How Nurses are Transforming the Future of Health with Bonnie Clipper and Shawna Butler: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

How Nurses are Transforming the Future of Health with Bonnie Clipper and Shawna Butler: 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 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.health/sonsiel to learn more. That’s outcomesrocket.health/sonsiel S O N S I E L to learn more.

Saul Marquez:
Welcome back to the Outcomes Rocket, Saul Marquez is here and I want to thank you for tuning in again for this 12-part series with SONSIEL, the Society for Nurse Leadership and Innovation. I am privileged to have two amazing nurse leader guests today. First, I’ve Got Shawna Butler. There’s a growing community of clinicians at the vanguard of digital health technologies. Shawna is among those pioneers and one of the nurses encouraging others to join. A nurse economist, health tech catalyst and the builder of the Global EntrepreNURSE Movement, Shawna aims to better position nurses in our health innovation agendas as discovery engines, solution designers and scale agents. Several years ago, she initiated a global conversation highlighting the rarity of nurses in boardrooms, product design, innovation teams, policy development, tech conferences and health media. She’s on a mission to change that. Also with us is Bonnie Kliper. Dr. Bonnie Clipper is the Chief Clinical Officer at Wambi. Bonnie is an expert in the nursing innovation space and was the first Vice President of Innovation for the American Nurses Association and created Innovation framework that is inspiring four million registered nurses to transform health through nurse-led innovation. Prior to that, Bonnie spent more than 20 years in executive nursing roles. She’s a top nurse influencer in LinkedIn and speaks internationally on nurse-led innovation and the future of nursing. Dr. Clipper is a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation executive nurse fellow Alumna and an ASU AONL Executive Fellow in the Health Innovation Leadership Alumna. So I just want to say thank you for both of you to jump on here and share some of your thoughts and leadership ideas around nurses in health and health care. Thank you for joining us.

Shawna Butler:
Well, we are so glad you invited us and so many others in these conversations.

Saul Marquez:
Yes. And so both of you have just an extraordinary amount of experience, a ton of credibility. You’ve done so much in your careers. I’m just excited for what we’re going to cover today. Before we dive into the specifics around what you’re doing in your current roles, tell us a little bit more about what inspires your work and your journey in health care.

Shawna Butler:
Bonnie, do you want to go first?

Dr. Bonnie Clipper:
Sure, I’d be happy to. So I have been a nurse for quite a long time. It’s interesting to me because certainly, nursing has evolved as has health care. And for me, I wanted to make sure that I had an avenue to provide my input. And I’ll give you an example. Way back early on when I was a bedside nurse, actually was working in an organization. And as was kind of typical for the time, we had bins on the counter that had medications in them. Nowadays, we would never think of that. We would put them in a locked storage device, but we had bins next to each other. There was kind of normal saline and heparin and potassium and other things that just happen to be in these bins on the counter. I remember looking at them and actually seeing that a saline flush was right next to the bin of potassium and they both were the same size and they had the same color plastic tops. And at the time, even being kind of a puff of a nurse, that struck me as being a really bad thing. Right? An accident or disaster.

Shawna Butler:
That’s kind of dangerous.

Dr. Bonnie Clipper:
Right. I know Shawna. And the crazy thing is that when I talked to the manager about it, they said, OK, great, thanks for finding this. We’re going to put it on next month’s safety committee meeting. And it just made me scratch my head thinking, why can a nurse at the bedside not affect change fast enough? That can prevent something really bad from happening. So that’s kind of what gave me a little bit of a push to really find how I could get my voice heard and intervene, make things better.

Saul Marquez:
Wow. Certainly eye-opening. Next week. Well, how about now?

