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 of true crime and nursing. We talk about, well, we just sort of talk about nursing and healthcare issues, but we infuse the true crime element, like, to talk about the good things that people in healthcare do, and we throw in the bad things, too. Because, hey, we don't like to just pretend like these things don't happen. We talk about 'em.
We put 'em out there in the open, and that way we're aware of these things. You're aware of them, and we can contrast those with the way that we're supposed to be acting as healthcare professionals. So for this week, I wanna introduce, of course, my wonderful co-hosts this week. My, I usually say guest hosts, but they're really not guest hosts. These guys are absolute family. I love them so much. It's Tom and Ben from the Will Continue to Monitor podcast. They're advanced nurse practitioners.
They are amazing nurse practitioners. Amazing people. Amazing human beings. Especially Ben. Oh my gosh. If I started talking about all the things Ben does, you guys, well, that would just be the whole podcast. We did that once, didn't we? So, welcome guys.
Yeah, we're happy to be back.
It's good to be back.
So good, happy. It's good to have you guys.
I was gonna say excited to be here, but, uh, boy, this story, it's a dark one, so, uh, if this is what you like, and this is what you tuned in for, you are going to get a plentiful helping of dark this episode.
Mm-hmm. Yeah, and for those of you maybe that don't pay attention to the descriptions down, you know, in the descriptions of the podcast, I usually like to say something at the beginning. This is absolutely one that we wanna put a disclaimer on. It is very disturbing, the content. I don't know that there's even a word in the English language to describe how horrible the acts are from this so-called "healthcare professional". He was absolutely anything other than that.
But he was a doctor nonetheless. And we have to talk about these things. We cannot, as I said, we cannot pretend like these things don't happen, but it's, it's truly terrifying at the same time. 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.
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Miss Tina, if you don't mind, I'm gonna go ahead and get us going into this story. So we're gonna be talking tonight about Dr. Kermit Gosnell. I hope, I honestly actually hope I'm saying it wrong 'cause I don't like him. So, he is from West Philadelphia and insert all the jokes you want here. He worked in an unassuming three-story brick building with an exterior that was rather plain, but it sounded rather prestigious. It was the Women's Medical Society.
It was a women's health clinic that was owned and operated by Dr. Gosnell. He grew up in the neighborhood and he spent nearly four decades serving his community or just about anything that you could call serving his community. He, uh, he didn't do anything that was really wholesome for the people in the town as you're about to find out.
So in about 2008, he expanded his practice to offer quote unquote, "pain management services" to patients. Uh, the doctor did not keep typical business hours for patients, pain management or otherwise. He would only see patients in the evenings. Usually after 7:00 PM. He would continue seeing patients until about midnight or later. Um, his favorite medicine cocktail, and this one was a little alarming to Tom and I, was to prescribe a combination of oxycodone, alprazolam, and codeine syrup.
Uh, while it's not illegal for a doctor to prescribe these medications in Pennsylvania or other places, uh, state law in Pennsylvania does dictate that there is a legitimate medical purpose is required for prescribing them. His purpose for prescribing the medications was less a legitimate, uh, medical need and more about the greed of... Basically one of those pill mills that we hear so much about.
A couple things stood out. Learning about this guy in this practice is, first of all, pain management, let's start right there, is a very specialized field for any provider to get into. There is lots of certifications and training and honestly opening up a clinic would require a large amount of capital and a lot of backing, including all those certifications. So it is not an easy undertaking.
So anybody that just pops up with saying they're in pain management all of a sudden, I would be a little leery about. And also the specific hours. Now, honestly, I could see in a bigger city like Philadelphia, there being a clinic that works seven to midnight, like that really doesn't seem something completely, you know, unthinkable, you know, in a city that large. I'm sure there probably are 24 hour, you know, urgent cares and minute clinics all around the place.
So at first, that sounds like, you know, like, oh, well he is in Philadelphia. It could just be that. But as you start diving into some of his practices, you know, the combination of that cocktail in particular, I start to think that he's only open after 7:00 PM because he doesn't want anybody paying attention to the comings and goings of his office.
So I start to doubt that there's a lot of legitimate medical purpose and that combination of medications... there's no legitimate medical reason, I can imagine, that you would get prescribed all three of those to be taken at once. Like there's... Ben, if you're seeing something I don't...
