have a hand in the education. So if I'm hired by an organization to come in and be like a, um, a float or a travel nurse educator, for instance. Yeah, then I'll do that, and I'll even take some patients here and there, or I'll be bedside with the other nurses making sure that they're learning how to do the skills or improve whatever, um, essential skill that the organization needs to improve, like conflict resolution skills, which is something—

oh yeah, we're great at that.

We are good, but we have to learn it by fire. They don't train us how to do that in school. We have to figure it out on our own. Anyhow, so, so this burnout, this feeling of just depleting our reserves for others, um, that's what you saw as a problem. So share with the audience, what did you do about it?

Yeah, so I guess I probably started using my own intuition for myself and sort of started tapping into myself because I remembered thinking— I had a young child, she's nearly 10 now, but at the time she was about 2. 2 or so. And I was just like, oh God, I'm just feeling— I just can't. I felt like, um, my brain was just stuck on this superhighway of just constant, like, going, going, going, going, going. You know, I go to bed at nighttime and all I hear is those bloody call bells, the nurse call bell, and, you know, and just, and just constantly processing my day. And then, um, I just was like, this is, you know, I thought, I thought the answer was to go for a run, to go to the gym, to go to a psychologist. I started drinking too much. Um, I just— anything to stop it, to stop the noise, anything to just switch off. And then I emotionally shut down in the end, and it ruined my marriage, ruined me, my relationships. Um, but I did seek help, so I got psychology— I went to a psychologist. Um, it helped, but it was literally just paying lip service. It really didn't help that much. Yeah, it was almost like re-traumatizing myself. I felt it wasn't really giving me any great strategies.

Psychologists have a tendency to, to make you face your fears and relive trauma so you can unfold them and unpack them and then repack them. And I'm like, please, can we not do that? Yeah, focus on moving forward. I don't want to go back.

Yeah, and I'm all about moving forward. I'm not about— I really don't like— I mean, yes, okay, bring up— I'm very much a present-focused person, like, how can we move forward? How can we make this better? So I ended up, um, looking to holistic and alternative methods of healing. So I ended up going So one of my, one of my friends, she's a nurse, she's a registered nurse, and she, um, became a Reiki teacher. She's still a registered nurse and she still works within the system, but I found her and I went and learned Reiki as a stress relief. And it was, it's like a meditative practice. They call it spiritual, you know. I have as a byproduct become a very spiritual person because I've had no choice. Um, so yeah, I went and tried out. Um, so I'm now— I, I do Reiki more so for myself, but, um, also as a stress relief. So I learned a lot of body practices. Um, like trauma gets stored in our bodies from all this stress and stuff, so I had to do a lot of body work and, you know, all that sort of thing. And, and I'm like, why is this not spoken about the bodywork stuff that we need to also— because if we just live up from, up from here, up from our necks up, we're completely disregarding like where all of the health issues are stored.

Again, we make decisions in our healthcare system based on things that make money and things that are that have concrete evidence, right? So, and when I say concrete, we mean reproducible studies that have, you know, control groups, all of this stuff, right? That's how we make decisions. And I do value research. I really do. But we also know that the universe is far more— oh yeah, and we can even comprehend. And there are plenty of studies and evidences that we are creatures made of energy, and that through manipulation of that energy, we can change you know, the— even the biophysics within our own body.

100%.

Just for instance, there's research that proved that when you go hang out by a large body of water, that your pH changes slightly more alkaline, that you have less negative ions floating through your body, that your, your brain activity both calms and focuses at the same time. There is studies that show this. So there's plenty of evidence that we can tap into things more so than, you know, reproduced trials of patients taking meds, right? So it's like we can really invest more into exploring these things, and there are plenty of, um, countries doing that. It's the United States certainly is not one of them. I can't speak for Australia, but I know—

no, it's not happening here. I mean, there are studies here, you know, they're saying, oh, get out in nature and, you know, it's great for your mental health. Yeah, and it is, it is 100%, it is.

But, you know, where's the backup from the healthcare providers or the healthcare industry saying, yes, there, there are, you know, facts about that, and yes, you should take your shoes off and put your feet on the bare ground?