Shawna Butler:
Yeah, so Saul, I think what I heard was what inspires. Is that right? What inspires my work and how and just following up on and amplifying what Bonnie said, the incredible range of problems and unmet needs that exist, and then these cool technologies that are increasingly available off the shelf, very user friendly, that help us to solve problems at scale. And so I’m very inspired that despite so many breakthroughs, a lot of advances, I mean, we see them in the headlines every single day. These vaccines, the COVID-19 vaccines are just miraculous. I mean, such a testament of human endeavor. And yet, despite all of these remarkable innovations, there is still so much that is left undone and these things that are left undone, the gaps that are in care. It falls hardest on those who live in communities that have been marginalized, that have been overlooked, that have been unfairly treated, and truly, I think they’ve been underestimated and there’s been a lack of investment. And oftentimes we just also say that these communities that I’m referring to, much of what is so essential and important in our economy and things that are so beautiful and wonderful, they have been built on the efforts of the communities that tend to be overlooked, that have inequities. And so what inspires me? What drives me? And truthfully, what frustrates and angers me and that’s more my drive is the level of injustice. And so I feel very compelled with the privilege that I have, the luck that it’s been afforded to me and the skills and the expertise in the community that I feel very compelled to work alongside with and for the people who don’t have a voice and frankly don’t have a choice. And that’s, you know, from the standpoint of at every turn there is there just seems to be no challenge or problem out there where health care and the solutions that we’re able to bring aren’t at the intersection of or the foundation of. So those are the things that oftentimes people ask me, what’s your passion? I’m like, you know, it’s not my passion that drives me. It’s my frustration that drives me.

Dr. Bonnie Clipper:
And Shawna, you know, what’s so cool about that is that nurses are so sick to their eyeballs and frustrated. They are just jumping in to come up with the changes that need to happen in order to create a better world for people. So we’re no longer just sitting there waiting to be tapped.

Shawna Butler:
Yeah, as you say, there is no more standing by and waiting for permission. I mean, the phrase that I use all the time is be bold. Do not wait for permission or instructions or an invitation. Proceed until apprehended.

Saul Marquez:
Love it.

Shawna Butler:
Absolutely.

Saul Marquez:
That’s fantastic. And by the way, folks, I didn’t tell you also, Dr. Bonnie Clipper is an Amazon international bestseller, The Nurses Guide to Innovation. Shawna is a host of See You Now podcast. Just the thought leaders in their fields. Definitely be leaving show notes here for you all to check them out and check the work that they do because they’re just incredible people.

Shawna Butler:
I want to add one other hat that I wear, that’s a really important hat that informs a lot of the work that I do. So I’m the Managing Director for the community and the programming and the content for Exponential Medicine. And I really describe that as Disneyland for clever optimists. We are really that gravity and the center of gravity and the epicenter for where technology meets the community, who believes we can solve these really difficult problems. And they are the pioneers, the first group of people who want to bring voice recognition, A.I., big data, robotics, synthetic biology, any of these platforms and technologies that allow us to solve problems in new ways and at scale. So it’s like, you know like I said, it’s like Disneyland for clever optimists. And they work with some of the smartest people on the planet who are solving the hardest problems for all the right reasons. So that’s another area that takes me into the technology world and gives me this really nail-biting front row seat oftentimes of how innovations are unfolding.

Saul Marquez:
Yeah, and thanks for mentioning that, Shawna. I made it to that meeting about five, six years ago. It was mind-blowing. I appreciate you reminding me about it because I definitely want to head back. It’s just one of those things.

Shawna Butler:
We all want to head back, Saul.

Dr. Bonnie Clipper:
Let’s go!

Shawna Butler:
Exactly.

Shawna Butler:
Everybody needs to get vaccinated.

Saul Marquez:
That’s right.

Shawna Butler:
I was just going to say that it’s just really interesting at that twist on theirs that the vaccines are really important, but without vaccinations and this incredible workforce, they’re going to be hundreds of millions of vaccines that are going to be delivered. The vaccinations and the vast majority of them. It will be nurses delivering those. I just want to put that out there because it is such an important as we move through this pandemic, there have been many people who’ve made contributions. And I want to highlight all the scientists and the data scientists and the microbiologists and our cleaning staff. And there are so many different people involved with that. And I think that the vast majority of people when they go and have their vaccine gratitude experience, they’ll be doing it with the nurse. And we’re very honored and excited to be playing that role. Bonnie and I have been part of that vaccine effort.

Dr. Bonnie Clipper:
We have literally given lots and lots of vaccinations ourselves.

Saul Marquez:
I bless you both and all the nurses out there. I actually just got my vaccine the first dose, And it was just so smooth. I was so impressed.

Shawna Butler:
If only the appointment was so smooth, right?

