Most of us in healthcare are warm, caring people who are committed to keeping our patients safe and doing. No harm, but there are some among us who do the unthinkable and betray our noble profession. On this podcast, we like to shine a light on the good and the bad. Each week I'll be joined by another healthcare professional, and together we'll dive into these stories while chatting about nursing and healthcare along the way. I'm Tina, a registered nurse, and this is Good Nurse Bad Nurse.
Hey everybody, this is Tina again with Good Nurse Bad Nurse. Welcome back to another week, another episode of Good Nurse Bad Nurse. You guys, if you haven't heard this before, yes, it's true crime. I know you guys come across my podcast and you're like, oh, good a true crime podcast, and then when you hear us going on and on about nursing stuff, you kinda get mad at me a little bit.
I'm just gonna tell you right now, yes, it's, we definitely do a true crime story, but we use it to talk about some nursing stuff and healthcare stuff. So just to warn you right up front. Having said that, I do have a really good show planned for you. But before I get started, I wanna talk, I wanna say just like, super fast, a little moment of clarification for someone. So someone gave me a wonderful five star review, which I really appreciate it.
But they put in their comment that at some point I mentioned LPNs and apparently they said that I didn't refer to them as nurses. So, I just want to say, first of all, thank you so much for taking the time to give me a review. Thank you so much for being positive about it and telling me that you enjoy the podcast and you're still listening.
So many times when I say the wrong thing, people, they'll literally like, send me an email like, so mad at me and then like, I'm never gonna listen to you again. But number two, I wanna say this. If I have ever said anything like that, please forgive me. I worked alongside LPNs when I was a travel nurse at this little hospital in Livingston, Tennessee. And I've said this before, and I realize that from episode to episode, it can be different what I say.
And I also realize this is very spontaneous. And I say, I just sometimes just run off at the mouth and who knows how things come out and things do come out sometimes the way it's not intended. I worked alongside licensed practical nurses. They are absolutely nurses and they did the exact same job I was doing as a registered nurse.
I handed off my patients that I took care of, I worked in the ICU there, and then they would float me sometimes to the med-surg floor and I would have four or five patients on that floor and an LPN would come along and I would hand off all of my patients. There was never a time when someone was like this LPN can't take this patient for this reason. No, they took all of the patients. Every now and then there would be one little thing maybe that they would have to get another nurse to sign off on.
That is no different than when I worked in the CVICU and someone could not take a patient who had not been signed off on. Balloon pump education, for example, or, I don't know, just anything. There, if you haven't been educated on something or signed off on something, then you shouldn't be taking those patients. And for LPNs, they have a certain set of criteria, things that they have been educated on.
But let me just tell you, it's almost everything that we do and I'm just telling you right now, there is almost no difference. It is so, it's so little that it's not even worth talking about. The main difference between LPNs and RNs, I will tell you right now, is the pay. And it's huge. It's drastic, it's ridiculous 'cause they're doing the exact same job, exact same job.
And I worked at two different hospitals where this was the case where LPNs were taking care of the same exact stinkin' patients. They would even float the LPNs into the intensive care unit and somehow got away with that, even though they said that they weren't supposed to be in there. I, it's just, it's unbelievable, you know, the things that sometimes hospitals do and get away with.
And for me, the biggest injustice of all is the fact that they hire LPNs, licensed practical nurses, to do the exact same job as registered nurses and then will pay them so much less. So much less. It's ridiculous. So I just, my gosh, if I said anything like that, which obviously I must have said something that came across that way, please forgive me and know that absolutely, that is not what I believe. That is absolutely not what I believe. LPNs are nurses.
Now there are some LPNs that will go back and get their registered nurse degree. They will get, they go that extra step. Just like I was an associate degree nurse and I got my bachelor's degree. Okay, so associate degree nurses are nurses. They're registered nurses. We are all nurses. Anyway, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to get on a rant. It's just that when I saw that, I was so, it bothered me so much that whatever I said came across that way.
'Cause let me just tell you, I absolutely do not believe that. LPNs are amazing nurses and I've learned a lot from them. They have a lot to offer and they are totally disrespected and deserve so much more respect and pay than they get. So I'm gonna stop there because I could go on and on and on about this just because it's so upsetting. But anyway, I guess we could, need to get started with this show. And I want to introduce you guys to two nurses that I'm so excited about meeting.
I just met them. I got an email from them. They are starting a podcast, already have started a podcast. They're emergency room nurses. I bowed down to you guys. It's, I was so, Nashia and Kate of the brand spanking new podcast National Nurses. It is offered exclusively on Audible. Welcome to Good Nurse Bad Nurse.
Thank you. It's actually National Emergency Tina. Just to, it's okay.
Gosh, I, you guys, I swear I talked to them for 10 minutes about the name of this podcast and I still said it wrong.
I like National Nurses, though. We sound like we're wearing superhero capes flying over the country.
They have to be white. They have to be white. And they come off of our caps.
Yeah, with a white hat.
Which is what we're doing. I love that you were talking about LPNs, though. Like LPNs are amazing. At one of my many jobs, as Kate loves to say, I work with LPNs and they, there is no difference besides the pay. They've found and tipped me off to so many patient care issues or patient care conditions that I would've never known if they didn't see and assess it first. That's why it kills me when it says they don't assess because I'm like, their assessment brings on my assessment.
So if they don't assess, like stop it already. So, I mean I've worked with some amazing LPNs who have gotten me through some of the roughest shifts ever. So my hat's off to them, whether they choose to go back for their RN or not. You are amazing and you keep doing the good work that you do and don't let anyone tell you you're not a nurse.
Oh yes, of course they're nurses.