I think, yeah, I think, you know, All of that, all of that counts. It really does.

Yeah. So, okay. So alternative medicine and practices have got you into a space where you thought there was more to all of this, right? You, you started to heal yourself. And then once you found your healing, and again, you retrained and went through the behavioral science, was that after you found healing? Or was that during your healing process when you decided to retrain?

Um, it was during— I didn't know again until I started the behavioral science and I sort of started to learn about, you know, my own having my own value system. Like, they didn't even touch on that in nursing. And I was like, and I'm like, hang on, what's my own values? I'm like, I didn't even know what that was— personal values and personal beliefs and, um, all of this sort of stuff. And I started diving into the psychology and understanding human behavior on just a completely different level, and I was just like, oh my God. You know, not only was I burnt out, I was just— I had no idea who I was. And that's how Project In Between started, was because I'd lost my inner light. You know, I was once this really— you know, people always say, oh, you know, I would make them laugh and I was very confident and very gregarious and stuff. But by the end of it, it was like I'd lost my spark, like, to completely— yeah. And my self-esteem was in my boots. My self-confidence. It was like I'd lost it all. And it was within the behavioral science and, and sort of my own healing that I realized, you know, where I had become a bit lost. And, um, and then I sort of— yeah, I ended up writing the, the 30-Day Self-Care Solution for Nurses because it was how I, how I, I healed myself but B, dug into the why of how I got to that place.

Right.

And then, you know, that sort of stuff. So it was all based on the behavioral science and my, my background, because I think if you don't know why you're burning out, right, then what can you do about it?

Then what can you do about it except run to the next thing that's shiny and hope that it worked.

Well, and that's literally what I did. It was— I was like a— I was like a little mouse in a mouse wheel, you know, like frantically trying to, um, find the next best thing. Is this going to help me? Is this going to help me? Is this going to help me? What's going to help me? No, I had to— I realized the only thing that was going to help me was to become radically self-responsible and to say— and to choose my own and to deep, deep, deep, deep, deep within to find out what it was within my own behaviors that was causing the, um, the overwhelm and the stress and the seeking out, um, and, and not sort of healing and things like that. It was quite fascinating. It's been a very fascinating journey, but it's been hard emotionally.

Of course. Of course, it's always hard. Doing the right thing is always hard, right? Doing the things that are going to create progress is difficult. I mean, look, some people take just the world around us for granted, right? Sometimes we just take our conveniences for granted, like the Zoom call we're on right now recording this podcast. Um, and just for the record, I'm not a sponsor of Zoom. But this call that we're on right now for the podcast is making this possible, right? And it was a team of people who spent years and years and years of developing the software for this to happen. The computer screen that we're using, the cars that we use to get around, the subway stations, the skyscrapers, the planes that get us to and from different continents. All of this takes dedication and work and determination to get it done, right? We have an idea, and we keep moving until we solve that idea. That's the spirit that everyone needs to hold on to. That is what makes humans humans. We have the capacity to move beyond almost any challenge except for death, right? We can't— We can't—

yeah.

Oh yeah.

And it's gonna come for us at one point in time, but we've learned how to slow it. We've learned how to even reverse it in certain situations, right? So we need to really kind of— I always believe, take a step back even when it feels like the world is falling apart around you, and take a step back and just take account for all of the things that you have and all of the things that are amazing in your life right now. Once you do that, then healing and getting through difficult times and moving past your comfort zone becomes much easier.

Yes, the grief. But, um, from, you know, from grief, when you go through— because it is a grief process too, right? So from grief, uh, comes healing, obviously, but it also brings passion. It— well, for me, it brought out a passion inside of me that I didn't know existed. And it also showed me that I'm actually a lot stronger, I'm actually a lot more intelligent, I'm actually, um, you know, a lot more than what I— I'm more valuable than I thought I was. Um, you know, this whole thing. And I was like, wow, I really undervalued myself. I really thought— but it was the process, right? The process is my undoing. Has then been my becoming.

