Leveraging Adversity to Meet Your Goals with Chris Recinos, CEO and Founder of the Nurse Leader Network and Creator of Hello Harmony: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Leveraging Adversity to Meet Your Goals with Chris Recinos, CEO and Founder of the Nurse Leader Network and Creator of Hello Harmony: 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 Month. In this 12-part series will 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.health/sonsiel to learn more. That’s outcomesrocket.health/sonsiel to learn more.

Saul Marquez:
Hey everybody, Saul Marquez with the Outcomes Rocket, and I want to welcome you again to the podcast. Today, as part of the Nurse Leadership Series with SONSIEL, I want to bring you a fantastic guest. Her name is Dr. Chris Recinos and she’s the CEO and founder of Nurse Leader Network. And she’s also a nurse executive, entrepreneur, innovator, podcast host, and speaker. She’s also the creator of the mental health app for teens Hello Harmony. Her former roles include Chief Nursing Executive for Kaiser Permanente South Bay Medical Center, Deputy Nurse Executive for the Veterans Administration, and a variety of nursing professor, nurse practitioner, and registered nurse roles. In her spare time, the time that she has, she can be found advocating for mental health and suicide prevention policies. Chris, I am so excited to have you here on the podcast today. Thanks for joining.

Dr. Chris Recinos:
I am so excited to be here, especially during nurses’ week. This is awesome. Thanks for having me.

Saul Marquez:
Absolutely. And so, Chris, you also have a podcast. I want to pause there for a minute and really just kind of tell us a little bit about the Nurse Leader Network podcast and listeners as part of this SONSIEL series, I highly encourage you to check her out. So, Chris, tell us about that.

Dr. Chris Recinos:
Oh, awesome. It really began out of my own needs. So as I was transitioning through my own leadership positions and moving up the career and then landing an executive role, I didn’t know what I didn’t know. I was a nurse practitioner by training and just got promoted and realized that there really weren’t a lot of safe spaces for nurses who are trying to really do wonderful, powerful things. And so I created the Nurse Leader Network to help nurses along with wherever they’re at in their journey and whether that’s a formal leader position or a nonformal leadership position. But I bring them the tools that they need to really revolutionize health care while not sacrificing the important things in life. So that’s what the Nurse Leader Network podcast is all about.

Saul Marquez:
That’s powerful. That’s powerful. We’ll make sure to leave a link to Chris’s podcast, so make sure you tune into that. Chris, talk to us a little bit about you. What inspires your work in health care and health?

Dr. Chris Recinos:
Yeah, so I actually grew up in Los Angeles in foster care. At 14 years old I found myself in the hospital in the worst pain of my life. And guess what I was in pain from?

Saul Marquez:
What was that?

Dr. Chris Recinos:
I was in labor with my first baby. Yeah. And, you know, navigating foster care and then as a teen mom was pretty difficult. But there was a nurse who really took me under her wing and she taught me how to change diapers and bathe the baby. I didn’t even know how to give my baby a bath. But she really taught me how to do all these things. And I said I want to be like her. I really want to be like her. And, you know, decided I was going to go into nursing. And interestingly enough, at my last job in Prominente as a nurse executive, around my second week at work, I was giving out an award for one of my units. And I look over and I see this person and she sees me and I’m like, oh, my God, we must we work together. I think it was like my memory. We worked together somewhere and then it clicked. And then she started crying and then I started crying. And then everybody thought we were crazy. And it was that nurse. I became her nurse executive. So it was just like totally full circle. She was like, Oh my God, I had no idea I inspired you like that. And, you know, now we’re good friends. And it’s been really a blessing to have reconnected with her after all of those years.

Saul Marquez:
Wow! That is an amazing story. Well, first of all, amazing, like your personal story is just amazing. And, gosh, I want to give you so much credit for all that you have to do to really rise above the challenge and overcome the obstacles that you’ve overcome to achieve what you’ve achieved to raise your kids. And then there’s this moment where it all comes full circle and you see the nurse leader that helped you, that inspired you. I can’t even imagine.