Okay, I digress. Soap box over.
So when, whenever we get into the "Good Nurse" portion, of course we're gonna, we have our true crime story that we're gonna get into here in just a minute. But when we get into the "Good Nurse" story, you guys, please stick around. I always have to chastise you, my listeners a little bit, smack 'em on the hand, because they will come here and they will listen to the true crime story and then they will bail on me. Not all of them do that.
And some of them will send me emails and go, I always listen to the, so I'm just teasing you guys.
Oh my God, you know, I thought you were talking to us. Like when we get to the "Good Nurse" story, please. I'm like, oh, I wanna hear the "Good Nurse" story. That's what I'm here for.
Who is this?
That's what I'm here for.
Let tell you, National Emergency, this podcast that Nashia and Kate are doing, I am so excited about when we get into the "Good Nurse" segment, we'll talk about what this podcast is gonna be like and why they're starting the podcast. So I can't wait to get into that. They are the good nurses for the "Good Nurse" segment, so I always love that. I love having my good nurses on. This is fun. Did you know that you don't have to go all across the country to be a travel nurse?
You certainly can, but you don't have to. I literally took an assignment that's an hour and a half away from my house, and I love it. I can stay in a hotel room if I want, or I can drive back home. So it's the best of both worlds for me. For my next assignment, we're gonna get a cabin in the mountains that's about two hours from our house, so it'll really be like a little getaway. Also, one of my really good friends is going with me so we can share expenses.
You guys, even if you're just a little curious about travel nursing, go to trustedhealth.com/goodnurse and fill out a profile so you can see what kind of jobs are out there and what they pay. Go to trustedhealth.com/goodnurse and fill out a profile. So I guess we can get started with this "Bad Nurse" story. Oh my gosh. I'll just warn you guys right now. It is, this is a disturbing story. The, oh my gosh, it's disturbing on so many levels.
It is, I don't even wanna say it's a cautionary tale because I don't know what in the world we really could learn from it because it is so incredibly unbelievable what happened here. And I don't, I really don't know what could have been done differently to avoid it because I don't know, I don't know what all went into this. But it is a very tragic story. I will kind of warn you right up front. It happened in Australia, and I have a lot of Australia listeners.
People will sometimes send me messages and I can see from my demographics that there are lots of people, lots and lots of people that listen to this podcast from Australia. So when I saw this story from way down there, I was excited to get to do it. So this is the story of Walter Ciaran Marsh. At the age of 51, Marsh was a nurse and a former US Marine. He was from the US even though he was living in Australia. He and his wife Samantha, she was a Vietnam native.
They were residing in Sydney, Australia on 457 visas. Marsh worked as a nurse at Royal North Shore Hospital. Life for the couple would take a drastic turn when Marsh believed that their eligibility to remain in the country was threatened.
Now, I will tell you, because I have really, really like some of my best, absolute best friends in the whole world moved to Australia for a year because one of them, their job took them over there and it is not easy to just based on all the things that I learned from them, it's not easy to get into a Australia on a visa that will, to get residency and to even get a visa that will allow you to work because one of them was there on their job, but the other one could not.
I kind of get it because they were probably getting to a point where they were gonna have to leave. You can't just stay if your visa's running out. Right? So I'm sure he was sort of feeling a little bit desperate. So meanwhile, Michelle Beets was 57 and she was a nursing manager in the emergency department of Royal North Shore Hospital. She was his supervisor and he reportedly did not agree with her management style. So...
Oh man.
Yeah. This is frustrating. I get, already. It's just, it'll start, it'll make your blood boil. Let me just tell you, when you hear, you know, all of the things that happened in the way that, you know, just because somebody doesn't like the way you decided, you know, to manage them, which, I don't know. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say it probably had something to do with the fact that she was a female and he was a male. But I'm just saying it, that happens a lot in these stories.
I just feel like the, if there's one person who doesn't like the management style, and then you hear about, you know, as we did research on this, like all the accolades for this woman, for Michelle Beets, she was a really, really well-liked manager. She was a liked manager by 99% of the staff. And so this guy didn't like her management style. So who's the problem?
Right.
Right.
Yes, exactly. And that is no easy feat to have that kind of relationship with your, with the people that you're having to manage. You know? The fact that they respect you enough to really, to be able to be under you and yet, you know, respect you and like you as a manager. I've had managers that I've liked and that I've thought, please don't leave 'cause you know, you never know who they're gonna get replaced with.
And I've had managers that... usually if the manager, if I'm not crazy about their management styles, because they're a little too laissez-faire for my taste, you know, like people would be a little more hands on.
I think we each have managers on each end of the spectrum where we were like, oh my God. I love you as a person. Please don't ever leave me. And then other people you were like, so today's not your last day? You don't want it to be your last day?
So you like your job? Right? I mean, everybody said that, whether you're a nurse or who, whatever you do, I mean, there's just, you're not gonna always kind of get along with everyone or agree with everyone. I feel like the, my personality, just the way I tend to do my work, usually, no matter what, where I've ever worked, I just sort of put my head down and just do my work. I don't really get involved in a lot of the politics and stuff.
I don't really just, if anything, I tend to Pollyanna-ish everything, just because I don't feel like negativity belongs necessarily right there in the workspace. That is my belief. I don't believe you should be sitting there at the nurse's station bad talking the hospital, administration. Like that is not the place for that. That's my belief. So I tend to be like, put my head down, just do my job.
See, and when I put my head down to try to just mind my business, everyone's like, are you okay? Is something wrong? Because my personality's just like--
What's wrong with Nashia?
I'm here.