But look, it's not just you. Obviously, it's not your undoing. It's not just your psychology. Again, going back to being conditioned, we're told that we're just nurses. Many of our own colleagues even utter those words on a regular basis. I don't know what they expect from me. I'm just a nurse. Like, what? First of all—

It's not even that.

Go ahead.

I actually heard somebody say one day, oh, you're just a nurse.

I've heard that.

And I was like, you, you have clearly no idea what nurses do. You're just a nurse. In fact, what an insult.

In fact, those words got me to write a long article about what nurses actually do and physically place it in front of a certain individual so that they can learn. Because I was like, no, no, no, You're not going to just assume what you want and not actually have a taste of what's happening here.

Yeah.

So yeah, we are conditioned not only by society but also by our own, our own colleagues because of the training and then the, the high, the hierarchies that are created. And, you know, we do have a high stress, you know, profession. It is high stakes, high stress. And, you know, we're not always nice to each other either. And that's a big chronic issue. And so, you know, we have lots of amazing people who have been on this podcast. You're now one of them who are doing the things that need to be done to change the culture, to change the profession so that we don't keep having this chronic issue. So, yeah, so you've mentioned a couple of times you've written something. 30 days, right? And so explain that in a little bit more detail for the listeners.

Yeah, so the 30-Day Self-Care Solution for Nurses, I, um, wrote that, um, launched it this year, but it was basically— I just pretty much took out all of the tools that I use to help, um, deal with the burnout. And a lot of it was a deep dive, it was a very deep dive into my own inner workings of, of my own behavioral patterns intergenerational patterns of where I've learnt to become this way or that way, sorry, um, but also how I untangled myself from it. And then, um, yeah, and it's just, it was my savior. And I'm thinking, and I was like, well, how could I not provide a resource to other nurses and other carers to, um, learn how to put themselves first and put in their own oxygen masks? Um, you know, it's not an easy feat to, to dig into your own inner psyche, but it— as we were just saying, it is painful, but it's the best gift that we can give to ourselves to go, you know what, I am valuable, I am worthy, I am lovable, I am enough.

Yeah, you are enough. And I mean, honestly I can't keep saying it enough that we can do anything that we set our minds to, and that goes for anyone, not just nurses. But nurses have a very special gift that we learn through our trainings, both in school and in the clinical space. Um, many of us are parents— not all, right? But many of us are parents, so there's also that nurturing component. And yes, there's parents in other, you know, industries, but they don't continue that care throughout every day of their life, right? So it's like nurses don't get a break from being the fighter. They don't get a break from being the problem solver, the protector, the person that people trust with their lives. They don't get a break. And so because they don't get that break, you know, a few days off in between shifts is not enough, right? We know that's not enough to go through and unpack the traumas and the stress and the, you know, the assault that we sometimes receive from our patients or even our colleagues, the, you know, discrimination, the disrespect, the lack of consideration, you know, again, us not being able to put on our oxygen mask first. We're running out of oxygen while we're circling the unit making sure everyone else has theirs. Yeah, and that does burn out anyone. So anyone out there thinking, oh, I've never really felt burned out, or I've never really felt— I would challenge you, please step back and really look a little deeper and ask yourself, have you never thought, this is not what I thought nursing would be like, or this is too much, or what am I even doing here? Because we all go through that at some point in our careers. I thought about it within the first 6 months of my career. I almost left the profession altogether. Yeah, I almost left. Nursing almost lost me. But instead of just leaving, I thought long and hard about all of the sacrifices that I made to get to where I was and how I really, really wanted to make it work and how I really, really loved, um, being a nurse and being able to use my skills to help other people. But in the capacity where I was at both the stage of my career and setting of my career, I knew that that would not be possible. And I'm a second career nurse, so I had 15 years of food and hospitality industry before I even became a nurse. So I was like, I have transferable skills coming right in. And I just knew that it wasn't going to be in alignment for me. And so I learned very early. About not only some of the tools I'm sure that you share in your 30 days, but I had tools from my prior experience that could be immediately implemented to drive positive outcomes. And because they weren't nursing-specific, no one wanted to listen to me. So I decided to step into a space of empowerment. I stepped into a space of empowerment and I went back to school and I got my master's in nursing education. So then I can put processes in place to implement these strategies and make it nursing specific.