Dr. Chris Recinos:
It was super surreal. It was so funny because when I was in foster care, I had a crush on her son and her son had a crush on me. And so when she told him that she had found me, it was just like funny because it was like a, you know, like a kid thing. And it was just kind of neat to see her family grown and her to see my family grown. So really, it’s just really been a cool thing. I share that story to say you never realize who it is that you’re inspiring, you really don’t ever realize. And you hardly will ever, though hardly ever come back. But such beautiful things can be born from, you know, mentoring or not even mentoring, just being a kind person. And so, you know.

Saul Marquez:
That is awesome. You’ve done a lot of things in your career. And so we focused a lot on our podcast around adding value. How do you believe, whether it be with, you know, with the network that you lead or anything that you’re up to, how do you feel like you’re adding value to the health care ecosystem?

Dr. Chris Recinos:
I think when we’re talking about just me as an individual. I realized about four years ago and I’ll share the story with you later on in the podcast, how I really came to that realization. But I realized how important it was to ensure that you inspire people every single day. And so because when you inspire them, the things that come out of their feelings of inspiration, they’re astronomical for your network. The business is really centered around building a community and a safe place for nurses to learn, grow and develop and really understand that what you may think is success. As a nurse might be somebody else’s definition of success but doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s your definition of success. And so I think what we do differently compared to other nursing organizations, leadership organizations is there’s really a huge focus on community. There’s a huge focus on it’s not where you go pay thousands of dollars for a course. And then after three days of your course, like that’s it, you’re left to, like, implement on your own. It’s not a place designed for you to come and spend two years at. It’s a place that really helps you grow through your career, grow through your challenges as an individual, make sure that you’re balancing your home life and your things that really pique your interest. And that’s whether you’re going into, you know, maybe like an organizational leadership role or an entrepreneurial role or whatever it is that you’re looking to do as a nurse. But there is no organization like the Nurse Leader Network. We really pride ourselves on being there and being part of the journey. We are the guide. We don’t take the credit. And a lot of places that you go to, you feel really I felt really intimidated, you know, trying to learn information. I was a very young nurse executive in my 30s, the youngest that there was at that time for Kaiser. And so it’s intimidating to sit with somebody who’s been a nurse, you know, and they’re in their 50s or 60s. And they’ve been a nurse for longer than I’ve been alive and try to learn and grow in that type of scenario. And so for the nurses, the work is very different. They see that. You know, I grew up in foster care. I’m a person of color. There’s nothing that they need to be embarrassed about or any silly question. So because of That, they’re able to take that potential that they learn from, you know, what it is that they’re doing in my business. And these nurses are really revolutionizing and changing major outcomes in big, big ways.

Saul Marquez:
Yeah, that’s huge. And so as you think about creating that environment of learning, that environment of, hey, it’s OK to make mistakes, there’s support here, we’re going to rise together. What would you say is that key element that your organization does differently than what’s out there right now?

Dr. Chris Recinos:
I think the biggest pieces, it’s most nursing. My business is like a nursing educational business. And most nursing educational businesses, if not all, are focused on content. They’re really focused on getting that content out there. Here’s how you do, Strapline. Here’s how you do whatever. Mine’s not. Mine’s focused on the community because the value they get is from each other. These people are networking and having connections in terms of like I now have somebody I can call and say, hey, we just got our first COVID patient Came to our clinic, what are you guys doing? And it’s not you know, there are other organizations that really try to have a community, but they buffer like you can’t go in and just kind of post, you know, you have to wait for a certain amount of time and then maybe some people respond or not. Mine’s focused on making sure that there is people that are engaged. That’s one of the biggest Kind of things I’ve set my membership up. So it looks like Facebook’s. Super user friendly, but then we do a lot of connecting inside and outside of the membership sites, a lot of in-person, a lot of, you know, online. And so it’s just having that sense of community is a huge difference. And it’s really what I believe is changing these people’s lives because they always have this tribe to fall back on, too.

Saul Marquez:
Yeah, that’s so key. And especially right now, during COVID, it’s just been so difficult to have that tribe. And who are you connecting with and how are you doing it? Have you seen growth in the uptake of this community that you’ve developed?

Dr. Chris Recinos:
Yeah, definitely. There’s definitely been growth. I actually just started it pretty recently. I left Kaiser in September and then I launched Nurse Leader Network in January. And so it’s only been about three months. But I literally have nurses calling me and I have nurses on LinkedIn that are linking or they’ll come and find me on Clubhouse and they’re just thinking. And I think that’s why my business has been so successful in these three months because it’s word of mouth. I’m not doing any advertising whatsoever. It really is people just seeing the value and then sharing that because they know that their friends would benefit from it.