I'm here and I'm ready, ready to rumble. So, the thing is the, he was on a contract, and it was up to her whether or not this contract was going to be renewed, and she elected not to renew his 12-month nursing contract. And this sent him off. He went into a rage. He tried to get employment in that same area in order to retain his visa, but he was unsuccessful in getting another job.
And he started to suspect, he was kind of paranoid, and he thought that she was deliberately giving bad references and that was keeping him from getting another job.
But as a manager, you don't even have to give a bad reference and say, this person is so terrible. There's a key question that they ask you and they say, would you rehire this person? Or if given the opportunity to work with them again, would you rehire them? And it's yes or no. And the yes or no, like takes you down a totally different pathway as a prospective employer. So if I say yes, you're like, oh, that's great. Thank you for your reference, blah, blah, blah.
If I say no, you still say, that's great. Thank you for your reference. But you're like, so let's dig a little deeper. Why wouldn't they work with them again? But not with that particular manager. So she didn't have to say anything, just we didn't renew his contract.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. And different hospitals have different policies. Some hospitals will not even allow the person to say the reference, the person that's kind of being the reference to say anything other than the date they were hired and the day that they were let go. Like nothing else. Now I think that there are a lot of hospitals that will tell the start date and the end date, and they will allow them to say whether or not they're re-hireable.
But a lot of hospitals, and of course I know this is in Australia, but I know a lot of hospitals they will not go any further than that. As far as, you know, getting into any details as to why they were let go or why didn't you renew the contract? I mean, the fact that he was on a 12-month contract and it wasn't extended kind of speaks volumes.
Yes. Especially in this world, as we, even in Australia, we know there's nursing shortages everywhere. So if you get a good person and you've had 12 months, I would say is a good amount of time to assess if you can keep that person, and even people that you have a personality difficulty with, a good manager doesn't care so much about that. If it's a great nurse, you're like, all right, this person's a pain in my ass, but you know, I need this nurse.
And they're a great nurse, they're great with patients, they're great with their coworkers, whatever it is. And they'll say, I'll renew because I need this nurse. So the guy, you know, I really, I would love to read his evaluations.
Oh man.
I can't imagine. I'm sure he was problematic, but whatever. I'm, that's hearsay. I'm just imagining.
Exactly. And the way that he handled this whole situation just kind of tells you if this is how he handles this situation, how did he handle any sort of issue between him and a potential patient between him and family members, between him and coworkers?
What, who knows how he would've, there's so many times in our job working at the bedside, we are in very stressful situations, having to work with other colleagues, other nurses, physicians, all kinds of different people who can, you can kind of get rubbed the wrong way by their personalities, right? And if you don't know how to handle the situations, if you can't handle yourself well, you know, patients come in there and they're frustrated. Family members come in there and they're frustrated.
If you don't know how to deescalate as opposed to doing things to escalate the problem, that's probably not someone you're going to want to stick around. And I mean, to me, the fact that he handled all of this in this way...
Seems like it was his manner.
Speaks volumes.
This was his way.
Mm-hmm. Well, he became obsessed with revenge. And over the course of a few months, he devised a plan to basically eliminate the perceived threat in his livelihood. He made several surreptitious visits to his former employer's home. That is so creepy to think about. He learned her routine. He followed her. He knew when she returned home. He would call her landline from various payphones in the area so that he could tell when she, when she came home and he, oh, it's absolutely stalking.
He practiced a very stealthy throat-cutting technique on his wife.
Ok.
Blows. My. Mind.
I know.
On a random Tuesday night, it's like, babe, let me come and practice cutting your throat. Like that's not a flag. Not even a red flag. That's like a blaring house fire. Like, I don't understand.
Well, you can imagine any man who puts this level of his ego and his everything into this kind of stalking and this planning, this crime and everything, I'm sure he was a really horrible, controlling partner. There's just gotta be no question. And her situation depended on his situation too, I think. Right? The wife?
Yes, definitely. For sure. I know they were in, she was in a vulnerable situation, but he even sent his brother-in-law, okay, her brother, to a local thrift store to pick out dark clothing. Okay. I mean, you're practicing slitting someone's throat and then you're like, go to the thrift, this thrift store and buy, you know, every, all the stuff in black. I don't know, it just seems like--
Obvi.
Mm-hmm. So after carefully devising his plan, he was ready to confront Michelle. On the night of April 27th in 2010, he broke a light sensor at her home and waited in the dark wearing, uh, balacl-- Oh my God.
Balaclava.
You guys, I Googled how to say this.
I always wanna say baklava, which is the dessert, but it's balaclava.
I always screw this word up. So you are in good company because...
It's so frustrating 'cause I Googled it. It's literally still up on my, it's literally-- I like, I'm so mad at myself right now. Oh, dang it. How about this?
There you go.
Ski mask.
Love a ski mask.
Because that's what it is. I had never seen that word before, ever. I was like, what is that? And I looked it up and I'm like, why wouldn't you, why can't we just say ski mask? Why say balaclava? 'Cause they wanna mess with me. I feel like there's, everybody's trying mess with me. So basically he was wearing a ski mask, like one of, and this particular type of ski mask, it covers, it can be in different varieties, but basically it goes all the way around the head.
Like it covers the head, everything but the face. And it can cover, it can go up over your mouth, over your nose to where you can only see your eyes and, or only see your nose, you know, or your whole face. Like, so that's the kind of, sort of like ski mask it is. It's not one with like the eyes cut out, you know, it's literally like the whole face is kind of out. But you can use that, the bottom part of it, to cover up any portion of your face that you want to, is kinda the way it works.