No, and I mean, you're looking at basically two opioids and then the benzo. You know, we do know that there's a risk with mixing opioids and benzos. We do have patients that do that, and that is part of dealing with, you know, it's done particularly in my family practice. But the addition of the codeine syrup is where it really definitely loses its legitimacy look to it, at least for me.
Yeah, that's really the over the top, and again, as he said, we, this is not something I would say is unthinkable, separate, as like chronic pain medication or anxiety treatment together. Like, that does happen. But to be put together in this combination with the codeine syrup does kind of give it a stain and it doesn't look good. And so again, anybody in pain management would honestly, they would probably know that going into it.
Gosnell wrote thousands of fraudulent prescriptions for narcotics. In January of 2010, he wrote more than 2300 prescriptions for controlled substances. Uh, he was apparently charging approximately $150 for each prescription. Gosnell and the staff allowed the pain management patients, and that's, quote, "pain management patients" to purchase prescriptions under multiple names, pay in cash, give tips to the clinic staff.
And it was estimated, yes, it was estimated that he was making 1.8 million annually from this operation. So, here we go again. Um, some of the practices, again, I have, I actually have patients in my practice that they pay for their own, you know, that's how they want to do things, and that's okay. So that's not unheard of, but when they are requesting you to pay it cash or, uh, the staff is soliciting tips.
Mm.
Again, not a good sign of somewhere you wanna be a patient at.
Or you're charging per prescription.
Yeah. That's also yet another sign of... So you can have this pain medication if you give me this rate of money, but you get this pain medication if you give me a separate rate of, you know, money. That's not a real, that's a poor sign that you are going to get, uh, healthcare. What you got at that point is a drug dealer. So that is, do not, do not confuse the two at that point. February of that same year, at approximately 8:30 PM, though, the FBI came knocking instead of one of his patients.
They thought that their job would be a routine elimination of a pill mill, but once they entered the doors to the clinic, they deemed it a quote, "house of horrors". The air was pungent from the odor of cat urine and the multiple cats that were permitted to freely roam about the clinic. Bloodstained furniture and instruments were not properly sterilized. Medical equipment like a defibrillator and an EKG monitor were broken, and the emergency exit was bolted shut with a padlock.
In the waiting rooms and the recovery room were women scheduled for abortions, and all of them were nude from the waist down and covered by filthy blankets that staff later admitted were only laundered once a week.
It is so hard for me to hear those words, like when I was first reading about this and what he did, I cannot, the visual that that creates in my mind, I'm such an empathetic person that when I hear stories of things happening to people in situations like this. My mind is so, it's like it creates a whole movie in my head and I have the, for some reason my whole body just creates the feelings as if I were the person.
I'm a very empathetic person, and so it absolutely kills me to think of those women sitting there, so humiliated in this situation that they're already, you know, they're already, before they ever get there, they're already, you know, struggling with this horrible decision that they're having to make, and who knows how they even got to that condition. Who knows what their circumstances are.
I just can't tell you how devastating it is to hear those words, to hear that this is the way these people were treated.
You know, in the first couple of times when we were talking about some of the specific little things, I was like, hey, just for example, if you see a cat walking around your office, that may actually not be the worst thing in the world, right? That may actually be a quirky, oh, they have a cat, but a cat and the smell of cat urine is an indication, you know, of a poor place to- so that's what I was pointing out before, like, Hey, these are things, if you're an individual.
But what the scene I just described, these are people, they know the situation they're in, and unfortunately we've created a problem where that's where they had to go to get care. And I feel bad for them where that's where they felt they had to go. That this is where they had to go to get care because we provided them nowhere else to get it. And so that, to me, I don't want anybody to come across like I'm victim-shaming.
No. As a matter of fact, if anything, I'm blaming us that provide healthcare for not making a better situation for patients. I'm just hoping that if anybody ever walks into a doctor's office at this point though, and they smell cat urine, they go, hey, maybe this isn't the place I want to be.
So, the women were semi-conscious and had been sedated by the staff. There were at least eight to 10 women in one room all waiting to see Gosnell, who reportedly did not like to hear the women's cries of pain, so he instructed his staff to give them preset dosages of pain medicine in his absence.
Yeah, so many things wrong.
So true. I mean, picturing that in your head is just horrendous.
I mean, the fact that he, really? Did he have that much of a conscience that it bothered him to even hear them com-, was it just annoying to hear them?
