OR_SONSIEL_Rhonda Manns: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

OR_SONSIEL_Rhonda Manns: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Hiyam Nadel:
Welcome to the SONSIEL podcast where we host interviews with the most transformational nurse scientists, innovators, entrepreneurs, and leaders. Through sharing their personal journeys, we create inspiration, provide guidance, and give you actionable ideas you can use to be a catalyst for change.

Hiyam Nadel:
Hey SONSIEL Nation! Welcome back to the SONSIEL Podcast! I’m excited today to have Rhonda Manns on our podcast, and I am sure you’ll find everything she has to say very enlightening. Rhonda, could you introduce yourself?

Rhonda Manns:
Sure, and hello, everyone, my name is Rhonda Manns. I am a registered nurse of 13 years. I started first in patient rehab nursing, and I transitioned into ER nursing, healthcare I.T., case management, and now a little bit of product management where I get to lend my consumer and clinical knowledge into business systems, and I’m so glad to be here today. Glad to reconnect with you, Hiyam, and of course glad to talk to everyone here at SONSIEL and the world abroad.

Hiyam Nadel:
Rhonda, you are always good for my soul and I learn so much from you but wow, all those specialties you went into, let’s start with the beginning. So how did you end up at the very beginning?

Rhonda Manns:
So at the very beginning, I, some people may be familiar with my story or not, but I kind of had a pivot in life where I had an opportunity to become a nurse, and I definitely took up on the opportunity, and I graduated nursing school at a time when the economy had a downturn. So for many of the people listening today, I’m sure you can either identify or sympathize with that, but at that time there weren’t a lot of real nursing opportunity jobs, or at the time there weren’t a lot of nursing opportunities to obtain jobs. And so having formed a relationship with one of my local hospitals, I got invited to apply for inpatient rehab nurse, and lo and behold, I actually liked it. In our unit, we decided that in our unit what we took care of were patients who were post-surgical, either through orthopedic surgeries or maybe even spinal cords, or spinal cord injuries, or traumatic brain injuries. And I think coming out of nursing school into an area that was so robust and so connected with both the patient and care coordination and their physical therapy was a really good introduction into healthcare and nursing at large because it helped me to see the end-to-end process. I think so often in nursing, I think the public view of nursing is that we are just very episodic, that we see people just for that moment in time, but the truth of the matter is that when we begin to take patients in, we are meeting them where they are, and that when they leave us, they have a regular life that they have to continue with. And so that exposure was very, very important, and I think it just kind of sparked my interest into other areas of nursing and healthcare as well.

Hiyam Nadel:
Interesting, and did you feel that, when you mentioned the economic downturn, is that why you went into nursing, or do you feel that you ended up in this specialty because of the economic downturn and there weren’t as many positions?

Rhonda Manns:
Oh, definitely, I would definitely agree with your second part to say that I ended up in that specialty, which ended up to be very beneficial, let me say, but I ended up in that specialty because of the economic downturn. In 2009 when I graduated from nursing school, that was a time when nurses had the pick of the litter. They could, they had multiple job opportunities, multiple options. They could pretty much enter into any specialty, but as the economy went through that transition, we saw nurses who came out of nursing school wait 6 to 9 months to try to find a position, which, of course, you know, is problematic because throughout the last, I would say, 40 years of nursing and that might be an exaggeration, but throughout the long time of nursing, we’ve noticed that there is a shortage and there is a need for nursing professionals. And so to go from a state where nurses could just jump in a month after receiving their license to now having to go through multiple applications and wait six months to obtain anything that was available, that was a challenge, that was a challenge, and that was definitely different, it was different for the industry. And so even when we step back and look at what that meant, that why, I guess some people may think, why did it take new grad nurses so long to obtain a position like that? Well, we had two dynamics. One, we had, rather than there being just 12 applicants per job requisition, suddenly the industry saw maybe 200 nurses applying for that same requisition. So it’s not that the demand was there for the nursing, it was a matter of a requisition job opening mismatch.