Yeah, love that.

So here we are. So, you know, 10 years later, actually 8 years later, um, now I'm working with organizations to put systems in place to change the way we do things. So that we can elicit that change that we need so we can get to those positive outcomes. So, okay, so you have a lot of tangible, you know, tools that people can use to do that deep dive assessment in your book. Where can people find that?

Um, so it's currently available on Amazon, on Amazon, um, via Kindle and paperback. Um, yeah, 30-Day Self-Care Solution for Nurses. Um, Yeah, um, it's a— it's just, it's not like a crazy, um— I, I made it so that it was easy. It's just a day-by-day thing. It only takes like 30 minutes to go through. It's really quite short.

Sure.

Um, because obviously I, I was very aware that we don't have time to wipe our asses half the time, right?

Exactly. So you wanted to give something that was an easy read but high value. If people put those, those tools into place and they really use those tools, the same things you use, you'll find that although you can read the whole book in 30 minutes, but how much work does it take to get through those processes? Yeah, months, sometimes years for some people.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's, yeah, it is a book that is, it's an action, it's an action like action-based kind of book, obviously. Um, so yeah, and it sort of— it describes my, my journey into it. And, um, but yeah, it's just a deep dive into— it's really to get people to start questioning their own inner stuff. And, and, and don't be scared of doing the deep dive. I call it the deep dive, you know.

So don't be scared of doing the deep dive. Yeah, because you need to find out who you are and not have other people tell you who you are, because only you know why.

Yeah, it's about finding out your why. Do you want to stay or do you want to go? It's okay to go if you want to go.

It's absolutely okay to go. Many of us have left the bedside, but we're still empowered within our role as a nurse. We are still helping people. We are still saving lives. We are still improving our society. We just don't want to work in a hostile environment that doesn't value us, treats us as line workers, treats us as shift workers, treats us as somebody who costs money to the organization rather than who brings in money. So many of us are saying hospital systems have to change their ways or we're not coming back.

Yeah, and I remember at one point, I think there was a point where I thought, if I'm not a nurse have I just boxed myself into a career that I can't get out of for some reason or other? I don't know why I thought that, but that was a belief that I had. Um, thank God I didn't, because you can do whatever you want. Nursing is such a beautifully transferable— as we sort of touched on, people want nurses in all areas because we can— we have got the skills like you wouldn't believe. You can go and work in the finance industry. You can go and work anywhere because you've got the empathy skills, you've got the soft skills, the emotional intelligence, problem solving, collaboration, all of that, right?

We do the things that basically— our characteristics of our ability to work through day-to-day tasks, whether they're small tasks or very large complex tasks our job description basically meets that of C-suite individuals, people who run entire organizations. Those characteristics are what you see on those job postings. We want a person with strong collaborative skills, problem-solving skills, you know, high emotional intelligence, you know, essential skills like conflict resolution, contract negotiation, you know, budgeting, healthcare reform. Nurses do all of that already, 100%. So there's no reason—

we still—

yeah, we hold ourselves back. We hold ourselves back. Honestly, we hold ourselves back. We keep accepting, you know, the low rates and the shift work and the things like that because it's the easy way in. Um, but once we're in, we have to do our due diligence to band together and try to change what's happening. And I think your 30 days is really going to help people to strengthen themselves so then they can be more—

I hope so. That was my hope—

more present so they can elicit the change that needs to be done on a larger system.

Yeah, yeah, I hope so. I hope it helps people, um, about giving people the strategies to find out who they are, what they are, how they can work, and that they're valuable. That you're valuable, you're worth it. You know, it's just choose you. It's okay. And don't lose your light for others.

It's absolutely—

because it's just, it's detrimental. We need you. We need you. And I hope that this book helps, you know, a few people, if not many. I don't know. Um, as I just had to put it out, and if it helps, it helps. If it doesn't, it doesn't. Um, yeah.