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Basically, you know, he spent a lot of time watching her, following her, doing all this stuff to learn her routine and practicing what he was gonna do, and then she changed her routine that day that he went to approach her, and she backed into her driveway instead of pulling in straight, you know, forward. And so that forced him to have to face her head on instead of coming up from behind her as he had planned.
He promised her that he would not hurt her if she would stop screaming, but his promises were empty, obviously, because he proceeded to cut her throat and subsequently stabbed her eight times in the chest before fleeing, and he left her for dead on her veranda at her Chatswood home. Her neighbors were out walking their dog. They heard that scream, you know, when she initially screamed, they heard her, but they rushed to her aid.
I think one of them tried to approach him and he, you know, he left. But man, that's so scary. I mean, you know, you hear something like this going on and for those people to run toward the situation, I just commend them. I mean, I think there's not a whole lot of people who would do that. Who would, you know...
Well not in the United States because you'd be pretty sure that person would shoot you to death. But Australia has pretty strict gun laws, so you know.
You're not as afraid maybe of a gun--
Hand-to-hand combat as opposed to someone just shoot you from 20 feet away.
And maybe not, you know, not even stopping to think of the fact that this man is a US Marine and skilled in hand-to-hand combat.
He cut her throat and then stabbed her eight times. Like that level of rage. You had that level of savagery for your manager? Like--
For what?
You don't even have a real personal connection with them. You work with them. And that's the end of the story. I don't understand how it gets that drastic. That's how you know, there had to be, this had to be who he was as a person.
Yeah, definitely.
Yeah, exactly. It's in these stories, you know, it's, you always wanna try to make sense of it. How does this make any sense? How in the world would someone think they're gonna get away with this? And the thing is that people that are in this state, they are not thinking rationally. They don't think the way we do, they're not really thinking too far into the future.
Even if he thought he was planning all this out, and I say this all the time too on this podcast, when you might think that you are so smart and you're gonna be able to plan the perfect crime and you think you've got the whole thing planned out, all the details. Once you get into the actual act of whatever it is you're trying to carry out, let me just tell you, I've been doing this podcast for five years now. I've done so many of these stories.
All of these people have been caught doing this stuff, obviously. All the people that get caught doing this stuff, a lot of them had these intricate plans. They really thought about it before they did it. When you start doing something like this, your adrenaline takes over and you forget stuff.
You missed steps.
You run off, you leave evidence. You miss steps. Exactly.
I always tell people, if you've never read, Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky, it's thick. You know, it's not an easy read, but once you get into it, it is so incredible and it actually just totally, you know, dissects that criminal mind. And you know, this guy does think he's gonna get away with something and he thinks he's got every base covered.
And you just watch him unravel himself because, like you said, Tina, you can't, once you're in that, you've crossed that line, like there's no going back. There are no regular rules and everything about you that's weak is gonna expose you, your arrogance, your blind side, whatever it is, like it's, you're doomed.
It has to, because you don't, you stepped outside of your humanity.
Yes.
So you don't have the same thought process as a rationally thinking human being.
Yes. Exactly, and where you have to draw the line is way back, way back before you know, you at the moment that you start feeling these hostile feelings toward a person as you know, your manager or whoever it is, that's where you have to make the decision of whether to go forward with those feelings.
Before you go home and start your stalking plan and start your nightly ritual of throat-cutting practice like, you have to think about it. And say, do these things match up? Oh, they don't? Okay, great.
Yeah. And what do you, and does the toxic poison that is living inside of you, that is all that bitterness, just all that anger, the resentment that's there, I don't care if it's justified. Who cares? Who cares? Why, you're gonna literally destroy your entire, your life and everybody around you, all of the people connected to you, you're gonna basically, that person, they hurt you even worse.
Like they're, whatever they did to you initially is gonna pale in comparison to the damage that you're gonna do to yourself by allowing that bitterness--
To ripple-effect.
To cause you to murder them.
That's right. To the ripple effect that follows that one action.
Yeah. Just letting it live in your heart like that. Just, just purge it, you know, get it out, get it out of there. Do not allow them that real estate inside.
Yeah. But that perseveration that he obviously had, and that it seems like excitement as it ramped up to the point where now to me, a smart Marine, and I've never been in the military, but I'm a trained ER nurse, the smart person knows that when the plant, when the, when the shit happens, where she backs into the driveway, abort, abort, abort. This isn't going the way you planned in this way. Right?
Mm-hmm.
Back off, like it's, you're probably gonna make a huge mistake, which clearly he did. He was, the neighbors knew, I mean, he, it was not this thing that he had imagined at all. So he's not in his right mind. He's just so ego-connected to this clearly.
Yes, exactly. And, you know, like 40 minutes later after this happened, he met up with his wife. We talked about how, you know, all of the things that he had been doing with his wife and her brother, he confessed to her that he, quote, "did it" and that, quote, "there would be no more bad references." And that's what he said to her. Witnesses were able to identify Marsh as the murderer, but prosecutors didn't have a weapon.
And that, you know, that always bothers-- They feel like it's important to juries, to, they want to, to see the murder weapon. So they were, however, able to obtain CCTV footage, showing Marsh walking through Chatswood Shopping Center, and it showed him disposing of something in a bin on the day of the murder, and then throwing away a distinctive, dark-colored backpack the day after. So in the absence of a murder weapon, this was the hard and fast evidence that the prosecution needed.
So he reportedly told his wife that he was part of a secret Irish organization known as The Service, which had given him permission to kill, quote, "a certain someone." This is what he told his wife. So according to Samantha Marsh, if there was anyone he didn't like or that needed to be removed, he would need to ask the organization before he proceeded with it. And this is what he told her. He also told his friends--
This is just a lot.