Yeah. He was annoyed. Yeah, this was, there was no conscience. He was, he wanted it to be easier for him. Uh, Gosnell was the only doctor at the practice despite two of his employees having attended medical school. They were referred to as doctors, however, even though, even though they and Gosnell knew that they were anything but doctors, the remainder of Gosnell staff lacked any medical licensing or certifications.
But this did not deter them from administering medications, performing procedures, or making diagnoses. Uh, one FBI agent, uh, one FBI agent, described the deplorable and unsanitary conditions of the surgical procedure rooms as quote, "a bad gas station restroom" end quote.
Which, that gives you a mental picture. Isn't-
Yes.
Yeah, if that's not a visual. I don't know what is.
For men, you know, we have the ability to urinate standing up where women don't. So I think this is that bathroom where you're kind of like trying to hover over the toilet.
Yeah. Where you don't wanna touch. Yeah, even guys are like, yeah, I don't, so that's what I was gonna say is sometimes, you know, we can get into these real long, flowery descriptions, but sometimes just saying it looked like a bad bathroom. We all got the perfect, you know, visual. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Like where you are wanting to wash your shoes before you walk into your house. Like, oh, I definitely caught something going into that place. Yeah.
And this is a place that medical procedures were being performed.
Exactly. And I mean, so, hmm. The equipment that they found was rusty and outdated, and some of it was even covered actively in rust while they were holding it in their hand. There was no functioning resuscitation or even monitoring equipment except for a single blood pressure cuff in every recovery room.
Which going back to Tom's, you know, hey, red flags, if you're going to... You know, Tom and I both have ER experience. If you are sedating a patient, a conscious sedation, or anything deeper than a conscious sedation, you are monitoring that patient. You are monitoring heart rate, you're monitoring oxygen, saturation, blood pressure, everything to ensure the safety of your patient.
Yes, and it's usually at that time, a one-on-one. So that ER nurse is in that room with that patient, with that monitor, with all the proper medications, airway, cart, all that stuff one-on-one. That is the type of level of care you as a patient should be expecting to receive if you were going to a place and getting conscious sedation.
If you're gonna get conscious sedation. It's one of the reasons that when RaDonda Vaught was arrested and ultimately convicted, it's one of the reasons that it really frustrates me, is because this was not ordered. It was not ordered for that sedation that she was administering to be administered in that setting.
There was no monitoring, there were no orders for a nurse to be, you know, a one-on-one nurse to be standing there with that patient monitoring, q 15 minute, vital signs, checking respirations, checking blood pressure, checking all those things. There's a reason why that is the standard and it's the way it should be done every single time.
But to think about the fact that in that particular case where that medication error happened, RaDonda Vaught was giving what, a milligram to two, one to two milligrams of Versed. And in this case, these people are receiving no telling how much.
No, literally no telling. Because there's no tracking in the medications. The people that were giving it were not certified or trained. So we honestly, not only were they giving possibly lethal doses or combinations of medications, but we don't even, like, those in safe dosages put together can be bad, putting them together in unsafe dosages. I am utterly shocked that we didn't hear about tens of dead bodies, you know, coming out of this place for women dying from anesthesia.
I just, I'm honestly shocked it, we didn't hear more about this place because I can't believe I didn't hear more about this place before you sent us this story.
So, ambulances were called to transport the waiting women to safer conditions, but the emergency exit was secured with a padlock. None of the staff, even Gosnell, could produce a key to the lock. And so they had to use bolt cutters to remove the lock. So as the FBI search teams continued to navigate the House of Horrors, and this is ugh, they would discover fetal remains stored haphazardly throughout the clinic in bags, milk jugs, orange juice cartons, and even cat food containers.
Some remains were frozen or refrigerated. The doctor was known to be negligent and paying the disposal provider on a timely basis. There were occasions where he would not pay the provider for months, and the basement was filled with fetal remains. The search team also found specimen jars containing infant feet that Gosnell reportedly told his staff they were for medical research and DNA testing.
Yeah, so as I said before, they didn't find more women dead from anesthesia, which I'm honestly shocked because as you find more and more about this guy, it seems like he went a lot from just a poor practitioner and negligent provider to serial murderer who just created a space where people came to him.