Saul Marquez:
I know that was definitely a little rockier, but yeah. Great points. And I love this conversation because it’s these things that oftentimes go. These points that go undiscussed like, hey, by the way, you know, that was a nurse giving you that vaccine, I love doing this with you because and with SONSIEL and the work that’s being done at the Society of Nurse Scientists, Innovators, Entrepreneurs and Leaders to really promote nurses and the Importance of them. Let’s talk about how you guys are adding value to the health care ecosystem. Bonnie, do you want to start off by telling us maybe a little bit about Wambi and the work there that you’re doing with your nurse counterparts?

Dr. Bonnie Clipper:
So our world is really around turning things into the positive so that we can sort of cultivate and reward people for all of the amazing work that they’re doing. So often in health care, we tend to hear from leaders, from management if there’s something that we didn’t do well. For example, if you discharge a patient and you forget to send home their glasses or their prescription or they’re waiting to have somebody actually check them out those tend to be feedback experiences as the care provider, the nurse that you might hear complain. Why didn’t you do this better or faster? And let’s figure out how we can do better.

Dr. Bonnie Clipper:
What we do at Wambi is we really work very hard to reduce clinician burnout, enhance the patient experience and really optimize the engagement of clinicians. And we do that by focusing on what’s going well. So we really want to make sure that we highlight all of the good things. We also certainly convey the feedback or the opportunities for improvement, but we really make sure that we put our best foot forward and give the clinicians or the care team, the information from the patient, their family directly in real-time about what they’ve done so well. And what we find is that actually really is finding a way to help people change their behaviors because everybody loves that good feeling. So when you see your peers getting recognition, this all happens through an app. But you can tell that others around you are actually getting positive feedback and recognition. So you want to get that, too. And we’re finding that it really creates little micro behavior changes for people to do not really what’s right, but sort of what’s best in the scenarios, the best customer service possible, really work with the patient and their family to optimize that entire experience exchange. And what we see is that the feedback is really awesome. And people on the care team love to get that feedback. So it’s really kind of a cool process. It’s a very engaging app and platform. It’s gamified. The users love it as well.

Saul Marquez:
That’s fantastic. And it’s great to have a resource like that, especially with the high levels of burnout that we’re seeing, and be able to get that feedback. I mean, how often do nurses or anybody in health care, how often do they get feedback? Rare, right? Everybody?

Dr. Bonnie Clipper:
Well, that’s actually it’s negative when we.

Shawna Butler:
We don’t get positive effects, Saul.

Saul Marquez:
It’s all negative. Ok.

Shawna Butler:
That’s not fair. There are so many appreciative people. They really are. But it is, I think, what Stephen Covey referred to as the emotional bank account. You know, it just takes one negative experience to basically bankrupt, you know, to put your bank account, your emotional bank account in an overdrawn state. And we work with people in their most vulnerable, with their most precious assets, the people that they love. And we work so diligently, so hard to get it right. And when we don’t or there is a disappointment, it just so devastating to hear those things. So, yes, we do get positive feedback, but mostly what you hear is the times when you fell short and you might have gotten that thing sending people’s on. You’ve done it ninety-nine out of a hundred times. And there’s one time where you didn’t. And then when you take a look at the — that there was, it was crazy busy. You know, somebody made a phone call in the middle of your routine. It’s understandable. But that’s what you hear is the thing that you didn’t quite right. And it becomes demoralized.

Dr. Bonnie Clipper:
Yeah. Especially if it’s the patient family’s only experience. If they happen to be that one out of the ninety-nine, they’ve got the forgotten glasses for them. They’re not happy. So yes, the nurse or the PCT CNA feels terrible and the family is not happy. So it’s that kind of a world that we love to focus on what’s going well and help to mitigate those missed opportunities.

Saul Marquez:
Fantastic Bonnie. And this comes from a nurse executive and again, an example of how a lot of innovation, great innovation can come from nursing. And it should. Shawna, why don’t you tell us a little bit about how what you and the work you’re doing is is different and helping the system?

