Outcomes Rocket Podcast_SONSIEL SERIES_Nicole Lopez and Nicole Lincoln_01.mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Outcomes Rocket Podcast_SONSIEL SERIES_Nicole Lopez and Nicole Lincoln_01.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Saul Marquez:
Hey Outcomes Rocket Nation, Saul Marquez here. Have you heard of SONSIEL? That’s the Society of Nurse Scientists, Innovators, Entrepreneurs and Leaders. We’ve teamed up with them to put together a podcast series for nurses. In this 12-part series we’ll magnify and elevate nurse innovators’ expertise as transformation agents who contribute to health care reform and improved outcomes. Through interviews with these amazing nurse leaders and innovators, we’ll help you connect the dots in a world where nurses are significant leaders recognized for transforming health care and society. Visit outcomesrocket data.health/sonsiel to learn more. That’s outcomesrocket.health/sonsiel SONSIEL to learn more.

Saul Marquez:
All right, everybody, welcome back to the Outcomes Rocket, Saul Marquez here, and I want to welcome you again to this amazing series, The SONSIEL Nursing Innovation and Leadership Series. It has been so much fun to highlight the role of nursing and the amazing nurses participating on behalf of SONSIEL on this program. In this episode today, I have two outstanding guests, and they’re both named Nicole – Nicole Lopez and Nicole Lincoln. Nicole Lopez is a full-time nurse in the ICU at NYU Winthrop Hospital. Her experience is in caring at the bedside, but also she is working on her Informatics master’s degree, is a candidate in that respect, looking to broaden her horizons and how she could apply her knowledge in the field of nursing to a broader perspective. I also have Nicole Lincoln with us as well. She’s a founding member at SONSIEL and also Senior Manager of Nursing Innovation at Boston Medical Center. We’re going to be covering some of the insights and things that they have been working through, COVID and even before that and what the future looks like here as we embrace nurses as part of health care and health. And so I’m really excited to have you both on the podcast. Thanks for joining us.

Nicole Lopez:
Thank you.

Saul Marquez:
Absolutely.

Nicole Lopez:
So good to be here.

Saul Marquez:
Yeah. We’re excited to have you guys here. So, you know, one of the things that we like to start with is understanding what inspires your work in health care. So I’d love to hear from both of you on this one.

Nicole Lincoln:
Well, as a nurse, you get the privilege to share with your patients and their deepest, darkest moments the most critical moments of their lives. You share with the patients and families. Nurses are present during birth, the blessing of new life, and they care for patients during death. And they also ensure… I know when I worked in the ICU that patients never die alone and they’re the first responders in times of mass casualty. I worked at Boston Medical Center during the marathon bombing and it was just amazing to me to see nurses calm the panic in this and shaken community and just take those patients and treat them with unparalleled skill and tender loving, compassion, and actually stay in touch with a lot of the patients from the marathon bombing for years afterward. And I’ve been able to witness so much so many wonderful things as a nurse for twenty-five years, nurses are at the forefront of health equity. And I’ll tell you a little bit more about that today because we’re really working to level the playing field for patients out there in the community and ensure human rights for patients.

Nicole Lincoln:
And over the past year, during the pandemic, we saw really how truly critical nurses are as they led the way through all of those scary, uncertain times that we all faced in health care. I know nurses at my organization. I was in awe at the speed at which the teams transformed the whole hospital. In a matter of days, we were able to meet the needs of rapidly growing covid patients. We had pop-up units happening. Nurses changed roles overnight from pediatric to adult nurses from metasearch to critical care nurses in teams. We changed the whole platform of how care was given to meet the needs of the COVID patients and the families because families were separated from their patients during serious illness. So nurses connected patients to families and nurses actually acted as family members with these patients who were alone in the room and isolated during COVID. So I saw nursing as really a brave and united force during COVID and I was just amazed. So that’s what inspires me in nursing today.

Saul Marquez:
It’s amazing. I’m inspired by it. Thank you Nicole Lincoln. Nicole Lopez, what about you?