He also told his friends and members, mm-hmm, and this kills me too, members of the Mormon church about this whole fictitious service and told them he was supposedly taking the rap for the murder of Michelle because he was dying of cancer and had been promised a payout for his wife.
So we were talking about this, right? Because there was an article written by a journalist in one of the daily papers in Sydney, Australia. And he, Marsh contacted this journalist and proceeded to tell them like a similar story, but he was saying that he needed a payout because his wife wanted to go to, back home to Vietnam and start a business.
So if he killed Michelle Beets, that it was going to be a payout that he was gonna give his wife because he was dying of cancer and he did it from money. He needed the money, is what he kept saying. That he wasn't like that type of person, but he, it was, he was desperate and desperate people do desperate things, is what he told this guy. Like the journalist said that he even had tears.
He had lots of different--
Like, welled up with tears when he was telling the story and I'm like, that is sociopathic in nature.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. And again, trying to come up with a story that he thinks is in some way plausible, that the rest of us would go, oh, and have some sympathy. And it's like, no sir, if I, when I'm desperate, 'cause I can't get a job, I work on myself and I go, you know, I go ask a friend, like, what do you think? You know, am I coming off as harsh at work? Like maybe I should change that.
Right.
You know? Or maybe I need some training. I don't think, I will kill and remove everyone preventing me from getting a job.
Right. And how did this, how did Michelle Beets play into this organization's plans that she needed to be be removed? This person that is obviously so well-liked and well-loved and connected.
How did she get selected as the target like..?
Right. Just so happens that he, his contract wasn't renewed with her as her subordinate. And that was, you know, that's just a complete coincidence, you know, that it was somebody that he kind of had a beef with?
Right.
I mean...
Bizarre.
Yeah. It, clearly he was delusional and just...
And arrogant.
And delusional and arrogant and just to think that people are so gullible.
That they would believe this highly unlikely story.
Yeah. Clearly he thought they were believing it. Well, after a trial lasting over six weeks, Marsh was found guilty, of course, of murder. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with no eligibility of parole. He remained mostly expressionless during the trial with no visible evidence of remorse. As he was taken away after the verdict, he reportedly wagged his finger at a public gallery in efforts to tell off the friends and family of his victim.
Just the audacity of that move. I think we also read that he gave like the cameras, like this huge smile, like he was totally unbothered by the whole thing.
Yeah.
Just the damage that that does to the family and friends that came to support her family like that, that's just, I don't know, the depravity of people just amazes me every time.
Yeah, it's scary. It is really scary. You just don't know who you're dealing with in any of these situations. I mean, it would give anyone pause, you know, before taking on a position like that where you're gonna have to make these difficult decisions because you just do not know who you're dealing with.
Well, in some ways too, I mean, it is interesting how people think that things work and then the reality of how things work. Like we talked a little bit, obviously we don't know in Australia what the rules are, how it works, HR-wise, just to think that she was as obsessed with him as he was with her, that she would be really saying bad things. Like a good manager also knows, let's say she did have the power to say, oh, you know, Walter was rude, was, you know, late, was whatever.
You know, a good manager is trained and knows how to say those things in a professional way, you know, so she's not like just trash-talking him. And how is it that everything came back to her? This is classic nursing stuff to me that he, because of the way the nursing world works, he puts his focus on her, on the nurse, instead of the organization. Royal North Shore Hospital is a huge organization. She's not responsible for everything that happens to his career.
There should be a whole infrastructure there that's supporting her. I bet she knew this guy was after her.
Right. Like you said, they may not have even contacted her. That might not even be the way in which they do references. Like it could just be an automated, these were his dates of service. That's it.
Yeah. It could be that all the hospitals he was applying to already, they have a limited number of 457, you know, like we have the J31 visas or something here. Businesses can only hire X number of people with those visas for all you know, that's why you were being rejected, dude. Like it is amazing. Again, it's that arrogance, that self-centeredness that you just really think everything is about you and--
Right.
You know?
Yeah. That's exactly right. Well, after his trial, another criminal conduct came to light. He reportedly also planned to kill his ex-wife Tammy, to avoid paying a $50,000 child support bill and even flew to the US to do it. He was unsuccessful in his attempt, thank goodness. While incarcerated Marsh reportedly had previously slashed his wrist with a tuna tin activating the emergency button in his cell just in time to be rescued.
It was like a classic narcissist. He wanted all of the attention and focus, like...
Absolutely.
Oh gosh.
And things that are in your way have to be like completely eliminated. Nothing else has a right to exist.
Right. Because if he did succeed in killing his ex-wife, you still owe the $50,000, like it's not going away.
Yeah, how do people not get that? It goes to your children, ugh...
Ugh, it's disgusting.
Dad of the year there.
Yeah, just the mindset. Well, in 2015, Marsh failed to have his conviction and life sentence overturned on appeal, and his lawyer did not hear from him, mm-hmm, for many years, until his office received a phone call from Marsh. He requested to have the US Embassy come to visit him, but he did not ask to speak to his attorney who was outta the office at the time of Marsh's call.
So in April of 2020, a day after placing the call to his attorney, Marsh was found dead at the maximum security Lithgow Correctional Centre. No cause of death was given, but local news outlets reported that Marsh was in a single cell in segregation and took his own life.
I wonder what he wanted with the embassy. Was he going to ask for like, play the card like I'm an American citizen and I shouldn't be here despite killing an Australian citizen.
Is there some card that he could play? Yeah.
I'm a double agent with the Irish government and you don't understand how I'm being used. Who knows?
And I mean, you never wanna hear about anyone taking their own life, but like what leads a person to turn into this person?
Yeah.