Shawna Butler:
I love how you set it up as far as adding value to help the ecosystem because I definitely think of it as adding value. And I’m going to speak to the See You Now podcast. And it’s fun that you have both Bonnie and I on this conversation because in the early stages of germinating, we need to have a podcast, we need to be out using this medium to reach people. And so Bonnie was a real champion in making sure that this came into being. And when we initially had this conversation, I was so excited when I was approached to say, you know, we’re thinking about a podcast that really looks at health innovation, that’s driven and led by nurses. And I was like, well, you had me at hello. I mean, I’ve been going all around the world trying to help share that story. And in my experience of going all around the world, here’s what I’ve learned. The vast majority of people have very little understanding of what nurses actually do. And if you ask them what they do, if you were to ask them to close your eyes and imagine and envision a nurse, they would have a very narrow picture.

Shawna Butler:
There are really three things that I think that the See You Now podcast is doing. One, it’s broadening the understanding in the portrayal of the characters in the roles in our health systems, because mostly when we talk about health care, we are very physician-centric, physician-biased, and we tend to talk about it in terms of medicine. We don’t actually talk in terms of help. We don’t really include patients or the people who make that whole system run. And that can be your security, your H back, nutrition, pharmacy, social work. There are so many people and it’s actually systems of people that help us to create help and to mitigate disease and illness. And the biggest portion of that health care workforce and the number of characters and roles are nurses. And people don’t think of nurses as scientists and innovators and legislators and activists. And so that’s one of the big things that we have in this mission, is how are we helping to tell the story of health care as a team sport and identify who all the players are and where innovation is coming from. The second thing I think about it doing is introducing listeners to the myriad of health challenges that exist, their scope, their scale, the problem, the science behind it, the research and the data supporting those solutions. And then, more importantly, who are those innovators that are leading this progress? And then the third thing that I think that we’re really doing is not only have we helped you to understand this problem and help you to see your role in it and why you should care about it, but then also identify who the thought leaders are, what resources you would have available to you, the approaches to that problem or that challenge that maybe you or your organization, you maybe you didn’t know about. But what I have found in all of the storytelling and looking at all these innovations is that the human experience is universal. The problems tend to surface in many different ways. And when you find somebody who’s solving it in Kentucky, maybe that’s a solution that can work for Connecticut and maybe it works for some place in Peru. Maybe the things that they’re doing in Israel are things that we need to be paying attention to. So that’s where I think that we’re adding value is helping people to understand that this is a very complex, connected system and it takes a full cast of characters to drive innovation and some of the just by virtue of the sheer volume and the fact that nurses are in every single day, they’re the first and last touch point of safety. And all of your clinical interactions, they are innovating because they’re so close to the problems in health care.

Dr. Bonnie Clipper:
And Shawna, if I can add to that, I recall specifically talking with you about this. And one of the things that’s so important is a word that we used way back at the beginning, and that’s underestimated. I think that people don’t realize there are four times as many nurses as physicians, eight times as many nurses as pharmacists. They spend more time with patients in their families than any other disciplines. Yet we underestimate the value and what they can contribute because we just sort of see them as part of the backdrop. They blend into the walls, right? However, when we give them a voice and we amplify that, we’re seeing incredible things emerge from nurse-led innovations and nurse-led disruptions. So what we’re going to continue to see out of nurses is something that we’ve never really imagined. We kind of unleash the beast here and now. There are some incredibly beneficial changes that we will continue to see.

Saul Marquez:
Yeah, this is fantastic, Shawna and Bonnie and we’ve uncovered a lot already. And if you guys had to hone in to maybe one or two things that you believe, people need to know that maybe they don’t know about the role of nursing, what would you say that one or two things are?