Hiyam Nadel:
Right, right, and here we are today still very short-staffed and really doing different programs, especially with the new grad program. And tell me a little bit, when you were a new grad, how was the onboarding for you?

Rhonda Manns:
Yes, I’m so glad you said that, and, you know, I just took a moment to pause to think that even though we are sitting here in today’s day and age, we’re seeing a trend. We’re seeing the same sort of practices kind of come back again, you know, through this time and age. But my onboarding, I will say I had an amazing onboarding. I would say the hospital that I worked for, we spent two weeks in an HR onboarding just not even related to the patient necessarily, but we spent two weeks just learning about the hospital, what the hospital’s mission and vision was, more about the systems that we would use, the EHR and the company history. And then we were paired into a preceptor where we spent, I’d like to say, you know, 6 to 8 weeks, depending on your individual performance with someone at your side walking you through day in, day out, from clocking in to clocking out, from medication management to reading the MARs, which at that time were on paper before we transitioned into electronic health records, right? And they, and it was so I mean, when I think about what I’m hearing today, it makes my heart sad, and I understand that it’s multifaceted and I understand that, it’s very complicated, but when I literally think that I had someone by my side who walked into every room with me who, you know, did the med checks with me to make sure that I was checked off of my competencies, and I said the same things, and I provided the right education, and allowed me to grow into independence as a nurse. Like that was my experience, and that I think, is so important, onboarding and just that acclimation into the patient setting. We know nursing, nursing education prepares us for the task and it prepares us for what it’s going to be like when we get into the unit, but there’s nothing like being in the arena to truly prepare you, and that’s why you have to have your mentors. You need your preceptors and you need that support as a new nurse.

Hiyam Nadel:
Right, so it’s interesting because, what you said, how important it was for that side-by-side mentorship to get you to become independent, I think we moved away from that a little bit, and now in my institution, I attended the first, they hired like 200 new grads. I saw them initially, they were so nervous, and they wouldn’t even look at you in the eye. And then I went to their graduation after their residency because they have this nurse residency program now, what an amazing transformation. They were confident, they got up and spoke, they were smiling. And I know there’s been literature out there that if we onboard and put them through some residency, so what we do here is a whole year where they onboard initially and then they get presented on their unit and then there’s continued mentorship for that entire 12 months, that after two years there’s a 90% retention rate, and that’s what we should all be working towards.

Rhonda Manns:
Yes, that’s key, that’s so key. And, you know, there’s something special about that two-year mark, because, you know, from the literature, what it shows is that in two years, it takes you two years to develop that critical thinking nurse brain, right? Now, of course, you know, six months into the unit, you’re kind of getting a flow for the day in, the day out, how to manage the orders, how to manage the patients, and the particular thing about nursing is that every day is different. You might have a patient that has a condition, but the way their body responds and reacts to it, or the way that they present, or the stage in which they come to you might be completely different. So it’s not every day you’re stamping the same thing, but you’re constantly applying methods to something that’s creating a change which involves reevaluation and more interventions. So with that said, you really can’t quote master, and I don’t want to say master, like we’ve all perfected nursing science and application, but you really can’t become comfortable until you’ve seen and observed and participated and applied knowledge to all these different situations. And that comes with time and it comes with exposure. And let’s be very realistic, even though you and I are speaking about new grad nurses, what about the seasoned nurse who changes disciplines or specialties or units? I mean, you can have a skill set and change a unit and still have that same apprehension or nervousness or just feel a little bit uneasy, and I think that’s why, to your point, when you pair someone up or you actually create that structured program though, allow them room to both learn and grow and have that support to say, Man, I was unsure about that, but this is what I did. It does, it adds to retention because you feel supported. There’s so much of nursing that’s already high stakes, high acuity, right? There’s the personal elements of I really want to do a great job, or man, did I really mess that up? And I think having that community, that connection, and that person who has experience to say, Oh, you handled that well, you did well, and let me tell you about the time that I might have messed up, right? So it’s involving that relationship, I think that’s just going to carry the next generation forward, and I’m excited about it, Hiyam.