You know what I mean? Like what?
Yeah. You gotta wonder.
We don't know his traumas, we don't know his history, we don't know anything. But that's what therapy is for, like, don't take it out on other people. This lady shouldn't have lost her life because that was your singular the focus.
No, she should not have.
That's horrible.
So I have to tell you guys about an experience I had with a nursing student. So, you know, I've been doing travel nursing, well this hospital where I'm at has a lot of LPN students doing their clinicals there. So one of them was following me around one day and she noticed my stethoscope. And of course y'all know the EKO technology company that sponsors our podcast.
They teamed up with Littmann to make the stethoscope to beat all stethoscopes, the 3M Littmann Core Digital Stethoscope, and this is the one that I use now. So she said, "Oh my gosh, I've been wanting to try one of those." So of course I let her use it and she just could not stop talking about it for the rest of the shift. It was so cute. She was like, "You know, I can't hear anything with my normal stethoscope because I have tinnitus."
And so she was so excited because she could actually hear what heart sounds were supposed to sound like. She said, "I'm gonna ask for one of these for graduation." And I was like, "Yeah, you definitely should." So just so you know, the EKO technology that makes the stethoscope so amazing, you can enable it with a flip of a switch. You can turn it on and off.
It has active noise cancellation up to 40 times amplification, wireless oscultation using Bluetooth technology, it connects with EKO's free app and software so that you can visualize, record, share, livestream, analyze heart sounds, lung sounds, and whatever body sounds you wanted to listen to. So you can go to ekohealth.com and use the promo code "gnbn" to get $50 off your order. And that's EKO is spelled E-K-O, by the way.
So it's ekohealth.com, and use the "gnbn" promo code to get $50 off your order. I also wanted to remind you that if you're interested in travel nursing to go to trustedhealth.com/goodnurse and fill out a profile so you can see what kind of jobs are out there, and you can also see what they pay, the stipend, the hourly rate, all of that. I'm a travel nurse now with Trusted Health and I absolutely love working for them.
So go to trustedhealth.com, be sure and put forward slash "goodnurse" so that they'll know that we sent you there and fill out a profile today. There are some nurses, I think they're kind of down on management, you know, nurse managers. I personally have had some amazing nurse managers and I know that they're in a very difficult situation most of the time because they don't have a whole lot of power when it comes to raises, pay, any of that stuff. Even staffing. Even staffing ratios.
They just don't have a lot of power. They're not given a lot to work with.
They're under the thumb of admin and that admin's under the thumb of the whole system, which is a for-profit system.
Yeah. So I just want people to know that are listening to this, I appreciate you, nurse managers. I appreciate your job. I appreciate, I would just never wanna do it. I could never do it. I could never do the job.
Well, Tina, let me give a little shout out to a wonderful nurse manager I had for a period of time in my career. Oh, it's Nashia. We started together on the same day in the ER and eventually, of course, she's got it all going on and she became my manager. I don't know, for how long were you the 12 to 12 manager?
I was the 12 to 12 manager for almost four years. Three and a half years.
Yeah. It was a while. So she became my manager after having been just my lateral colleague. Then I had to bow down.
Not at all.
I'm only kidding. No, she is a great manager. And in general, I would say I've had definitely, on balance, really good managers. Yeah, I agree with you, Tina.
What a perfect segue that is to get into our "Good Nurse" segment, because as I told you guys at the beginning of the show, Nashia and Kate of the National Emergency podcast, this new podcast that's gonna be-- it is, it's already started on Audible. It just came out. It's got one episode.
No, I think they released all eight.
They released all episodes at the same time. Yeah.
Oh, they put 'em out.
It says nine, but that, the nine is the trailer. So there are eight episodes of the podcast. Yeah.
All right. So they're all out there. And if you want, you can become a member. There's a free trial option with Audible. I've been a loyal listener of Audible for years and like, probably over 10 years, like I have been listening to them for a long time. I love audiobooks. It's my jam.
You and me both love it, Tina.
And they have podcasts on there, too. Clearly. Anything you wanna listen to and it's just amazing. I love listening to just all kinds of stuff, but if you guys wanna check them out, we're gonna now get into kind of talking about what this podcast, what made you guys want to start a podcast?
This was Katie's brainchild, so I'll let Katie take it.
It was, it definitely was a little bit my brainchild, thinking about how to channel my frustration with some of the things that bother me about the United States Healthcare system and some of my frustrations with how nurses are treated and how nurses are or are not supported.
Obviously, mostly I'm complaining about how nurses are not supported and Nashia and I always have had, I think, similar philosophy and a similar vision of these things, but always in that jokey kind of colleague way where you, oh, you realize, oh, this person gets me. They hear me, and then this, I just thought, you know, can we get really serious about this, and really kind of talk about these things and see what's possible. I also happen to love Nashia's voice. I do. I just love her voice.
Whenever I work with her and hear her laugh and her voice, I'm like, it's like rain. It's such a nice sound.
So crazy.
I know, I know. She's dying. She's blushing. But anyway, so then we started talking seriously. I think that we had a dinner one night and I said, you know, can we really do this? I had done a training in public media up at Transom in Woods Hole, and so I was kind of on fire with audio and thinking about, you know, ways to use it and to get together and talk about stuff. And Nashia was game, really, from day one. I don't know if she thought I was serious or not.
I think it was like, oh, we're having dinner.
She's like, do you wanna do a podcast? And I'm like, yeah. Like, it's like, do you wanna go and skydive? I'm like, yeah, let's do it. You know what I mean? I'm that person. So I didn't, I didn't know that it was going to roll into what it rolled into, but I am so very grateful. Like, Katie's the professional person, like the whole production and audio and visual, that's her thing. Like she's the person that you go to because she has the connections and she knows what to do.