Dr. Bonnie Clipper:
I think one that’s really important to understand is that’s like asking me, which is my favorite child. So this is this is really a tough one, but it is the largest untapped source of health care insights. And when I say insights, I’m talking about clinical insights, operational insights, distribution, all of those things. Nurses have the fastest license to the patient. So when you think about who can work with medications, do things that are invasive, and when we are innovating, when we’re trying out new technologies, right now, virtual reality and voice recognition are two really big technologies by sheer volume. And the fact that your your license gets you fastest to the patient and you want to innovate as swiftly as possible when you don’t include nurses in the development of those new technologies, there’s a lot that gets missed out. And I don’t think that our innovation agendas, economy’s innovation centers, recognize how valuable the sheer volume, the fact they are so close to that patient and their feedback loops because when we’re innovating, we got to iterate quickly. And so nurses have two things working for them. Will they have more than two? But two things that I want to highlight. One is the trust. They are so, so deeply trusted. And when you’re asking people to do things that are new, that are hard, that are scary and new in different ways, telehealth has been huge I mean, this experience right now during the pandemic, we say to people, rather than coming in and visiting your primary care provider, we want you to do it off this device. We want you to use this. Your data is going to be saved. We’re asking people to do new and different things. So tapping into that nurse relationship where there’s high levels of trust, high levels of proximity, and then just that super fast feedback loop, I think that that’s one of the things that can help accelerate the pace of innovation as well as try it out in so many different settings and so many different patient populations. So those are when you ask me, what are some of those things? I think that these are hidden gems that the innovation ecosystem doesn’t really think about when they’re trying to figure out who to partner with to develop and drive innovation.

Saul Marquez:
Yeah, that’s fantastic, Shawna. I agree. There’s such a great opportunity. And to your point, the frequency of those touches and the volume of those touches, there’s so many insights to be gained. Bronnie, how about you? What would you say? Is that one thing that people maybe don’t know but need to know about the role of nursing?

Dr. Bonnie Clipper:
Yeah, I agree with Shawna. This is like picking which kid you like best. So I think that I would have to wrap this up in kind of a big ball here, like making meatballs, right? For me, it’s a round challenge. So I would say being a nurse is hard. It’s crazy hard work. Right? It’s mentally challenging because you are problem solving, iterating, testing, innovating on your feet all day, every day. It’s physically hard because it’s truly a demanding profession. There’s a lot of moving people, patients and things and locating items and long hauls that were not designed by nurses, things of that nature. It’s emotionally challenging. Most of us still remember the first name or two of patients we’ve ever cared for that died. Those are things that never leave you. We’re human. And I think it’s also it’s a challenge. However, it’s an incredibly gratifying profession. Right. I mean, I feel very honored to have been able to spend time with patients and their families at the most difficult, painful, vulnerable time in their lives and sometimes the happiest times of their lives. However, I would say we should not take advantage of the gratification that people derive from being a nurse and instead lean more into making sure that we provide the supports, the tools, the resources for whatever it might be, whether it’s people for staffing or whether it’s technology-enabled staffing to act as a force multiplier. We have to continue to provide this amazing profession, the tools to be successful going forward because otherwise, we’re going to look at numbers and turnover that are something that are untenable for us. So we’re going to have to lean into how we can help this group be successful.

Saul Marquez:
I love that, Bonnie, and you and the team at Wambi are definitely doing that. So the challenge is a factor. The innovation is there. Let’s address those needs. Let’s take advantage of tapping into this amazing group of people. And so I’d love to hear an example of when you saw your nursing team provide a great solution to a problem.

Shawna Butler:
So Saul, I’m going to, first of all, say there are so many stories. So when you say, again, like a time and actually that has been the whole goal of the See You Now podcast is to help share the story, so rather than team that I’ve been on, I want to shine a light on some of the teams that I have had the privilege to talk with and learn about. There are three episodes that give really good examples. One of them we released during the holidays. It was about organ donation and transplants. Patti Niles, who’s the CEO of Southwest Transplant Alliance in Dallas, Texas, and Jenny Mcbride, she’s the CEO of Our Legacy that’s based in Orlando, Florida. As you can imagine, organ recovery and donation is this incredibly complicated, complex orchestration of what they refer to as the most difficult day of one person’s life and a miraculous day of another. They call at the intersection of grief and gratitude. And we have hundreds of thousands of people waiting on lists for organs and we don’t have enough organ donation. So their innovations have been looking at, first of all, policy. How do we look at circulatory death versus brain death? Are there ways that we can actually increase the amount of tissue and organs that are available? They’ve been looking and making sure that no tissue or organ is not successfully transplanted. And that required a lot of clinical innovation, of management of donors, of management of those recipients. They have been working with all sorts of data. They’ve been working with new teams. And Patti in Dallas, her team just opened this brand new recovery and transplant center where they’ve taken the entire model of how we actually do the recovery, which is send a team to one hospital, recover that organ, take it back and find that patient where it’s going to be the best match and do the transplant there. They’ve put that all in one center and particularly during COVID that has been this huge innovation and made so much more tissue available at a time when we’ve had to stop so many different types of surgeries. We’ve seen innovations on homeless shelters. We’ve seen innovation in human trafficking.