Hiyam Nadel:
Oh, my God, Rhonda, I just didn’t even think about when you are, you know, we’re focusing so much on new grads, but I just never thought about when a nurse actually changes to another specialty. So that’s really interesting to me because you’re right, you need sort of maybe not as intensive mentorship and preceptorship, but definitely the resources they need to succeed. And Rhonda, you also said something that was very interesting, that when you first went into nursing or graduated, you said sometimes lots of people think that nursing is episodic care. And I so agree with you it is so not episodic. Can you tell me what you meant by that?

Rhonda Manns:
Yes, so I think the idea is that I come into the hospital, I’m here for three days and then I leave. But the idea of nursing, nursing principles, nursing science is that you’re supposed to consider the holistic view of the patient. But then also what’s their ecosystem like? So even though I meet a Type one diabetic today, right, what are the factors that brought them to this point today that, where they need me, the medical team, the hospitalization, the remedy, and then it’s just not okay to just look at my involvement. But how do we set this patient up for success? And I think that’s where nursing is very, is both specific and also very special, in that we are concerned with, okay, I’m seeing you today, How did you get here? But then how am I going to help you? How am I going to help equip you to be the best success going forward? So it’s that discharge teaching, it’s that care coordination, is that filling some of the gaps of why you’re here through either nutritional education or just connecting them to a program, I think nursing aside from the task, because from a consumer standpoint, all we can see is the nurse came in with the cow, right? The computer on the wheel. She did a thing and then she left, but what they don’t see is that we are literally coordinating the current event and then your transition back to your next provider and follow-ups and also offer helpful tips that may help you do the best that you can. Because I think we just, we care, obviously, we care enough to see the best for other people, but then also it’s the right thing to do.

Hiyam Nadel:
Yeah, and it’s and, you know, I always, until a patient has an interaction with nurses or is hospitalized, I think they don’t realize what nurses do. So how can we as a profession, or do we need help in getting the word out or educating the public about nursing? Because I also think it would drive more people to nursing, right? You know, I was talking to someone the other day who said, we need to start in high school and we also need to start educating the parents because your parents have a lot to do with which direction you go with your career, and maybe that’s where our focus should be. What are your thoughts about all of that?

Rhonda Manns:
I agree, and I’m so glad that you brought up the high school element in the conversation, and so I want to take it back to your first point. I think that the challenge in trying to share the value of nurses is great because what we have to determine is when is the right opportunity to do so. The right opportunity is not to do it in the patient care area. Like that’s not the time to promote what nurses do or maybe what we have done, right? So it’s kind of like this silent service that we’re doing time in, day in, day out that we really don’t get a chance to say, you know what, I wasn’t able to come to your bedside because I was taking care of these certain things that are going to benefit you, right? So how, so the question is, how can we continue to promote what nurses do on a larger scale? I know for me, I recently relocated to Houston, Texas. I love it here. There’s much work that can be done in the medical community, but then also there are phenomenal medical institutions here and a very large healthcare population of workers. With that said, I’ve become more involved in the community level and I actually have a future event to connect with a couple of the high schools here to start to expose them to the life of nursing or what nursing is, or really kind of just demonstrate some of the really cool things that go on inside of our nurses’ brain because we don’t have an opportunity to say, Hey, this is what critical thinking looks like. So by presenting them with maybe scenarios or maybe cool, fictional type of walkthroughs, I can help them to see what it is the nurse does. It’s not just drawing up the medication, it’s not starting IV. These are things that are very visual, anybody can see that, but it’s that internal process, that lit a light up for me. When I truly began to understand through nursing school application what nurses do, I was hooked. I was absolutely like, Where can I take this career and maximize it in every area of the community? And so to your point about high schools, there’s a high school here in my local area that actually has a health science, like an accelerated health science program, which inside of your high school years, you can exit with one or two things. One, you can exit with, you know, CNA preparation or exposure to various different health careers, whether it’s, you know, nursing or maybe some pre-dental work. But then also I’ve noticed that the high schools here also have an on-ramp to the community college, the two-year college. So as you’re completing your four years of high school, many of the seniors who graduate are graduating with their associate’s degree already because they’ve kind of taken some credits here or there in the colleges. And so how can we start to accelerate that on-ramp? How can we accelerate the on-ramp? How can we begin to expose people in their early career decisioning days to the opportunities that are before them? And then how do I make it easy to connect it to them, right? So if we can get more high school students aware earlier, sooner, hooked in, also supported in the industry, I think that would be an amazing way to start to tackle this very large problem.