So I just provided my experience and a little bit, a little bit of laughing talent, but you know, like, so, and my Nashia-isms or my Grandma-isms as she likes to call them.
Yeah. Grandma Nashia.
I mean, we've always gelled, so it just made it so much easier because we are so similar in our thought processes and we just, we just mesh so well. So it really turned into like this amazing thing that I never thought we were going to be able to do or that it was gonna come out how it did. But with our production team and just with like us being the friends and the colleagues that we are, like it really just made it so much better because you know how hard it is in nursing.
Like when you finally find the people that get you, those are your friends forever. You know what I mean? Like those are, we talk about nurse friendships, like being each year being at 10 years. Because in reality, the trauma that you go through each of those years puts you deeper and deeper into each other's, like pockets.
And that's how with the nurse friend, you can be 120 years old.
That's right. I'm so tired.
Nurse years are longer than dog years.
Yes, they are. You feel it every day.
So what can people expect when they go to listen to your podcast? What do they, what is it gonna sound like? Like what's the setup? What's the format? What are they gonna hear?
So the information is kind of heavy. The topics are heavy because the healthcare failures are heavy. So, we have topics on a wide array of things and there's so many other things that we still want to talk about.
But there's, we talk about things about like storm recovery and it really, everything is from the aspect of emergency room nursing or emergency nursing, period, but looking at it through that lens, but looking at how our lack of public health infrastructure really just affects everyone across the board and they flood the ERs and just the hospitals looking for resources that are never there because we don't have the resources to provide everything that we need.
So we send people back out into the community, not just haphazardly, just because we can't give them everything that they require, and then they come back.
I always say to patients, you know, who are maybe frustrated that everything didn't get resolved through their visit to the ER. You know, I just try to remind them like, look, we're just a, we're like a blunt instrument. We are, we do the best we can. We keep you alive. You know, we get you to a place where we've figured out, okay, the worst thing is not happening to you, and then here's what you need to do.
But we're sending them back out into the community where those things that we're telling them to do for their own health. Are not easily accessible. And there's a lot of reasons for that. We all know that it's a lot of demographic reasons. And then just the way it seems now, I mean, you said something, Tina, in our little chat before we started about how things are really bad in this country with healthcare. Like it's really getting to a tipping point.
And I think you see that in, pretty obviously in the emergency departments. We are really overwhelmed. Covid just made it all very obvious. And the burden is really becoming just too great. I don't know what's gonna happen, literally, but it's not looking good.
And since we're overburdened and the consumer is overburdened, like we, what can we expect? The system, like you said is, is decaying. And we have to find something to fix it. So that's the goal of this podcast. It really is to just put the information out there so people are aware of what, not just we face as ER nurses and healthcare providers, but what people are facing. But from like a boots on the ground aspect to try to get people involved.
And we give, that's Kate's corner of the podcast where she gives like, calls to action and gives different, like places where you can get involved that this is what you wanna do and try to do the work. And we interview people who are actually out there doing the work and they, the content experts, just so you know, it's not just us just spewing. It really is us just trying to get people on board so that we can turn the wheel around and we can avoid the iceberg.
Yeah. And what was fun was we learned a lot. We could just sit in kvetch all day, but that's just the two of us sitting at IHOP having pancakes. But you know, yeah, like today. But you know, I do feel like if these things are gonna be addressed, we have to have some movement. You know, there has to be movement in directions. There has to be movement.
So all of the episodes, the subjects that we cover, every nurse, Tina, is going to bond with these subjects because they are the things that we all see every day that are causing so many problems. Both huge systemic problems, and then more, you know, personal problems. Like we talk about burnout and mental health, sex education. Nashia had mentioned storms. You know, the effect that climate change is having these really intense weather events and how that affects health systems.
We don't have enough public infrastructure to deal with these things. We kind of are throwing Band-Aids on them after it's happened, maternal mortality, things, you know, that are, that we all are seeing, you know, black maternal mortality, which is just criminal in this country. Yeah. So we, the things we're talking about, nurses out there, you're gonna, they're gonna resonate with you for sure, 'cause we know you see 'em 'cause that's what we all see. And...
And non nurses, it's gonna resonate with you as well because this is, it just gives you a, we're pulling back the curtain to kind of give you an inside look into what is going on. And it's heavy stuff. But, you know, Katie and I are funny, so we provide a little levity. We try to give a little, just from our nursing, our nursing-- exactly. Personalities, you know, which sometimes will come across as dark, but I mean, it's how we deal. Little pressure relief.
You know. But it's so funny, I was thinking, you know, talk about your true crime. The United States healthcare system. That's pretty much a true, that's a true crime right there. So all you--
Yeah, I've done some episodes on that were, where we're... that I didn't quite... I'm not gonna bring the government into it .I'm probably not gonna do that. I don't wanna get on that radar. But no, I've done some administration, some hospital corporation situations that kind of really cross the line way too far. Yeah, 'cause it's definitely a crime. What is going on in our so-called healthcare system in this country. It is sad. It's an absolute travesty.
I'm actually working now from home as a transfer coordinator. And so what I do is, providers will call in from an emergency, most of the time I'm talking to people in the ERs. I'm talking to doctors, nurses, health unit coordinators, and they will call in and say, I have a patient here, you know, a patient came into our ER with you know, some horrible thing that's going on and they're in this tiny little hospital in "nowhere", Tennessee, yeah. And they need to transfer to a higher level of care.