I just wonder, don't you think there just absolutely had to be women who went to this facility for some sort of service, left there, and ultimately contracted a horrible infection and had to, had to have probably even ultimately died from it. And somehow it wasn't traced back to him.
That's, that's, but that's what I'm getting to is I don't know how we have not heard or how they did not kill or, to be clear, I would assume that there are deaths connected to this place that just have not been put together. Like maybe the remains haven't been found or they died in the local hospital under Jane Doe, and so there wasn't a way to trace it back. I don't know, but I am sure there are dead bodies connected to that place.
From a forensic standpoint, if, let's say a woman goes to there, has this procedure, dies. The coroner gets called out to investigate. They do an autopsy. The autopsy's gonna show, you know, obvious recent surgical procedure.
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But my assumption, and this is only my assumption, and so if I'm wrong, please email Tina and you'll correct me.
Yeah. Yell at Tina. Yeah, email Tina about our wrong assumptions.
But my assumption for women who are having an abortion, they're not, this isn't something they're gonna broadcast to a lot of people. So maybe they're the only one who knew that they had that abortion other than the autopsy.
Well, so, but, but even, okay. But even in this instance, even if they didn't tell anybody, there should have been a record had they been at a hospital. What this guy was doing, and the reason I'm saying we won't ever be able to connect him is because he was doing this under the table. So maybe patient A, B, and C all went to this clinic, but A and B got infections, but C died. Well, A and B aren't gonna broadcast it, and C didn't get it registered.
So there is no way for the police now to link those infections and death to his clinic.
So she goes to the hospital? And she says, oh, I'm just really sick. And they're like, oh, you've got this infection that's idiopathic. We have no idea where it came from. And she doesn't disclose that she had anything. They're not gonna look for that, right?
Well, no. That, you come into the ER, you say your name is Patty Smith, and you have no ID on you. Guess what? We don't not care for you. EMTALA says I have to care for you. So if you come in and say your name's Patty Smith, and you said, oh, I, I was at my OBGYN the other day, and I had to have a uh, IND. We're not going to assume you're lying. We're gonna treat you and ship you out the door, you know?
And so, that's why I'm saying is, so the first two ladies could have, or they could have just lied and said, I don't have to tell you anything. I don't feel good. And they get treated, you know? And the third lady, when she passes away, there's nobody to investigate. If she's dead when she gets there and there's nowhere to look for the procedure 'cause she did it under the table.
That's what I'm saying is I think honestly, If there is a way for the FBI to work with police and link stuff, I think you're going to see more in the future about this case. That's why I'm, 'cause we're about to get worse. Like it doesn't get better, the story doesn't get any better from here. So I still feel like there's a lot of room for evidence to be dug up about what's about to happen.
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As Tom said, you know, we thought the story was bad to this point. However, it becomes more grotesque and more gruesome. Investigators discovered that some of the fetuses contained surgical incisions at the base of the skull. Gosnell preferred to force full-term labor and delivery of the premature infants. The women were misinformed. They would visit the clinic during the day, pay for the procedure, given medication to induce labor. They were instructed to return to the clinic after hours.
He would not make an appearance at the clinic until later in the evening, sometimes as late as 10:00 PM Many of the women had already given birth before he arrived at the clinic.
With the late-term pregnancies, the induction of labor resulted in live babies, but Gosnell referred to them as "specimens". There is a possibility that many of the premature infants could have survived with proper medical care, but clearly that was not the standard provided at the Women's Medical Society.
Gosnell ensured that the infants would not survive by severing the spinal cord with surgical scissors or snipping, as he would te tell the staff, and this was his preferred method of ensuring fetal demise. So, let's be very clear about a few things regardless of political standpoint or anything, what this person is doing is murder. Okay? Regardless of views on abortion, we have long since cleared abortion territory. Okay?
So let there be no misconception on who or what we are talking about or where you stand at in any stratosphere or view. This is now murder. So there is no medical procedure or protection or legitimacy as we already discussed at some point earlier in the episode for what he's doing. So I just, from a former law enforcement standpoint and from being a medical provider standpoint, I will tell you there is zero.
I've covered a lot of stories where I have tried to play devil's advocate and tried to explain, well, maybe this could have, in this case, there is zero, there is none. And if you hear anybody say anything to the contrary, stop listening to them. That is the end of that story. That's how this goes because this is a very bad person. Gosnell admitted to investigators that approximately 10 to 20% of the procedures he performed were on fetuses older than 24 weeks.