Nicole Lopez:
Just to piggyback off what Nicole said, you know, all of that is so encompassing in nursing and it really is a true calling. You can tell right away if you’re meant to do this. And like I was saying earlier, I stepped away from bedside for about five years and was redeployed. And you feel those emotions like yourself? I’m scared to go back in. I don’t want to catch COVID. What am I about to see? Am I prepared? And something pushes you to care for your community and go back in. And it’s just like riding a bicycle. No matter how long you’ve been away from the outside, it just takes an hour or two. And you’re right back to doing exactly what you did years before on a whim. Seeing that in your other coworkers collaborate together to take care of your community is very inspiring and helps move you forward in times of crisis, such as COVID-19.

Saul Marquez:
Thank you. Thank you, Nicole and Nicole, you know, it is just and you both have mentioned two instances in time. You know, the Boston bombing now COVID. But there’s everything in between and everything that happened before and everything that will happen after. Nurses are that common thread that add comfort, that see us in the best and the worst of times. And you guys provide such an important role in our communities, the public health system just across the world. So thank you, first of all for what you do. And we’re listening to this on nurses month. And I want to make sure that the nurses listening to this know how special and valuable you are. And so a big thanks goes to you for all that you do. And if you have a nurse in your life, you will. And if you think you don’t, then you got to look twice because she’s there. She or he is there, whether it’s getting your vaccine or whatever, you have a nurse in your life. So thank them. Let’s talk about adding value. There’s obviously so much to be said here, but talk to us about how you believe you’re adding value to the health care ecosystem, whether it be a personal experience or something that the organization you’re working at is doing.

Nicole Lopez:
So I think that for me, adding to the organization I currently work for is going back and reaching the graduate degree level of education and then taking what I learned there and implementing it into practice to better help and support not just the organization, but the patients in our specific populations, whether it be geriatric, pediatric, perioperative. And I think that as a nurse, we should always look to grow and learn more and move up. And that’s a part of nursing. We’re lifelong learners. You know, health care is always changing and we always have to be able to adjust and learn. And, you know, that’s my input.

Saul Marquez:
Yeah, absolutely. And Nicole Lopez, thank you for that. And Nicole Lincoln, how about you? What’s your angle on this, on adding value?

Nicole Lincoln:
Well, I’m so motivated in my organization by all of the work, the amazing work that’s taking place there. So I like to jump right into it. Being a health leader and the manager of innovation, like, I’m privileged to be able to take part in a lot of the new programs that we do that promote health equity in the Boston Medical Center where I work. It’s not a hospital alone standalone. It’s a community. We reach out to the whole community surrounding us and the patients in those communities and so many innovative ways. And one of the things that I want to talk about is our quest to fight food insecurity in our patients. We have a lot of patients, over 50 percent of our patients are below poverty limits. We have many patients who struggle with food and housing security. And so we try to address that in innovative ways. We have a huge rooftop farm. I wish I could show you guys pictures of it. And we feed our patients with the vegetables from the farm. We have a food pantry and we’re actually the first hospital in the country to write prescriptions for food to our patients. And so I’ve had the opportunity to spend a lot of time in the garden and in the food pantry. And also we have, like, awesome test kitchen where we teach patients to cook those healthy foods, diabetics and patients who are looking to improve their health. And so we make those connections. We offer a summer camp for kids where they can come and learn to cook. So we try to we have a pediatric program called Thrive. And so we really try to work at all levels. I think it’s so cool when the patients get the prescription for the food, then they get food for the whole family because it would be very odd to send them home, only you can eat this food. We feed thousands of families every month from our food. I think it’s eight thousand people a month on average.

Saul Marquez:
Amazing.

