5.8K
Downloads
50
Episodes
Inside the halls of American hospitals, millions of people find comfort, healing, and support. But for many doctors and nurses, this couldn’t be further from the truth. This podcast will dive into the shadows of American healthcare to investigate and uncover the abuse, control, and political power plays that leave the very people responsible for our nation’s health, broken and battered. We’re sharing stories of professionals in medicine that have experienced horrendous treatment at the hands of a broken system that does nothing to stop the trauma. As the Association of American Medical Colleges states, “Long before the #MeToo movement, women in medicine have instinctively banded together to counter a culture that too often tolerated harassment.” From systemic trauma to abuse of power to the unspoken rules of cover-ups and corruption, Mandy Irby and HeHe will take you to the darkest corners of healthcare in America so you can have an inside look at bringing humanity back to medicine!
Episodes
Friday Feb 04, 2022
Friday Feb 04, 2022
This week, Hehe and Mandy get into travel nursing with Nurse Sibyl! She shares her travel experiences on social media, but we had some meaty questions for her about what it’s really like.
Plus, Sibyl gives us her take on how to have the best travel nurse experience no matter how toxic or unpleasant the hosting unit is. This is advice you can implement now, no matter what kind of nursing you’re in!
Stick around for the lightening round at the end. She gives some awesome tips for costs associated with traveling that she didn’t realize existed before she left her staff unit.
Some questions we get to ask her in this week’s podcast treat:
- How and why did you get into travel nursing?
- How do you manage new relationships and unit cultures so frequently?
- How is she treated as a traveler? Do staff nurses resent travel nurses?
- Freedom - is that a benefit of travel nursing?
Find her here: TikTok @sibsrn
Instagram: @sybilstephania
Friday Jan 21, 2022
Friday Jan 21, 2022
When you are in a healthcare system - language is powerful. HeHe and Mandy dive into the importance of language: things that are said to patients, what is said around patients in the room, not correctly addressing someone by their choice of pronouns, etc.
Join us as we discuss this timely topic and how it pertains to the health and safety of patients and workers within the health care system. It's tough to vent our feelings and process an event but also balance a presence and therapeutic relationship with our patients.
In this episode, we discuss some tips and tricks for using language and transparency to center the patient and deflect a pushy colleague.
If you're in L&D, check out www.traumainformedbirthnurse.com for trauma-informed care training from over 15 educators and experts plus Live online support by a trauma therapist.
As always, you can follow along with us on Instagram at: @pulsecheck.podcast
Friday Jan 07, 2022
Friday Jan 07, 2022
Links:
OB violence map: here
ANA code of ethics: https://www.nursingworld.org/practice-policy/nursing-excellence/ethics/code-of-ethics-for-nurses/coe-view-only/
OSHA complaint: https://www.nursingworld.org/~49c45e/globalassets/practiceandpolicy/work-environment/health--safety/osha-complaint-fact-sheet-20190530.pdf
Medical board by state: https://birthmonopoly.com/find-your-state-board/
Birthxapp.com : BirthX is a crowd-sourced review platform to read and write reviews on your childbirth experience with your healthcare provider.
Steps to report: https://birthmonopoly.com/how-to-file-a-complaint-for-mistreatment-in-birth-or-obstetric-violence/
How to file a complaint as a consumer:
- Write down your story as soon as possible— a stream of consciousness— if you can record it on video or voice recording is even better as it capture the true thoughts without the hindrance of having to write it down
- Think about the scope of the complaint—was this an ongoing issue or a one time offense?
- Was it an overall safety concern or one incident/person?
- Is this a system issue or specific to your situation?
- Provide them with feedback as to how they can improve to avoid this in the future.
Research your hospital's process for reporting complaints. There is usually a “patient advocacy’ or ‘patient relations’ department that handles all complaints. Making sure your complaint gets into the right hands is crucial. If it lands in the wrong inbox, there will be no forward progress because they won’t be able to do anything about it. DO NOT FILE YET! Obtain your medical records and operative reports Report to your states medical board: https://www.fsmb.org/contact-a-state-medical-board/ File a report with the Joint Commission (manage patient safety concerns): https://apps.jointcommission.org/QMSInternet/IncidentEntry.aspx?_ga=2.33659361.1333699656.1546967936-996439568.1546967936
- If you need to edit your complaint, do so here: https://apps.jointcommission.org/QMSInternet/IncidentUpdate.aspx?_ga=2.33659361.1333699656.1546967936-996439568.1546967936
- Their priority is patient safety so coercive care, abusive providers, and failure to gain consent is very important to them and will be investigated.