Saul Marquez:
I love it. Yeah. And these types of resources are so critical. And so right now there’s a lot of people that I would say appreciate nurses because of what difference they’ve made in their lives. But I also feel like there’s a good share that I don’t know and could use a little perspective. And so myself, I’ve gotten to know so many great nurses just through the podcast and the different work that I do in health care, but I feel like you guys are underrepresented. So let’s talk about this, OK? What do you believe people need to know that maybe they don’t know about the role of nursing and improving outcomes and also business?

Dr. Chris Recinos:
So there’s a couple of things. I think the first thing is there’s a saying in health care, right? We don’t do anything for the patient without the patient, meaning we bring them in for their focus groups. We take their feedback. I mean, we constantly bring them in. But we also shouldn’t do anything for the patient without the nurse because the nurse is the one that’s with the patient ninety-five percent of the time. And so I think that’s one huge gap is really just for people to understand that while many nurses don’t have a business degree, their contributions, in my opinion, are higher than that of somebody who even has a business degree, because the connections they make, the creativity they have, I mean, you will not find a nurse that has not invented something crazy on the unit to either make it something easier or to make it better for the patient. You just won’t find that. And so nurses are natural creators, are natural innovators, are naturally compassionate. And so if you give them the tools they don’t have, which is around maybe some of the metrics in business, and teach them that they’re going to be rock stars. I think one of the things that we fail to do in health care is to make sure that we have nurses at the table. And I don’t mean at the chief nurse executive table because we have nurses obviously there, but we don’t have enough CEOs that are nurses. And I have a really hard time swallowing a pill where ninety-five percent of the care is given by a profession that is not running that profession. Right. physicians don’t. We have people telling them how to run their profession, engineers don’t have people telling them how to run their profession, yet as nurses, we allow folks with MBAs or whatnot to really kind of gauge how we run the hospital or run ambulatory care, run wherever it is that we’re providing that care. And so I think just for those that are listening, like what value do we have? It’s immeasurable. There really is no other you can’t get any closer to patient care than the nurse because the amount of time that they spend with the patient, particularly in the inpatient. That being said, the reason that we’re in this situation is because nurses have done this to ourselves. We have completely siloed ourselves. If you look at the American Medical Association, they have really done a wonderful job of getting their tribe together, making political moves, really doing what it is that they need to do that’s in the best interests of their profession. And as nurses, we don’t do that. We have the American Nurses Association. But then we also have 50 other certifications that you could become certified for. And nurses tend to silo. So if I’m an L.A. nurse, I’m not going to be an American Nurses Association member. I’m going to be an L.A. Nurse Association. And because we do that, we don’t have a unified voice and we end up not having seats at the table because we don’t even see eye to eye in our own profession. So there’s a lot of work, I think, that needs to happen within nursing, around unifying our voices and really being the ones that are taking charge and leading our profession. I think we have a lot of nurses that do that. But if you look, you know, on average, less than 20 percent of the entire nursing population speaks for the rest of the 80 percent of nurses. And that needs to change.

Saul Marquez:
And so there’s an opportunity there. So, Chris, totally appreciate your callouts there on the need to be more organized. And you know what the work you’re doing with your network and SONSIEL and the work that they’re doing. I think that the future is bright. And so I want to take a minute to Hone in on Some examples. You know, give us some examples of when you saw your nursing team provide a great solution to a problem.

Yeah, like I said, nurses are there, infamously known for being really great innovators. And so one that comes to mind to me, that was just it was just really fun. And that’s why it comes to mind, as we were struggling with some of our metrics for sepsis. You know, most nursing education centers around like, here’s a test, let’s do a Hands-On thing. You know, like just to be frank and everybody knows it. So I’m just going to be transparent. It’s boring. It’s some people actually really like. We have our specialties, but the materials, it’s not stimulating. It’s going to be hard for you to retain it. And so I sat down with the team and said, what are we going to do, guys? Like, how can we get these metrics better? We know everybody knows instead of health care tells us you can’t just educate. Like, that’s not what’s going to change a thing. It’s just that’s not what changes things. And so one of the nurses said, hey, let’s do some gamification. And I said, what the heck is? And they got the literature together and put together these really cool escape rooms. I don’t know if you’ve ever done like an escape room for Halloween with, like, the team thought, well, I don’t have chainsaws, but they do have like code blue alarms. And they created this escape room where you had to escape with your team to get out of sepsis.