Nicole Lopez:
Yeah, I think that’s so awesome. And then we’re also at the forefront of the fight against the opioid epidemic. And I’m sure you’ve all heard about how that there’s such an uptick in that during the pandemic. It’s just awful. And so BMC has set the bar really high. We’re trying to reduce opioid overdoses by 40 percent in the surrounding communities in Massachusetts. And we offer a lot of groundbreaking treatment. To treat opioid addiction, but also in harm reduction. Because what you reduce the harm when you prevent overdose, when you do education with the patients and stuff like that. So we’re doing tons of work on that. But I’m really proud to be a part of it. We actually started a new fellowship for nursing and substance use disorder treatment. So we had our first two fellows go through the whole six-month fellowship to be leaders and mentors for other nurses across the organization. And we just started our second round of the fellowship. So I’m really proud. This is the first nursing substance use disorders fellowship in the country and we modeled it after one in Vancouver.

Nicole Lopez:
That was really cool to meet the people in Vancouver. And there’s a doctor here that I think is just amazing. Thea James. And she is working on housing, on the housing end of things that we purchased a lot of buildings in Boston to actually offer stable housing for patients that are suffering from chronic illnesses and just need that stability. And lastly, I’d like to talk about vaccination, right? COVID vaccination. We opened six and I was one of the nurse ladies involved in this. And lucky to be involved in this, but we opened six clinics out in the communities where there were no clinics being offered by the state where I don’t know if you guys know of the statistics, but black and brown people suffered at a much higher rate from deaths from COVID and just from infection rates, almost two times that of white people. So we made sure we got out there and got vaccine clinics out in those communities. We partnered with churches and other civic organizations to have the vaccine clinics right out there to the communities of those people. I got to be a big part of opening day for some us. So that was really awesome and amazing.

Nicole Lincoln:
That’s really great to hear, because going back to my time in the ICU during COVID, the population was Hispanic, black and brown. I think thinking back, I may have taken care of two Caucasian people. So that’s really awesome that you often put out those services for those, you know, that population to be vaccinated. It’s very important. And they’re the ones who are at higher risk.

Nicole Lopez:
Yes, I really did. I felt it was such meaningful work and I was just so grateful to be a part of it and felt really like it was just it was like the upswing, the excitement of people getting vaccinated and hope for the future to get out of this pandemic together. So I felt really, really inspired by that work.

Saul Marquez:
Yeah, it’s amazing. And by the way, folks, so this is an audio, but I could see how because I’m looking at Nicole Lincoln and Lopez, how they’re lighting up, like when Nicole Lincoln was telling us about this. It’s just like you’re lit up, like you’re just like in the zone with this work. And it’s so cool and so inspiring to see that. But also to hear it, you could hear it in your voice. And it’s these social determinants of health, the housing, the food, know the access that our nurses are the first ones to identify and see. And I love that these nurse-led initiatives, including the one on opioids, which, by the way, to Nicole’s point, it hasn’t gone away. It’s gotten worse. And the fact is we’re turning the corner on this COVID thing and now it’s important. So I think it’s really great that you guys did this fellowship and it’s important to scale efforts that are working around opioid and the opioid epidemic to help this country because we’re suffering and it’s critical. So thank you for sharing that. Wow, amazing stuff. And around doing things different, there’s no doubt. I mean, what you guys are doing at Boston Medical Center is different. There’s a need for us to scale these efforts around how we do the things that are not billable to actually improve our community health. And so I think we’ve seen some evolution from CMS and in their ability to get some of these things approved and money, right for Medicare and Medicaid to be used for things like Nicole and team are doing. And so a call out to sea mazuma and all of them folks to keep doing that because we need it. And so what do you believe people know that maybe they don’t know about the role of nursing in improving health and outcomes. Nicole Lopez, you want to take that one first?

Nicole Lopez:
It’s so interesting. You could tie it to what Nicole Lincoln said. In nursing school and undergraduate school, They teach us about preparedness. Being prepared. So it’s very important. Even if you’re not a nurse, if there is a disaster coming, what’s your plan? And then again, what Nicole was saying, how involved nurses are all the way down to what you eat? I mean, why is it that a cheeseburger from a fast-food restaurant is a dollar fifty, but a cucumber is three dollars? There’s a huge disparity there. And it’s so wonderful to hear that Boston is really putting this to the forefront and in trying to prepare people to live a healthier lifestyle. So that’s nursing in itself. They’re just preparing people to know how to cook healthier food. That’s how involved nurses are in people’s lives. It goes all the way down to nutrition.