Pennsylvania law prohibits abortions older than 24 weeks unless there are unsafe conditions for the pregnant woman. Gosnell attempted to dodge the law by falsifying the gestational age of the fetuses for the procedure. The doctor trained his staff to manipulate the ultrasound equipment to make it appear as if the fetuses were smaller than they were.
If an employee recorded a measurement that was larger than 24.5 weeks, or somehow was able to get away with the extra 0.5 measurement, he would then order that the ultrasound be redone. The second measurement, of course, was always lower than the first. However, there is speculation that many of these pregnancies were significantly more advanced than 24 weeks. So as if this couldn't have been worse, like as Ms. Tina said earlier, you know, these women are already in a life-changing situation.
And you know, they're going through something they may or may not want to even be going through in the first place. There's so much going through their mind, but then they're being lied to on top of it, so that even if there was information that may have changed their mind, and I'm not saying there was, and I'm not saying it should have, whatever, that's their choice. But what I'm saying is they were never given it. Like the ultimate betrayal to the women at this point, and I just, God...
Here's my, I don't wanna say concern, I don't know how to word it. We have no problem operating a pill mill. We have no problem charging patient's cash prices per prescription. We have no problem doing unsafe abortions. We have no problem snipping spinal cords, but we're gonna draw the line at, well, let's dodge the law about the 24 week cutoff. Like that to me, I'm like, where does your moral compass lie that that is the line in the sand?
That he felt like that was somehow gonna be where he would get caught? That, like, he didn't think that someone, that somehow they were gonna come in to inspect his clinic. What in the world was he possibly thinking?
Well, I can only guess because clearly, first of all, I would never want to talk to this person, but I would only guess at this point that he thought he had already figured it out. You know, he got away with it for so long and, you know, he created the legitimacy during the day by, oh, they're pain management patients, so these patients can only get me in trouble if there's something wrong with their paperwork. I don't imagine how he lied to himself to get himself into that position.
And we've seen it before. I mean, we've all covered stories similar, where you're like, how did this guy get into this position? It's because he did one dumb thing, which made him think he could do one more dumb thing, and then two years later, you know, he's selling steroids, you know, whatever. You know, there's something like this. This guy on the other hand, had completely diluted himself.
Into thinking that there was a possibility of having correct paperwork, covering the fact that there were dead baby's feet being preserved in jars. Like that is a level of mental derangement that you cannot easily put labels on.
Yeah. The total just disregard for life. That, for human life. He obviously didn't even see the people that were coming into his clinic as human. Like, he didn't care about them as humans. He didn't care about these babies that were being born. And I'm sure the pain that they had to have suffered, um, in the moments that they were, you know, after they're born, they would feel pain also, I'm sure. Oh my gosh. It's just horrendous.
I can't imagine being able to do something like that to people on a daily basis, day in and day out. And like you said, just creating this whole facade, this whole ruse. To say, okay, we'll operate it as a pill mill, which this was back in 2000, what, 2010 or so. Nowadays, you're not gonna get away with anything trying to act like you're a pill mill. But maybe back in the day he thought, oh, we'll pretend to be a pill mill.
And, but in reality, he was using that medication to keep them sedated, for them to be able to have their procedure.
Well, it boils down to all he cared about was cash or, you know, money.
And he clearly had no integrity, soul, whatever you want to call it, to prohibit him from doing more. So it's estimated that Gosnell performed over 16,000 "abortions", and I'm using the term abortions with a sarcastic set of quotes over it, 'cause that's not the term I would actually use. But it's also unknown how many of those infants were, again, "snipped" as Gosnell put it. This is in part due to him destroying all the patient files.
Though, as we talked about earlier, I doubt he actually kept accurate ones to start with. Gosnell was convicted of three counts of first degree murder in May of 2013, he made a deal with prosecutors that spared him from the death sentence. He was instead sentenced to life in prison with no parole. You know, um, I have spoken out many times about how I don't agree with the death penalty in most cases. He might be one of those other cases that I'd be okay-
The exceptions to the rule?
Yeah. Yeah. Like I don't think if there's any doubt we should be putting people on death row. That's my personal opinion. No reflection on Good Nurse Bad Nurse. But this dude, this dude, well, draw your own conclusions.