And it sometimes is impossible to find a place for them to go. And if they happen to admit that patient and then things go south, it is almost impossible to find, to transfer an inpatient, a patient that is inpatient to another hospital. And people don't understand that.
But this is what we're talking about. Like why is it so hard to give people the care that you deserve as a human being? I feel like animals get better care, healthcare than human beings do.
I do too. And it's really sad and I, but like you said, you know, I will call one emergency room and say, Hey, I've talked to your house supervisor and apparently you don't have any beds, so we're gonna have to just send this patient ER to ER.
Oh, yeah. We get those patients.
And the ER's like, what?
Yeah, the ER doctor's going, um, excuse me, but I'm already holding 10 patients here in my ER, so you're just gonna bring me another one? And there's 30 people out in the lobby. They're holding 10 patients in the ER that are needing to be admitted. And I'm like, I don't, what am I supposed to do? It's terrible.
It's very morally distressing. Please. We walk in on the regs to 40 people being held.
100%.
35 people. 20-- 20 is a good day. 20 people holding. You're like, okay, not so much.
You're like, ooh, twenty's a good day. We have space.
Yeah.
We can actually walk. Yeah, it's...
It's really awful.
These are people who need to be admitted to an ICU or a step down, and you have nurses working in an emergency department who are really trained to kind of like...
Immediate acute urgent care.
Yes, immediate acute urgent care
We're here to stabilize and send you somewhere else.
Yes, stabilize. Okay, now you're not gonna die right now, and I've got, I know how to do that. I know how to make you to where you are okay right now, but I don't necessarily, no, yeah, you can get a drip started to help get their blood pressure up or down or whatever you need to do, but you do not have the time to sit there and manage this one patient who needs that one-on-one or maybe just, you know, two-on-one care.
I'll never forget that, one day in the ER, this is during Covid, so we had people who were on paralytics and everything else, and in the order set it was like Train-of-Fours. I literally turned around and was like, um, what's that? I don't do that. I don't know what that is. Never done it, not doing it. What are you saying? Like...
And it doesn't matter. It's like, well, you're a nurse and you're, no, that's not how this works. That is not how any of this works.
The intensive was looking at me and was like, that's a nursing thing. I was like, uh, maybe in the ICU, sir.
It's a nursing thing if you've been trained on it. I'm sorry. I mean, when I worked on PCU I didn't know what Train-of-Four was. I had no idea. I had never dealt with a paralytic. I might have gone and pulled one out of the Omnicell, probably had no business doing that, shouldn't have been there. I mean, really.
For real. But like, you know, you always have that one nurse who literally has worked everywhere and has the experience. So like, God, she was there and I loved, I was like, uh, Sue? Can you, um..?
What is this?
What does this mean? And she goes, oh, we don't, exactly. She was like, we don't have that machine, but let me show you quickly how to do it without. I was like, you are an angel.
Yeah. And that's wonderful. And the thing is that Sues are getting fewer and farther between because--
Sues are tired and they're leaving.
Walking away. They're tired of being treated the way they're being treated. They're over it. They've seen everything. And they are shocked at state of our healthcare system and they're not, and they're just over it. And they're like, you know what?
That knowledge not being valued in that way. That it should be right there always. It's almost like that should be a part of staffing. You know, make sure you have at least two or three of those Sues. Yeah. Cause death stuff goes down. God...
When you least expect it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I'm super excited for you guys on your podcast. I can't wait to listen myself. I listened when I got this email. It hadn't come out yet.
Yeah, it was just the trailer then.
Yeah.
I listened to the trailer. Yeah, so it literally just came out. As we're recording this, I don't know when this is gonna be released, but as we're recording this, it literally just came out what, like 10 days ago or something.
Brand new, spanking new.
Shiny and new.
Shiny and new.
Awesome. I'm excited. Well, I hope you guys will come back and visit with us.
Oh, we would love to.
Yeah, I'd love to have you guys. I love chatting with you. This is great. Super excited about your podcast and hopefully it'll get renewed and we'll get more episodes.
Yeah, you too, Tina. This was fun. It's just the perfect balance of like, ooh, this is gritty and scary, and then we talk about something nice so we can all go to sleep.
Right, right. Now we can go to sleep. It's like watching cartoons.
Well, or working as a nurse, right?
That's right.
You spend that day, you spend that day really in the horror, and then you slowly shed it all on the way home. However you do that. Nashia, do you wanna admit how you do that? What you listen to? From Audible?
So I have been a long-term Audible listener because I listen to trashy romance novels.
Oh, fun.
I read them. I listen to them. I love them. The ones where you have to turn down the volume when you're pulling next to someone. Because it's always that part and you're like, don't judge me. Don't judge me.
Oh my God. What if you're listening to it and you're like out in public and you accidentally like, take off, your AirPods get disconnected and starts playing out loud on your phone?
It's happened to me before. Yeah. Like my hairdresser is just like--
I would be mortified
That part, and you're like, oh, okay.
Haha, oh, nevermind. Oh, who puts that on there?
These kids are crazy.
That's disgusting.
But yeah, your podcast is really cool, Tina. Thank you so much for having us on.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Really enjoyed it.
Thank you. Well remind everybody where they can find your podcast.
You can find National Emergency with Kate and Nashia on Audible, exclusively. So, produced by Pizza Shark. It was a great time. We have a great team. And we hope you love to listen to us.
And of course you guys know you can find me on wherever you're listening to podcasts. You can find me on my website at goodnursebadnurse.com and I would love to, I always love to hear from you guys. Send me an email at tina@goodnursebadnurse.com. I always love to hear your feedback. I'm on social media @goodnursebadnurse, and before we leave, I have to remind you that even if you're a bad girl or a bad boy, be a good nurse.