Shawna Butler:
There are so many incredible stories. But I just wanted to…sure, I could share one of mine. But I don’t think anything that I have done is nearly as impressive as these stories that we’ve been producing so that people can have a deeper understanding of the nature of these different challenges and just the remarkable work and success. I mean, that’s not to say that this isn’t a messy process. It is. It’s very messy. But what I’m always heartened by is the level of conviction and determination, and it is there interesting from a scientific perspective. But when you listen to the stories and why people are doing this work, they’re driven to alleviate human suffering, to make things better for people.

Saul Marquez:
I think this is fantastic. And I appreciate you sharing the stories. And I mentioned that at the beginning. But folks, you can listen to the See You Now podcast as well. They’ve got a ton of episodes with more examples. And that’s what today is about, right? That’s what this month of May is about. It’s recognizing nurses, recognizing nurse leadership and innovation. And so I love the work that you’ve done there Shawna with this podcast. It is inspiring.

Shawna Butler:
Thank you.

Saul Marquez:
Absolutely. And so, Bonnie, give us your take on this.

Dr. Bonnie Clipper:
You know, I would echo Shauna. I think that there are so many incredible untold stories out there from nurses, whether it’s the development or reprogramming of an existing tablet or device into kind of a one tap way to communicate with the nurse for people at a homeless shelter or whether it’s the new scheduling tool or an app that does check in or mindfulness work for nurses. There is so much incredible work being done out there. Those are the stories that we need to highlight.

Saul Marquez:
Agreed. Well, let’s make this an opportunity. So you heard a couple stories here, but you guys could check out the See You Now podcast for another 40-some story that are available.

Shawna Butler:
If you want, I’ll give you a teaser of another one that I think is… I have found profoundly shocking when I was doing the research on. It is about human trafficking. And I had no idea the scale. First of all, it’s very hard to even put a number on it. But estimates right now are somewhere like 40 million people are being trafficked. I was like 40 million people! And that’s just a guesstimate. And those are the ones that they can kind of document. But the more interesting statistic is 90 percent of those people who are being trafficked will show up in our health care system, which means health care and particularly nurses are in the best position to identify and more importantly, help, start the process of getting people out of those situations. And so the story on this one is about nurse Danielle Bestin and she really took this on as a personal mission. She’s working in emergency department, and she’s in a region of the country where they have a very, very, very high level of human trafficking because it tends to be around these large events, large sporting events. I will not name them, but that’s where a lot of this happens. And she happens to be working in a city where many of these sporting events go around or come into their city. So and the other statistic is that the vast majority of time it’s going to be an emergency department nurse who’s in the best position to do a screen and to figure out that this person is being human trafficked and then put together the resources. So she has put together policies. She’s put together a procedure, a protocol. She’s worked within all of the data records so that all of these screening tools are right there. And they have been incredibly successful in screening and identifying people who are being trafficked. And then she’s got systems all around the country who are saying, hey, can you help us? We didn’t know how to write a protocol. And so she’s helping to take that innovation and put it into all of these different places. But more importantly, customize it, because the questions that work in one region and the signs and the screening tool, it would be very different in a place that was hot, humid versus one that was cold or had large… I mean, it was fascinating to me listening to the variables that you would ask for. So huge, huge, huge, huge problem that wonders. And I was like, Danielle, is there not other people working on this? Have these protocols not ever been done? She’s like, no. So she’s working with all sorts of law enforcement agencies. That’s the nature of these stories. And I think oftentimes that people think of nurses was working on problems that are soft, problems that are simple, that are not major global issues. That’s just one example. And then what we’ve seen with the Pandemic and the Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins and seeing that team who all they do is think about keeping our national security and how that’s tied to health, security and all the data relationships that need to go to that. There are nurses on these multidisciplinary teams who are pulling all of these things in to figure out what do we do when there’s a chemical burn? How do we treat all those folks? How do we handle mass casualties? How do we take care of PPE and keep everybody safe in? These are really big, huge problems of mobilizing workforces and changing supply chains and notifying people through communication channels. And so I just don’t know that people really have an appreciation for sometimes when they wonder why is it taking so long? Why is this problem not fixed by now? When you start digging into these layers and you hear the operational and the clinical and the regulatory side of what’s involved with these problems and how nurses are solving them, I think it gives people a sense of awe and wonder and a deeper sense of not only appreciation. You mentioned that May is a month of recognition. I appreciate the recognition, but what I’m really hoping for is that there is an elevation and an understanding that when we don’t tap into the insights, expertise, and experience of nurses, the public is really missing out.