Hiyam Nadel:
Exactly, and I know in my previous roles as an ambulatory nurse director, a lot of my CNAs wanted to go to nursing school but didn’t have sort of the money and they had families already and it was difficult to study. And, you know, I always sort of questioned what mark do I want to make as a manager? And what I did for the staff that was interested was to really facilitate them going to school. So, for example, hey, just take one course at a time, and we used to have lunch and learn, because I also think the public doesn’t understand how rigorous the course work is. So, right? And really trying to meet the staff where they are, their study habits, all of that, that they probably didn’t develop as much as they wanted to, but us as managers and leaders and directors and other nurses, we need to take that extra step. It isn’t just enough to say go to nursing school but to help them study, facilitate the path for their schedule, etc.

Rhonda Manns:
Absolutely, I agree, and I have a nurse mentee right now who has completed her accelerated Bachelor of Science of Nursing. So she came in as a second career bachelor holder, went through the ABSN, and has completed that. And I remember her, I remember her awakening and some of her discoveries when she would come back and say, Rhonda, I’m in nursing school and I only go to nursing school three calendar days a week, but you have a clinical day, that’s an additional day, right? You might have a lab day, you might have study day, or let’s talk about what nursing 101 foundations actually means. It means reading so many chapters and preparing yourself for a test in about two days and then you’re accomplished, I finished it, and then you move on to the next because every textbook is 250 pages, right? But however, however, it is doable, it’s totally doable, and I think that nurses, licensed, working, retired, or not working, we all have an obligation to reach back and to help the ones who are coming behind us. Absolutely, we can lend an ear, we can provide career advice, we can provide career coaching, or we can simply identify or lessen the shock for those going through the process to say, Yeah, I remember those days, and here’s how, but then also apply the remedy, Here’s how I got through it. I made no cards. I recorded the lectures, I took notes, I made a study group, right? It’s not just okay to just say, Yep. Oh, well, I remember that, and we were hanging. We have to create that bridge. We have to be the pathway in every area of nursing. You mentioned ambulatory nursing. I think another thing that we can do a good job of, Hiyam, to be quite honest, is to start to speak about the other different areas in nursing and healthcare, right? So ambulatory surgery, very, very important, right? Because you’re providing a service outside of a hospital system that might be more cost-effective, but then also you might not need that level of hospitalization and true intensive care post-op, right? But that’s a great place where nurses can serve. We see now so often telehealth, telemedicine, home health nursing, medical education, even with the states are doing a wonderful job with providing postpartum care to the Medicaid communities and the disadvantaged communities, the immigrant communities, the refugees, right? There are things that we can all do and engage in some kind of health promotion kind of way, and so I just want to encourage people that you will find your place. Go into school to learn the material, and then as you get exposed to the different clinical opportunities, right? We’ve all been through critical care, and telemetry, and mother-baby, and O.B., and Community Health, right? I’m not saying anything that’s unknown to our group, but once you go through there, you’ll find your neck. You may not know it by reading it or hearing a tale, but you might actually discover something that you never thought about, right? Like our friend. Your friend? My friend, Andrea. She’s in hospice nursing, she loves it. She’s done a tremendous, wonderful work there. She did research, right? And she finally found that place where her life and her spirit can flourish, and that’s what you want to do. At the end of the day, we all have to work so many hours a week, but you want to find a place where you are passionate, where you can serve others, and you feel good about the contributions that you’re making into the system, but then also in that patient’s life, because I promise you, there are so many moments I know that you can even recall where you were just present during a patient’s moment, and it meant the world to them. And that’s what we need. We need hope, we need presence, and we also need the freedom to actually be present and compassionate in our workspaces. And so you can tell them very.