Dr. Chris Recinos:
And every single puzzle that you had to unlock was a piece of what would be a sign of that early sepsis dictionary. Once you see the signs, what are the steps that you need to do? And then we incorporated team steps in there because it’s a team we don’t work in silos in health care. And so they just created this really cool, like a mock example, escape room with the sepsis patient. And the nurses loved it. And I even got a letter from one of the nurses who a couple of weeks after she had taken the escape and she said, I just want to let you know, because of that escape room, I’m 100 percent certain that I save somebody who would have died had I not taken it, because I did not know the things that I know now from taking that. And I was able to recognize sepsis early. And so, you know, just kind of like letting your team do what they want to do, as I think, especially if you’re an executive, it’s really important to not do top-down like really take their examples and, you know, take their ideas and then let them try it. And if it doesn’t work, guess what? You can try it again. You can do something different, make a reiteration. So I think it’s really important to have your team really do the leading and you just kind of as a stakeholder that provides whatever support it is that they need.

Saul Marquez:
I love it is a great example of that. And we have to be creative. There’s got to be an opportunity to tackle some of these challenges in a creative way. You seem to be doing a great job of that. What would you say is one of the biggest setbacks you’ve experienced and what was a key learning experience.

Dr. Chris Recinos:
So I told you that I would tell you why I was kind of passionate about mental health early on. I tell you what kind of came of all that. So in 2017, that daughter that I had when I was 14 years old was a premed student at UCLA. And she used to leave earlier than I did in the morning. She was a commuter and I went to her door one day, you know, she hadn’t left, her car was still on the driveway. And as I approached the door, there’s a note on the floor. And so I picked up the paper and it says, Don’t let the kids see. I Love you. Harmony. She’s harmony.

Saul Marquez:
Oh, my God.

Dr. Chris Recinos:
And so as I walked into the door, I found her there and she was lifeless and I began CPR and I couldn’t save her. My daughter had taken her life. And what I want to say was the biggest setback was that I realized as I was burying my child that I didn’t have the memories that my ex-husband had. He had the memories of taking her to PTA. He had the soccer game memories. He had the memories of taking her to the doctor like he had all these memories. And because I was constantly in school, right, I went a got a Ph.D., I stayed in school ten years and climbing this ladder, becoming a nurse executive in my thirties because I was doing all of those things, I missed out on everything in her life and thought at the time it was right. Right. I was doing what I had to do to support her so we would never have to end up back, you know, in foster care and not end up or end up self-sufficient. And I realized I was living somebody else’s dream in. Our time, because all those things that I was doing were things that maybe would make somebody else happy, but they really weren’t bringing me any joy and I didn’t realize that until I lost her. And so I would say that my biggest setback was really having to step back and take a really good look at my actions, what I do every day, what legacies I want to leave behind, and what I’m not willing to sacrifice. And I guess those are also what I learned from that. I learned that a lot of nurses who especially really are eager to go into leadership are really they just are naturals and they really want to learn that they sacrifice a lot more than they should. And because of that, people take advantage. So if you’re that nurse that’s working 12 hour days, the manager or whatever it is, and that’s not what you should be working and you’re sacrificing. I have all the time people come to me like, oh, I’m not going to go to my daughter’s Christmas Dance or what, because I work stop now. Like, if you’re listening, if you take anything away from this, not get the hell off and get your life together and really take a good look at where you want to be and how is where you’re going to get you there. So, you know, where I wanted to be was I wanted to be able to give fifty thousand dollars a month to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention after losing her.

Dr. Chris Recinos:
I wanted to be where I never missed a doctor’s appointment. I never missed whatever it was. I wanted to be healthy and like have yoga every morning and meditate and drink tea and all these things that I wasn’t doing as an executive. And that’s why I decided to leave Kaiser and start my business. I loved the job at Kaiser, but it would I could never be a nurse executive and make enough to pay fifty thousand dollars a month If I could never, you know, because of the commute, because of how much work goes into being a nurse executive, I could never get yoga and meditation and say no to every single thing that I wanted to say no to because of, you know, I want to be with my kids. And it became a really easy decision. So for those of you listening, you know, if you’re feeling any burnout or any tension or any dread when you go to work, it’s really time to step back and look at where do I want to be in the next five years and is what I’m doing and actually get me there.