Saul Marquez:
Yeah, well said. And appreciation was a word that kept coming to me. Bonnie, You were about to comment.

Dr. Bonnie Clipper:
Yeah, because, you know, I think Shauna is right. There’s so much value that nurses bring that kind of average people truly wouldn’t be aware of. And for me, there’s just such an incredible way to highlight that. And I would love to see us magnify the impact of that. And one of the things that I often think about is how do we get more nurses into roles in Congress. Or at the state level. Because nurses have such an incredible scope and depth and breadth of knowledge. If we can actually help them in local elections, state elections, national elections, get them in positions where they’re learning their knowledge, their education and their influence can actually change policy. That’s a pretty powerful way to use these innovations at a broader level, at a bigger scale, that’s for sure.

Saul Marquez:
Well, both of you are inspiring me. And I know that you’re inspiring the listeners to, which is really great. And I want just to make that call to action here. If you feel inspired to act on it, don’t just feel it. Act on it by saying thank you, act on it by inviting a nurse to your table to have the discussion because it is critical that we do that. And Shawna, you mentioned, hey, you know, a lot of people don’t know this. And the more people know, the more people will reach out and ask for help. And you guys want to help.

Shawna Butler:
Absolutely. And, you know, it is really important when you are when you’re innovating, when you’re solving a problem. The different lived experience, the different perspective are super important, and so, yeah, we talk about that, making sure that we have a seat at the table, giving voice, I have a voice and oftentimes I have a seat at the table when I’m looking for a couple more things. I want to have a position of influence. I want to have a budget. I want to have accountability. I want to be set up for success. And those tables where and the executive decision-making bodies, I think it’s really important to ask who isn’t here? And then the second part is why are they not here? And oftentimes the people who were trying to solve the problem for that’s not a really dignified way to do that. I mean, we need to be solving it with them. We need to have humility. And oftentimes when we ask that question, why are those people not here? Oftentimes it is because we overlooked them. We underestimated them. We didn’t think that this was meaningful to them. They didn’t feel welcome. And so as much as we talk about making sure that you have that person in the table, that there is diverse point of views, a deeper question is why haven’t they been here and start looking at that question. And then when we get them here, make sure that it’s not just a token. Oh, yeah, we have our nurse. Oh, yeah, we have our pharmacist. Oh, yeah. We have our black person. Whatever the diversity need might be, I worry that we’re not going deep enough to ask what’s been keeping people from this.

Saul Marquez:
Great points. And it’s key. Don’t do it just to check a box. There’s truly value here. You just have to believe.

Dr. Bonnie Clipper:
And I would push on that too. I would say have the courage. And sometimes you have to be a little fearless. You know, it’s OK to fail. It’s OK to fall and skin your knees. But push yourself into the situation to offer your insight, your knowledge, your influence, and use your courage.

Shawna Butler:
Yeah, I was going to say the concept of being fearless. I have a lot of fear. I own that. But I oftentimes can put the fear aside and I can be courageous doing things that I’m afraid of.

Saul Marquez:
Yeah, that’s so important. Well, what are you both most excited about today?

Dr. Bonnie Clipper:
I think for me, I am actually excited that we are cranking out as many COVID vaccinations as we are. And I see the opportunity to continue to get more and more and more of those under our belt.

Saul Marquez:
That is exciting.