Well, I think if it gets into people's hands who are willing This is— and this is—

this is going to be willing.

They have to be willing to do the work, right? So it falls into the hands of those who are willing to do the work, or for those of us who are helping other people move through doing the work. I think it would be a great resource, and I would love to be able to offer that to, you know, my clients who are also going through that self-discovery. How can they salvage their career? They feel like they're at crossroads, you know, and I think that would be a great tool to use um, to help them find alignment with what's going to be best for them. Because that's essentially— yeah, it sounds like you did find a lot.

Essentially, yeah, yeah, essentially it sort of gets you to decide. It's like a— it's also a decision-making tool. Do I stay or do I go?

Yeah, yeah. And you know what, there's, there's so much more potential, um, to where you are that you can really have a nice opportunity to work with your um, nursing organizations there in Australia to bridge the behavioral sciences and nursing and possibly even get that introduced into the curriculum so that we can really enhance nurses' resiliency when it comes to understanding themselves before they even get into the deep of nursing school. Because we know we lose a lot of really good candidates because they realize it's it's not for them. But why should someone— why should someone make it all the way through a program to decide that? Yeah, so, so there's a lot of ways that you can use some of your newfound knowledge to screen the optimal candidates and then also to incorporate those— you mentioned soft skills, and I just want to reframe the way you call them, um, and name them essential skills because they are very essential. They're not soft. And I think because we use the word soft in the past they're not as invested in as, as what we would call hard skills. I don't like a soft or hard, that's too black and white. They're all essential. So to take those essential skills that you learned from your new trade, then, which you don't learn in nursing school, and get those interjected into nursing practice education, I think that's so important. I think you have a great opportunity there, so I would really challenge you to expand on that. Um, use your nursing license and your education and your position as a nurse to really push the envelope and see if we can't change the way we do things within nursing, because that's the key.

Something's got to change.

Something's got to change, and you have an insight that the masses need, not just a few nurses looking for an answer. This is system changing.

This is true.

Oh, I think You're doing excellent work. Um, if people wanted to find you and connect with you online, how would they find you?

Um, yeah, so my website projectinbetween.com.au because I'm here in Australia, and I'm on Instagram with Project In Between and Facebook Project In Between. Um, my name is Chrissy Anne. Now, Anne is my work last name. So yeah, okay, that's very good.

And if people wanted to connect with you on LinkedIn, are you on LinkedIn?

Yes, so I'm under, I believe it's Christy Rigall, R-I-G-A-L-L, or Christy Ann. I'm— I changed it recently because I got divorced 2 years ago, so that's why.

All right, well, good. Well, they could definitely find you through Project In Between. Again, thank you so much for being on the Nursing Strategies for Success podcast. We touched on a, a topic that does come up over and over again because burnout is real. Nurses are really desperate about trying to find how they can salvage their love and passion for nursing and caring for others, but they're also saying no to being abused and taking advantage of in these really broken systems that don't really leverage our skill set the way that it should be. We're feeling undervalued. We're certainly underpaid. And many of us are creating empires within our own scope of practice, bypassing doctors, bypassing— yep— bypassing, you know, X-rays and CT machines because we have a skill set that can prevent things from happening. We can solve problems and really help people live healthier, happier, more aligned lives. So thank you again, Christy, for being on the show. I'm looking forward to collaborating with you more in the future, and, um, yeah, we'll be in touch soon. So take care, have a wonderful evening.

Thank you for having me on, it's been awesome.

Thank you, pleasure.

And that concludes episode 14 of the Nursing Strategies for Success podcast with this week's guest, Christy Ann. We hope that everything that we shared for you in today's episode will inspire you to lead the charge, find a way to battle nurse burnout, and invest in those essential skills that help to change the behaviors that will help us thrive and align with our purpose and find wellness and success in our personal and professional lives. All the ways to connect with Christy will be in the show notes of this episode. And as always, if you have any questions about anything we've shared, please visit thenursespeak.com/contact 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 that nurses can do anything.