Visit https://mypatientrights.org/file-a-complaint/ and file a complaint If you are a POC and/or your provider is a person of color, visit BirthXapp.com and file a complaint If this was a OBGYN or midwife (reproductive health providers), report to the Birth Monopoly Map: https://birthmonopoly.com/obstetric-violence/ File with your state’s health dept—it’ll vary state by state Now file with your hospital
Steps to file a complaint as a healthcare employee:
- Always be working on your “other options” so you never feel stuck or required to stay in a certain job
- Know your responsibility within your license to report unsafe behavior or abusive employees
- Write your story ASAP, because trauma can affect your memory of it. Don’t tie identifying patient info to the story. This quick story could be emailed to your superior, if appropriate, as a placeholder for a discussion about it in the future.
- Report to your employer if appropriate, they may ask for identifying pt info. These are often not anonymous.
- Report to the state board (state board of medicine or nursing), if appropriate, they may ask for identifying pt info, too
- You may want to report to the state Department of Health. They receive complaints of healthcare practitioners who may have violated a regulation or law, and complaints can often be anonymous, also.
- When safety and health standards are violated, you may consider exercising your right to file a complaint with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) within the U.S. Department of Labor. If it’s not safe to do your job, it’s impossible to provide high-quality healthcare.
- The Joint Commission - you may file a complaint here if it involves a patient safety concern or event. You may file anonymously here if you wish.
- Go public with that shit! - Just keep off the patient identifying info (and provider identifying if you’ll be connected with the report and still employed at that same location. See next step). Options for perinatal healthcare: birthxapp, irth app, birth monopoly obstetric violence map.
Friday Dec 10, 2021
Friday Dec 10, 2021
Strike Breakers
The ethics, the morals, the emotions, and the dangers!! When big health systems go on strike, there is guaranteed to be a mob of angry nurses behind it. Nurses who take on travel roles and fill positions to help the system stay afloat are doing so at the expense of the striking nurses! Mandy and HeHe discuss the nitty gritty details of nursing strikes, union negations and the power of numbers!
Connect with us on @pulsecheck.podcast
Friday Nov 19, 2021
Friday Nov 19, 2021
Healthcare, technology, and science is changing so fast, these days, it’s no surprise that professionals can easily be left behind and out of touch if you’re not constantly learning in your career. In this Episode, HeHe and Mandy share a few stories of how “I’ve been a nurse for 30 years” doesn’t mean what it used to in healthcare or nursing culture.
We’ll also discuss a new program that labor and delivery nurses can take advantage of if you’re looking to level-up your nursing care. Yes, it’s possible to practice in a way that’s aligned with your values inside a hospital system, but it takes some trauma-informed care training, specifically from other nurses.
Trauma-Informed Birth Nurse Program: join the next cohort today!
Friday Oct 22, 2021
Friday Oct 15, 2021
Friday Oct 15, 2021
Amy, an OB nurse whose patient was in the ICU, bravely shares her story about an earth shattering event in her nursing career that caused her traumatic stress and panic attacks. She details how this event affected her day-to-day work life, here career, and how she navigated the very limited support she received from her employer to begin to work through her trauma, heal, and courageously how she’s helping other nurses do the same.
There are some amazing and practical nuggets of info in this episode that can benefit every single healthcare professional. Amy is teaching about trauma bandaids and what we can do as professionals when our usual tools for coping fail (and our employers fail to support our mental health.)
You can follow along with Amy:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/redstarnurses/
Website: https://redstarnurse.com/
Thursday Oct 07, 2021
Thursday Oct 07, 2021
Mandy and HeHe sit down and interview Alexis Commodore, founder of Birth X. Alexis is a Certified Pediatric Emergency Nurse and Birth Doula. Birth X is a platform for birthing people to read and write reviews of their childbirth experience with their healthcare provider. Come along with us as Alexis vulnerably shares about her personal and professional experiences with racial biases in the health care system that pushed her to walk away from the bedside.
Follow along with Alexis:
@birthxapp on Instagram
Friday Oct 01, 2021
Friday Oct 01, 2021
This shift in perspective is a story you don’t want to miss. Meet Ima, a new grad and ... COVID charge nurse! Yeah, she’s both, and she’s ready to tell us what happened last year and some huge perspective shifts and troubling realizations about healthcare. This episode might be a tough one for you if you’re still working on the “front lines” of this Delta surge as it includes specific details of what it’s like for healthcare professionals and patients inside the COVID ICUs.
If you were in healthcare in 2020 or 2021, we urge you to find crucial, life-saving mental health care that you deserve.
https://thriveworks.com/