So, he was also convicted in the death of a 41 year old Karnamaya Mongar, a Nepalese refugee. The clinic staff administered unrecorded intravenous injections of Demerol, which is a sedative. After several hours, she stopped breathing. Gosnell reportedly attempted CPR briefly, Uh but no other life saving measures were implemented, uh, because, you know, they didn't have that monitoring equipment. And I would be interested to see truly how the attempted CPR went.
The defibrillator course was broken, so again, that lack of moral compass. So before paramedics were called, the clinic staff hooked up machinery and rearranged her body to make it look like they had been in the midst of a safe abortion procedure.
Which is hard to even imagine at this point.
Yeah, 'cause at this point she's not breathing.
And you have a clearly non-functional defibrillator.
She was taken to the hospital. Doctors were not sure what they were treating as. Neither Gosnell nor his staff were honest with the amount of anesthesia that was administered. She tragically had no brain activity and was removed from life support a day later. He was sentenced to an additional 2.5 to five years in prison for the death of Mongar. And in 2013 he was 72 years old, so he would be 82 today.
Well, I can only hope the worst for that person, for the rest of his life.
Yeah, he's still in prison. He'll be in prison for the rest of his life.
I'm honestly shocked he's alive, to be honest. I mean, I've worked in a prison. I am honestly shocked that he has survived. I'm sure he's in, I'm sure he's in solitary.
I was gonna say there are high profile criminals.
Yeah, he's, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's on the row.
Yeah. Particularly like where, you know, I'm from Kansas, so the BTK killer is still in prison in Kansas, at the Supermax facility in El Dorallo, or sorry, El Dorado. He is in solitary lockdown 23 hours a day with one hour out in the yard by himself because he's such, so high profile. If someone was to shrink him, then they get notoriety.
And honestly, I would assume within the prison system, and that's another thing to try and just dodge talking about this guy for a minute, the prison system has an excellent information system within it with the inmates. So I guarantee you everybody knows who he is, what he did, and why he's there. So yeah, I can only hope that somebody makes his kidneys into Swiss cheese with a toothbrush someday. But I mean, I'm sure as Ben said, he is being separated quite a lot from the rest of the staff.
I just, you know, we have talked about horrific things before, but this is truly one of the most disturbing human beings I've ever heard of.
Yeah. I mean, we've covered a lot with you on this show and that one takes the cake. I mean, that really just...
Yeah, it's hard to imagine really a worse human being that could day in and day out. See women come into his clinic, allow them to, just knowing what they're going through, come in there knowing that they're coming there out of desperation, needing help to get out of the situation that they're in, and taking advantage of that, taking money, a lot of money that they probably, who knows what they had to do to even get that money.
And then, while they're there, to be treated in the inhumane, horrible, horrible way that they were treated to be set, you know, have to sit there completely nude from the waist down, being sedated, using unsterile instruments, all of those things. No, in a group setting, I mean, horrifying.
Again, I just want to reiterate for just a second. I don't want anybody to think at any point I want anybody to think I think the victims in this case are at fault in any way. I didn't want that to come out, if that, if anybody took it that way, because I am just horrified that they had to go through this and that they felt like that was the only place they could get treatment.
And those two things are like little marks that I think us doing this story and people listening to the story, you're gonna get those little marks left on you, and they leave something on you for a while to think about after you hear something like this.
Could you imagine joint commission going in there? I mean...
Well, eh. Hmm. I got my own thoughts on joint commission.
As long as there were no drinks at the nurses' station I think they would have been fine.
I was gonna say Ben, they had all the proper drink mats. You can't fault them, Ben. They had all the drink mats in place and for those in healthcare, you get the joke. And for those not in healthcare, well, I don't want to, I'll let Ms. Tina explain JCO someday day if she was to explain JCO, but they're not nice people. That's what I think.
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 stethoscopes 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 stethoscopes so amazing, um, 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.
Tina, do you think we should get to, you know, I mean this has been a really depressing episode. I mean, do you want to do the "Good Nurse" story to kind of bring the...
I would love to do that. That's a great idea. The story- you guys found this awesome story, which I'm so excited about. I love the, I can't do enough of these stories. This is a story about a nurse practitioner at UNC apparently who recently donated a kidney to save a patient's life, and just so happens the patient was her father. Isn't that amazing?