Hiyam Nadel:
Well, you are so very passionate. I’m getting chills as you’re speaking. So, Rhonda, you know, you’re a member of SONSIEL, board member. Now, when did you recognize you were an innovator?

Rhonda Manns:
To be completely honest with you, I didn’t acknowledge myself as innovator until I heard others around me calling me an innovator. I think that I’d been applying the skills, I was certainly in the right spaces, I was actually going to the events, I was in the circles, but it wasn’t until someone else said, Hey, that was innovative, or This is an innovator. And I think there’s so many of us that are innovators that are doing innovation, right, inside the hospital, in our own companies, creating companies or in even design thinking events, but we just don’t know. Like, we just don’t think, like we think that’s those people. That’s the one with the 20-year career history, that’s not that’s not me. And so there’s that certain sense of imposter syndrome, like, Oh, no, not me, I just did this thing, but the thing is the innovation, therefore you are innovator, right? So I think so for me it just became a matter of putting on the coat and wearing the label and accepting that and saying, Yeah, I am an innovator.

Hiyam Nadel:
And you are, but tell me a little bit. You know, it’s not always an easy, easy pathway. So tell us a little bit about some of the challenges you face as an innovator and if there were any unique approaches to those challenges.

Rhonda Manns:
So I think the major challenges to any innovator trying to bring forth something new is, of course, buy-in. You have to be able to portray or convey the value of the idea ahead of the actual idea, right? So I think we’re, I think, as a society, we’re set up to see what’s the return and what’s in it for me. And sometimes you really, you won’t discover that or you won’t be able to reveal that or realize that until you actually have the thing in motion. But I tell you, if you can get a few key people behind you to hear your idea and actually think, Hmm, let’s trial this, or in the design thinking, let us pilot this just for a brief, a brief beta. Then it’ll begin to get wings. So I think that the answer is twofold. One, you have to get the buy-in from others who can help you gain speed in your efforts, but then also you have to be able to articulate that value. And it’s not always value propositions in terms of a formalized business plan form, because even there’s, I remember my days as an assistant nurse manager in the E.R., there were tons of people who came to me and said, You know what, I’m really tired of chasing the bladder scanner down on another floor. It would be really great if we did this, and then we connected our system to this. And I’m like, Whoa, that made sense, right? So it’s the ability to articulate what it is that we gain from it. I think if the audience can take that, if you can just explain what we will gain from the idea, you can then retrospectively go back and backfill the details. But if we don’t understand where we’re going with this, it’s almost dead in the water.

Hiyam Nadel:
Very, very true, and when I speak about innovation, I’m always talking about implementation because there’s a gazillion ideas out there. There’s a gazillion problems we can solve. But if you don’t implement them correctly and or measure them, then how do we prove what we’ve done? So I think those are really critical pieces. Now, so just tell me, how has SONSIEL helped you in your journey?

Rhonda Manns:
SONSIEL has been so pivotal, and I mean, I chuckled because I always flashed back to 2019, right to the first on-site Nurse Hackathon in New Jersey, where I met yourself and others. Though we were already connected through the organization, that was, of course, life-changing, and I think just being a part of a group of other people who thought and felt similarly to me gave me that confidence to say, Huh, let me stick close to these folks because they’re obviously into something cool. But then also, I want to learn what they learn because I have my own dreams and visions, but if I can learn and know how to do the things that they can do, that can help me create things that will help others as well. And so really it just, being inside of SONSIEL just increases my thirst for knowledge, it allows me to connect with others in the industry that I would not have access to. Hands down 100% I think about how privileged I am to connect with you, with Rebecca Love, Marian Leary, other board members, right, but then also our other members at large. There are so many people who might connect with me on LinkedIn and say, Hey, I’m a part of SONSIEL right? I’m in the membership app, and I saw that you’re in this area. There’s a conference, I’m going to be in town. Would you like to meet with coffee? Or I have a problem, can you help me out? Or vice versa, I come to people all the time, I say, Hey, you know, I’m really unsure how to handle this, can you help me? And so those things were very beneficial for me. And then, of course, the opportunity to serve on the board and to learn about organizational development, and how do you create programs that reach a wide network of people. And just knowing that I’m a part of a community that is truly trying to make things better for the health systems, patients, nurse managers, the units, nurses, right, and give us that platform where we can just experiment, right? Like it’s a safe place to just say, I got this idea. Try and fall with friends before you go full flat with others. So you could quote that, but yeah,