Saul Marquez:
So, yeah, totally, totally. It goes deep and details just amazing. So it’s a great point. Nicole Lincoln your thoughts.

Nicole Lopez:
I want people to know that nurses have global health impacts all over the world and there are much more than the traditional role that you think of when you picture a nurse in the hospital at the bedside that they are that to. And of course, that was such a huge thing during Cauvin to be there for the patients. But they’re also midwives. They deliver babies. They’re entrepreneurs, starting nurse. Health care businesses, they’re innovators patenting new devices and products, their public health nurses taking on crisis after crisis head on in our communities, their school nurses getting the kids back to school safely, their primary care providers and the role of the ENPI and their visiting nurses in the home. You know, I actually started doing that during. But again, I was a senior manager and I was involved in all of the kind of movement happening here in the pandemic. But I felt the need to take care of patients. So I started doing some home care visits and I found that that was really rewarding for that connection. Being a nurse for twenty-five years, I really needed to be a part of the solution, too.

Nicole Lopez:
So nurses are out there visiting patients in the home and helping them figure out how to to to tackle wellness in their own setting and to take on those little things in the home. And then hospice nurses there with the patients in the home when they’re dying and providing that care. And then I didn’t know if you knew that nurses serve in the highest branches of military nurses go all over the world as part of military.

Saul Marquez:
That’s awesome stuff.

Nicole Lopez:
And then there also legal consultants in the courtroom and they are CEOs running hospital systems and their research is building evidence that is shaping the way we understand and deliver care. Nurses are doing groundbreaking research on pain. And I’m working on my doctorate on pain. And I’ll talk a little bit about that later. But, you know, they do so much more than what people. And I just want people in the community to really realize that we’re just scratching the surface of what nurses do there all over the world and they’re just taking care of the community in every way possible.

Saul Marquez:
You go ahead, Nicole.

Nicole Lincoln:
That is so, so well put and well thought out and so true. And I feel like people finally realize what nurses do. And it took a pandemic, but they probably didn’t know that level of detail that Nicole went into that we are every stage of the life, every nuance of health care nurses involved in.

Saul Marquez:
So, yeah, and even outside of health care., I mean, the military and all these other examples that you used, just the breadth and depth of how nurses touch all of us in this country and across the globe is amazing. And we’ve done 12 interviews as part of the series. And I got to tell you, my view of nurses has been transformed. Like, honestly, I am a believer in what nurses do for us as a country, as an economy, and it’s just amazing. So spiritually, you name it. So I love to hear about nurses at work. Give us an example of how some maybe something you’ve seen a nursing team provide a great solution for and maybe Nicole Lincoln, you take this one would be interested to hear from you.

Nicole Lincoln:
I’m a founding member of SONSIEL which Nicole is also a member of. And it’s this great group of nurses. SONSIEL stands for society of Nurses Scientists, Innovators, Entrepreneurs and leaders. And a few years ago, a group of us came together, many in similar roles to myself as a manager of nursing innovations at an organization. And we started work having hackathon, partnering with Johnson and Johnson and just really trying to just build nursing innovation and entrepreneurship and just expand the scope of the nurse even further than what you mentioned earlier. But I was really amazed that during the very early days of the pandemic, when it became shockingly evident that the US was very short of personal protective equipment and the health care workers were really frightened and it was unsafe. And you heard stories from Seattle and from New York where they just weren’t enough masks. And I know I had to mail masks to an NP in Detroit who had done a nurse practitioner and the leaders of SONSIEL stepped forward and they developed this program share and they reached out through social media. And I was a part of that as well. And actually, we were short of PPE right here at Boston Medical Center or at least really worried about the future with that.