That is fantastic, though. If my father ever listens to this episode, do not get your hopes up. I clearly need both my kidneys so he cannot have one.
He said, "It's a gift from my daughter. It's a blessing." His name is Larry Koch. Her name is Lauren Herlihy. I hope I didn't saying that incorrectly. I apologize if I'm not, Lauren, if you're listening to this. So the alternative would've been to go on a waiting list, which was between four and six years. By that time, Koch would've been in his eighties and possibly no longer even eligible for a transplant. So at age 78, Koch had had kidney disease for 15 years.
He found out last summer he progressed to stage four and he was told he would need to get dialysis within the next 12 months. Other than progressing kidney disease from hypertension, he says he's mostly healthy, and he says he was reluctant to ask his daughter for something so huge, but she insisted, saying she put her faith in science and medicine. She's given me an organ, she has children, a husband. I was always a little concerned about what the impact would be. I didn't want any risk.
That's what made me hesitate. So I've, you guys, I've taken care of many, many kidney transplant patients at the level one trauma center where I worked, we did kidney transplants there, and I've taken care of them at all the different levels. I worked on the CVICU where they would literally walk in.
The recipients would walk in off the street and I would have to just do everything between, okay, get in the shower, and then when you come out, I'll put your IV in and draw your blood and send it down and all the things. And then they would go on. I would walk them into surgery. I would be with them the whole time. Then they would come back. Sometimes the shift change would happen, and then I would see them the next morning hopefully.
When I say that these patients are some of the most rewarding and memorable patients I've ever cared for, I cannot emphasize that enough. It was just such an amazing, miraculous thing to be able to be a part of. And so I can kind of just, I can't, just to think of a daughter doing this for her father. Wow. I love this story.
The quote that she said it, I really kind of just warmed my, warmed my heart, you know? Cause I said there was never any question about it. She was gonna donate the kidney. Um, "It wasn't a choice for me really," she said. "He's always been a good listener. He's been a great dad. I didn't wanna see him go through his final decade of life on dialysis." I mean, just amazing, amazing story.
Ah, she's gonna get an awesome Christmas present. I mean, yeah. I mean, he better step up this year. She better get a car.
You know what, a lot of times, a lot of times people who, you know in thinking about longevity or life expectancy and you know, people will say, well, I'm gonna have to die of something. But the thing is that sometimes those last few years of your life can be really miserable, you know, if you're not taking care of yourself and you end up, you know, if you smoke your whole life or you're just not eating well or whatever, and then those last five to 10 years can be absolute torture.
So what she did is, and I've seen people do that. I've seen people, the patients that I've cared for, I've seen them in those stages where they come in and out of the hospital all the time with CHF exacerbation or COPD exacerbation and dealing with these chronic issues. And she kind of saved him from that for this particular thing. Anyway, as you know. For at least for as far as, you know, renal failure goes. So what a gift. What a gift to save him from. I'm just so blown away.
Tina, do you want to explain why Tom and I hijacked your show?
Yeah. People are wondering why.
People are probably like, why are, why are they talking so much? So I have been sick for like a week and a half, and so I just felt like there is no way I'm gonna make it through this whole thing talking the entire time. I've already done one show today recorded, so, um, I didn't feel like I was gonna be able to manage like, talking through this whole entire show.
So Tom and Ben were nice enough to kinda take the reins for this episode and handle doing the show, the storytelling, which I appreciate you guys so much for and you did an amazing job. It was awesome.
Was there something else you wanted to talk about, too?
Oh my gosh. Yes. I'm sorry.
Ben for the win. Yeah.
Ben for the win. Thank you so much. You saved me. I have sick brain. I've got that brain where I'm in a fog still. Absolutely. Thank you for reminding me. Oh my gosh. I got the most amazing review last week and I wanted to read it because you guys, I mean, I, oh, this makes my day. I want to read this every day for the rest of my life. I think I could be happy forever. This made me so happy. I'm gonna read this to you, this review to you.
I want everybody that's listening, just to stop and think, all the nurses especially, you're gonna understand why this meant so much to me. So this is titled Good Nurse. "Hey Tina, great podcast. I've been a fan for about a year. I'm not a nurse, so I learn a lot about nursing. I'm a heart transplant patient and frequent user of medical services. At my last angiogram procedure, I was making small talk with the nurse while she was preparing me for the procedure.