Hiyam Nadel:
Yeah, and I just hope we’re going to continue to build upon that, and again, I just love what you’re saying because we’re really here. Some people will say, well, you trying to take nurses away from the bedside, and it’s absolutely not. But you know, what my experience has been, that they actually want to stay in the bedside if they can solve more problems and they’re at the table. So it’s actually having that effect and not the opposite, not leaving the bedside. So, Rhonda, what would, what is one thing you would love to leave the audience with today and how can our audience reach you? I know you mentioned LinkedIn. So is that the best way?

Rhonda Manns:
That is absolutely the best way to connect with me, and I’m sure that Hiyam and SONSIEL will put that into the show notes so you can definitely connect with me there. Love to continue any kind of conversations that would be of service for you there. But when I think about what I want to leave the audience with, and I think about this often and it’s about leaving people with hope. We, I put on Twitter the other day, which is another medium, but I’m not very active at the present time there, but I put on Twitter the other day that what we have to do is we have to have hope, right? We have to have hope that there is a brighter day coming because presently we’re living in such a contrast where we’re seeing like tremendous turmoil on one side, but then like super cool advancements on the other, and we’re living these dynamic contrasts at the same time. I mean, even day to day, it doesn’t even have to be the span of like a week or a month. You can have a great monumental win at 9 a.m. and then 10:30 your entire life changes, right? So I think there’s two things I want to just expand on. One, leave others with hope to say look towards the brighter day, but then also try to create that brighter day in any way that you can.

Hiyam Nadel:
Yeah, I mean, the hope is the most important because if we don’t, if we’re not able to see a brighter future, then what are we living for?

Rhonda Manns:
Well, the challenge here, Hiyam, is that, you know, I recognize that as nurses, we are service providers, right? We care, we’re caregivers. And so it’s almost there’s that dynamic or almost a disconnect where when we step into our scrubs, we put on a new persona. It doesn’t mean that we’re being anything different, but it means that we are engaged in the act of service. We are providing great care to someone. And then at the end of the day, when we step out of our environments and we arrive home and we take off our scrubs, or more symbolically, when you take the stethoscope off your neck and you put it down right, then you have to return back to your life. And so there’s always this on again, off again, switching where you have to, we have to be a part of the machine and we put ourselves on pause, but then when we step out of that hospital, we have to face real life again. So to your point, maintaining hope is so important because once we leave the hospitals or once we leave our homes, we need that fuel to keep going, to keep us inspired, to keep us renewed, to keep us refilled. And so the challenge, you asked me what we can take away. I’m giving you a challenge. The challenge is find the things that fill you up, find the things that make you hopeful, right? And start to add that back into your life, because life gets hard, times get hard, they get better again, but they get hard, right? And you don’t know when better is coming, but it is coming. So until then, you don’t wait. You start to feed yourself in the interim and lean on your sisters and your brothers and your people, that’s all I can say.

Hiyam Nadel:
Thank you so much, Rhonda. Honestly, your passion comes through, your dedication comes through. For anyone out there, please reach out to Rhonda, she is amazing. Thank you so much, Rhonda, and you have a wonderful day.

Rhonda Manns:
Thank you, Hiyam. It’s been a pleasure. It’s awesome to speak with you again and look forward to seeing you again soon.

Hiyam Nadel:
Thanks for tuning in to the SONSIEL podcast. If today’s podcast inspired you, we invite you to join our tribe or support our mission by visiting us at SONSIEL.org. That’s S O N S I E L.org.

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