Shawna Butler:
Yeah, it ss. I think what gives me the most hope, I don’t think that I’m feeling excited yet, but I’ll tell you, it gives me the most hope is our youth. When I take a look at them and I won’t even call them students. These are scholars that are entering our health professions. They are coming in with a set of skills, with an attitude, with a drive, with an intention to solve some of our biggest problems. They are willing to ask really tough questions. They are asking people in power to be answerable to the power that has been entrusted to them. I think that that is what gives me really great hope. And I’m thinking, I mean, the vision that I have in my head at the moment is Amanda Gorman, when she delivered that incredible piece of poetry at President Biden’s inauguration and seeing seeing so many other youth leaders who are boldly, bravely, intelligently taking on big, huge challenges and saying, we can do this, we can fix this. And I think that that’s what gives me hope. I guess that’s where I’m excited.

Saul Marquez:
Thank you, Shawna. Yeah, it’s definitely exciting to see our youth and their potential and what they’re doing. It is. It is. And in so many fields, but especially in health care, with everything that happened in 2020, how we’re recovering. I’m very proud of the work that has been done. Well, we are here and I truly have enjoyed both of your thoughts and your company. Why don’t you, Bonnie and Shawna, leave us with a closing thought and then the best place for the listeners could get in touch with you and learn more about you and the work that you guys are up to.

Dr. Bonnie Clipper:
Yeah, that’s great. You know, I think my parting thoughts, it’s hard to sum all that up and distill it into a little nutshell here, but I think basically there is such an incredibly strong reason to be optimistic going forward, whether it’s the coronavirus, whether it’s the changes that I think are on the horizon for us in regards to health equity, whether it’s around education, there is a whole lot going on in the world that is reason to be very, very positive and encourage. And I think is Shawna highlighted a few minutes ago, young people in general are really stepping up and have so much to contribute to this conversation. So I’m excited about what the future brings for us. I’m excited about what we all are going to do together. I think that looks really cool in regards to getting in touch with. I am available on LinkedIn and I look forward to people reaching out and communicating with them that way.

Saul Marquez:
Thank you, Bonnie. I really appreciate that. Shawna?

Dr. Bonnie Clipper:
So you can find me on LinkedIn, Twitter very easily. ShawnaButlerRN is my Twitter handle. And then, of course, the SeeYouNowpodcast.com website. But really, wherever you listen to catch your podcasts, that’s the best place I’d like that. The thought of the caring people on a journey, being a voice of comfort, whispering in somebody’s ear and having a dialogue with them. So that’s a good place to find me. And I think just that that last that thought is that nurses really are from the standpoint of how are we going to we get so excited about breakthroughs. We get so excited about the drama. But really the most exciting thing is when people have help, when they’re not ill, when they’re not disabled when they have dignity and inclusion and belonging. And so when we talk about innovating for help, if you have a mission or a mandate that includes help and a beautiful human experience, you need nurses. And we are there. So many of us were everywhere. We do so many different things and we are ready and eager to be a part of solutions. So please do not hesitate to reach out to make sure that you’re including us and also to the nurses who are listening. Don’t stand by. This is not a time to be sitting on the sidelines or waiting for permission. This is that moment to take all of those tools that have been made to be used off the shelf, find the problem that you know, that you’re frustrated about and the technology that you’re excited by and find the overlap of those to and just start innovating.

Saul Marquez:
Love it. Thank you, Shawna. And now is the time and take action, everyone. You know, I think really the best thing you could do if you got inspired by Bonnie and Shawna today to include nurses as part of what you do to acknowledge, to recognize they’re making a huge contribution and they can make an even bigger one if we embrace their full potential. Take action and do something about it today as a result of this podcast. And so Bonnie, Shawna, really want to just thank you both and really grateful that we were able to do this today.

Dr. Bonnie Clipper:
Absolutely, it’s been a pleasure.

Shawna Butler:
Yeah, Saul. Thank you so much. I was going to say I really appreciate all the contributions that you’re making. I love listening and discovering all of these new ways that people are addressing different problems. Who knew how much transportation was a health care issue. So I was very grateful for all of the things that you’re bringing to the innovation landscape as well.

Saul Marquez:
Thank you both.

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 OutcomesRocketHealth/sonsiel. That’s outcomesrockethealth/sonsiel.

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