After setting the IV thing into my arm, she left and came back with a bag of saline. She told me what it was and why she was giving it to me. Then she gave me aspirin and Benadryl. I have a slight allergy to the dye and it helped relax me. Before the procedure again, she told me what I was taking and why. I told the nurse, you did everything right. You told me what medication I was getting and why. I told her I learned about this important procedure on Good Nurse Bad Nurse.
She never heard of your podcast, so I was happy to tell her about you. Tina, you made me a better patient. I'm much more understanding when staffing issues impact the service I receive. Take care and keep up the good work." Oh my gosh, you guys, when I read that, I gasped out loud. I literally just did an audible, "Aw". Oh my gosh. Makes me feel so good. I love this so much. I cannot tell you how much it meant to me.
Just in case anybody out there thinks she's being less than sincere. We heard about this review for several minutes before we got the review, before we were told what was about to happen. Before she even said, we just kept hearing about this review. I'm like, wow, she really likes this review. So no, everything she just said is a hundred percent true and she's right. That these are the type of things that when you get this feedback from a patient that makes you go, oh, that's why I do this.
I forgot there's all this crap we've been through lately. So this one thing though, every once in a while, this is what, this is what makes it better. So if you are non-healthcare, and I don't mean don't do it for no reason, but if you get good care. Please actually tell the healthcare provider or the staff or somebody like, "Hey, thank you. That was a very good visit." Just that little phrase will make their day, I promise.
As independent podcasters, meaning that, you know, we're not owned by Wondery or, um, Sirius, or any of the other ones that are out there. The independent podcasters, we read reviews, every review we get, every email, we get, we legitimately read those. It's not going to some company somewhere else. I mean, this is proof that even Tina at Good Nurse Bad Nurse.
Yeah, she's super powerful. Trust me, in the podcasting world, she is the queen. They're, it's, it's ridiculous how much power she has to be honest. She rules with an iron fist, a whole underworld of podcasters. It's really terrible. Honestly.
I know this. Yes, I'm sure you're all collectively rolling their eyes right now.
It's so funny because she's so sweet and having met her in real life, just like trying to imagine her even being like, Tom, Ugh. And I'd be like, what? Why do you keep raising your hand? Like, oh, are you trying to hit me? Like, what's happening here? So, no, she's terribly sweet and those reviews are fantastic. I thought it was awesome.
So yes, please leave ratings and reviews for independent podcasters that you listen to.
Yes, it's so helpful and it means so much. I mean, we do read 'em all. I mean, it is encouraging. So, I mean, I enjoy doing this. I'll keep doing it, but it's nice to hear back from people, you know?
I'll keep doing it. Sometimes.
I'll keep doing it.
Maybe. Yeah, maybe I thought about it.
So, well guys, remind everybody where they can find you and your podcast.
So we have two podcasts. We have Just Some Podcast, which is usually directed at advanced practitioners, you know, PAs and PEs. That's our more of our medical podcasts. And then we have Will Continue to Monitor, which is our creepy, weird stuff.
Unsolved mysteries? Yeah. Stuff like that. Yeah, if you wanna learn about healthcare, we say the first one. But if you just wanna listen to something and be like, I don't want to go to sleep now, listen to the Will Continue to Monitor. That's, that's roughly...
But see, that'll put me right to sleep. Like I love it. It's comforting to me. I'm like, tell me something creepy and I'll just be all comforted and just go right to sleep.
And that's why you're the queen of the podcasting underworld with an iron fist. Scary things put you to sleep.
We do have some positive stories as well. I mean, lately we did the, most recent was the Loretto staircase, which is considered a miracle. Um, so I mean, we do-
A positive miracle. Yeah. Yeah.
Not all bad. And our website is justsomepodcast.com.
All right. And you guys know you can find me at goodnursebadnurse.com. You can email me at tina@goodnursebadnurse.com, and you can find me on social media. Uh, guess what? @goodnursebadnurse.
I was gonna say cia.gov. But...
I thought it was "QueenOfThePodcastingUnderworld" that was social media.
I should probably try to secure that website.
Uh, I need a few purchasing dollars now. Yeah, we gotta, we got some websites to buy.
Well, thank you guys for listening and of course, before we leave, I have to remind you that even if you're a bad girl or a bad boy, be a good nurse.