Saul Marquez:
Wow. Just again, I appreciate you sharing it. I appreciate you choosing to be here with us today to share your message. And listeners, you heard from Chris. If you don’t want to do it, you don’t want to put up with it, if it’s conflicting with the type of lifestyle to live, to say no, life’s too short. And so Chris’s life story is inspiring. Chris, you talk about inspiring people every day. You’ve inspired me. And I’m sure right now inspiring everybody listening. I’m grateful for it.

Dr. Chris Recinos:
Thank you. I’m just glad to be able to share the message because I really don’t want anybody else to end up in those shoes because they’re a lonely pair of shoes to be in and it doesn’t have to be that way. Somebody told me something one day and I was like, oh, crud, they’re right. I was like, how do I fit it all in? I was, you know, with the mastermind group of mine and I was talking all the things I’m working on. I was like, how do I fit it all in? And somebody told me it was straight on. He was like, you don’t. You pick and choose what’s important and everything else you say no to. And you say, I’m going to deal with those consequences for saying no to it, but you don’t have to fit it all in . The only person that can choose what we do every day is us, ourselves. Nobody else can choose. Nobody tells us what to do. We can say no.

Saul Marquez:
Yeah. Fantastic. I really appreciate you sharing the story and the inspiration to follow your heart and to do it in a way that is constructive and that adds value. That’s what it’s ultimately all about. And whether it be doing yoga or giving 50k a month to the organization of your choice, suicide prevention, and crisis case, just follow your heart and it’s amazing what will happen. What would you say you’re most excited about today, Chris?

Dr. Chris Recinos:
I’m most excited about where I’m at in the time span. Right., we just had our first female VP. She was a person of color elected. And this is not something I would have ever dreamed of as a child. Yet I’m sitting here watching my children, watching this. And so just to really understand that we are at such a pivotal point of our lives and as a nation as where we’re at in the world, the possibilities are like literally endless. There isn’t anything thay we can’t do. And I think that’s one of the biggest takeaways, is that it only takes one person. You don’t need hundreds of people. You have to have one person with one vision. And that person could be you. A lot of people think their dreams are too big, but they’re not. The only person putting the limit on that dream really is you. So, you know,

Saul Marquez:
Make it happen.

Dr. Chris Recinos:
Yeah.

Saul Marquez:
You think about something that you’re going through right now and you got to think to yourself, what’s holding me back? A lot of times it’s ourselves. When Chris mentioned that I’m sure an idea came to your mind, it definitely came in mine. And so what is that thing that you’re holding yourself back from? And if you get out of your own way and it’s not, sometimes it’s actually easier than you think. Just do it. And the possibilities are endless. So from a nurse leader perspective, you’re such an inspiring person. Chris, I love that you shared your story. You’re very vulnerable. And the things that you shared. What would you say is the parting thought that you would give to the listeners as, hey, take this and run with it? And then what would be the best way other than listening to your podcast that the listeners could engage with you?

Dr. Chris Recinos:
I think the number one thing I would say as a parting goodbye is hashtag you matter, you matter. You matter on your worst days and you matter on your best days. You matter to people that don’t even realize you matter, too. And so just live your life with that sense of purpose, knowing that even if it’s a really bad day for you today, there are only 24 hours in a day. But you are important. And so just, I think to keep. To the forefront, because we do talk the most negative to ourselves and sometimes we need that reminder to really check ourselves and say, hey, I matter. And then if folks want to get a hold of me, I’m on LinkedIn, Chris Recinos, or they can check out my website at www.nurseleadernetwork.com.

Saul Marquez:
Chris, this has been fantastic. Really want to thank you for just coming on and sharing the amazing work that you do. Let’s get you back on in six to 12 months, I want to hear how your nurse leader network is going and certainly share it with the listeners on our podcast so that they could join in and get the benefits out of the community.

Dr. Chris Recinos:
Welcome. Thank you. It has been such a pleasure to meet you and to be on podcast. I appreciate it. Thanks.

Saul Marquez:
Thanks for tuning in to the SONSIEL Nurse Leader 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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