Nicole Lopez:
And so this program share, which was really innovative. Rebecca Love came up with the idea, I believe, was to reach out to all the providers that were shut down during COVID like dentists and even construction, because they wear the N95 masks and all the other providers do because a lot of those non-essential things were shut down in those early months and ask for them to donate their PPE to the front line workers. And I know BMC was the recipient of a lot of those donations, but this also inspired this social media campaign, also inspired a lot of organizations that were also kind of vital, like colleges, to start making some of the. And I know MIT and Harvard and Ford Motors, you know, they may face shields and gowns, gowns, auto airbag material, you know, like it was really kind of cool, awesome. And so this of one nurse and the organizations spread and we just were able to deliver people all over the country to a lot of hospitals that were in need. And I just thought that was such an awesome example of what nurses can do.

Saul Marquez:
Wow. Yeah, that’s such a great example. And you mentioned one nurse and a team, and you guys are definitely like SONSIEL is like the Navy SEAL nurses. Like you guys are just like coming up with so many cool things over there. And I’m inspired by the work and listeners I know you’re inspired to there’s no way you can’t be like this by the work that this amazing group of nurses is doing every single day. And the hackathon, which you’re listening to this it happened last week. I mean, it just incredible work coming out of that as well. OK, so, you know, setbacks are something that are formative. And we’ve talked about cCOVID. We’ve talked about the Boston bombing. Let’s talk about biggest setbacks. And so maybe Nicole Lopez, maybe this is something you could touch on. What’s a setback you’ve had and a learning that came out of it.

Nicole Lincoln:
So interestingly, I think one of the setbacks was but it’s pushing forward is telecommunication. So a lot has been moved to virtual visit. And I think that’s a huge change for health care. But in doing virtual moving the platform to virtually reach further. So just giving the hackathon, for instance, SONSIEL had people from India and all over the world participating, whereas when it’s in person, you only have a certain demographic that it can reach. So although it’s a setback, it’s also a positive. It’s hard to explain, I suppose. But for all the techies out there, they understand. there’s a whole bunch of stuff that goes behind it. CMS reimbursement for television. Can the patient get on to the platform? You know, it’s difficult for some generations, especially the older generations, to navigate technology. So I think that’s been a bit of a setback. But it will be the wave of the future. And then, like I said for the hackathon, it allowed us to reach the whole world rather than the set location.

Saul Marquez:
Yeah. Now, that’s a good example of the growing pains of adapting to what COVID has presented to us have been. I think we’re starting to experience some of the rewards. There is a crazy hard focus on care in the home. Like all of the big organizations, hospitals included hospitals and device companies, technology companies. They’re focused on care in the home. And so the challenges that you mentioned, Nicole Lopez, was at the beginning are becoming the opportunities of tomorrow. So, yeah, spot on with that one, Nicole Lincoln. Any setbacks you want to share or should we move to the next one?

Nicole Lopez:
Well, I think the only setback that I really want to share is just around burnout. And you know that we’ve all worked incredibly hard this past year plus. And I think that was my biggest key learning was that, you know, we have to take the time for yourself to keep moving forward. And I think we’ve spent some time working with the nurses here on that as well, on resiliency, on self care, and just on having that time and in time at home with family, because I always think I get kind of jealous, like a lot of people got to work home for the past year and, you know, nurses just worked more. And as we all had kids at home from school and it was just such a challenge. So I think that was my key learning is that self care is really important and taking time for family.

Saul Marquez:
Yeah. And so how do you scale that message? You know, because, you know, there’s nurse leaders listening to this and they’re thinking, oh my gosh, you’re right. I’m burned out. My team’s burned out. How do you scale that message? Do you have any tips or tricks or ideas that are working that maybe nurses could think about?

Nicole Lincoln:
Maybe self-reflection. You need to reflect how long has it been since I took a vacation? What is my mental status? What is my mental health look like right now? You have to look inwards and then seek the help that is offered to you. Many organizations post COVID are offering nurses free mental health care. Correct me if I’m wrong to call, but to the best of my knowledge, it’s out there. But you have to be able to look within yourself and take that time to realize you’re not doing OK and it’s OK to not be OK. Yeah. Total reach for help.

Saul Marquez:
Yeah. Yeah. Great tip. OK, so I mean just incredible examples and things that both of you have shared, so thank you. What would you say you’re most excited about today?

Nicole Lincoln:
I’m excited to see what new possibilities for nurses as leaders emerge coming out of this pandemic. Nurses now have got a table in the highest advisory committees for our country and health care policy and health care development. So I’m really excited to see what comes of that. Advanced practice nurses such as nurse practitioners, midwives and nurse anesthetists have expanded the scope of practice. And over half of our states, I don’t know if you knew that they’re now independent practitioners. Nurse practitioners can work and start their own clinic without partnership with the doctor, as it was in the past. Massachusetts passed that same state law during the pandemic. And so being a family nurse practitioner myself, I find that that’s exciting because I could open a clinic with some of my peers and we could shape the way health care is delivered in a more patient-centered way in the home. And I envision like seeing the whole family together as a unit for their primary care appointments and things like that. I just think those ideas will come from that health policy change and and the laws advancing the scope of advanced practice nurses and many nurses that are getting their doctorate today. And so they’re just as trained as physicians. They’ve had the same amount of education. It’s just it’s differently focused. It’s focused on prevention and public health. And, you know, like we talked about nutrition and all of those social determinants of health. And so I just see so much possibility in that.

Saul Marquez:
Yeah, I do, too. And even, you know, there’s a big wave of direct primary care. This whole new approach to receiving care from a primary care physician augment that with the nurse power. And now you’re talking.

Nicole Lopez:
I think that there will be some great partnerships that will happen between nurses and docs. Totally agree. Yeah, I think it will be awesome.

Nicole Lincoln:
Yeah, I would agree because remember nurses are 24/7 365. We’re always there always where physicians do Have their patient load and they care about their patients just as much or you know, even more, but they just don’t have that time. But the nurses are able to give and I would say I’m most excited for the new innovations that come forward. I mean, if we could increase awareness to our fellow nurses about SONSIEL and what a hackathon is, if they’ve never heard of it, because really some of the most amazing ideas I think I’ve ever seen come from nurses. And you’re like, why didn’t anyone ever think of that before? That’s just so simple and so smart. And I think I’m excited to see what other nurses will come up with in future hackathon. And that’s what I’m excited for.

Saul Marquez:
Yeah, for sure. Well, the future’s bright and the opportunities are increasing. Thank you all for listening to today. But I would be remiss if I didn’t give you a call to action. Your call to action is to include nurses in what you do every single day. This is why we’re doing this, to provide awareness and encouragement and to show you what the power of nurses can do to your organization, to your patients, to your company. Nicole, Nicole, this has been a ton of fun. And you want to thank you both for spending time with all of us. Give us a closing thought. What should we be thinking about here as we conclude this episode? And what’s the best way for the listeners to get in touch with you if they want to connect?

Nicole Lopez:
Well, for a closing thought, this is Nicole again. I’d like to say find joy in your work. Appreciate the little things from day to day, have gratitude and others will follow. You’ll pass that joy. You’ll spread it to the others around you and you can feel free to reach out to me. I’m at nicole.lincoln@bmc.org. Thanks, everyone.

Saul Marquez:
Thank you, Nicole.

Nicole Lopez:
I mean, how do you top that closing statement? I’m not sure. So I’ll just leave it out if you need to contact me. I’m nicole.lopez@nyulangone.org. And remember to thank your nurse. A simple thank you goes a long way to us. That’s all we ask is say thank you. I appreciate what you’re doing and we’ll go above and beyond for you.

Nicole Lincoln:
That’s a good closing thought.

Saul Marquez:
It’s a very good closing thought. That’s amazing. Well, God bless you both. Thank you so much for being with us today and for sharing your insights in the space. Folks, thank you so much. And thank you, nurse. Love what you do and include a nurse in that. Thank you both. Nicole, Nicole, have a great day.

Nicole Lincoln:
And thank you as well.

Saul Marquez:
Thanks for tuning in to the SONSIEL nurse leadership series. For the show notes and to learn more about how you could have nurses join your mission, visit us at OutcomesRocket.Health/SONSIEL. That’s OutcomesRocket.Health/SONSIEL.

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