¶ Nursing Intuition and Compassionate Care
I didn't really put much stock into it at the time , but I remember , after working five years up north in a very , very rural hospital and moving back down south to a huge stroke center and all of a sudden seeing 80 to 100 to 120 patients in 12 hours , you know , I thought it was just a game that I was playing at triage where I would start to guess what
people were coming in with . You know , obviously , if they're having their hand on their chest , it's potentially going to be chest pain . They've got it on their chest . It's going to potentially going to be chest pain . They've got it on their stomachs , probably abdominal pain .
But it was just a way for me to stay interested for 12 hours , like hearing story after story after story and trying to figure out who's sick , who's not sick , who's really sick .
And the more I practiced on it , the more I would trust when something would kind of ping in me , so a heaviness in my gut or an idea that would pop in my head or just a sense that , holy crap , I need to stop and I need to do something now because something's coming down the tracks .
Hi , I'm Linus Woods Mullins and I love to help women to vibe , to be more vibrant , intuitive , beautiful and empowered in their life . So come on , let's vibe . I'm really happy to be able to spotlight a topic that I think is so important .
First of all , you know how , when you are walking down the street and you see someone dressed in military garb and you say thank you for your service , you know and I don't know if we ever get a chance to say that to our nurses , because we don't know who they are , they don't necessarily always have uniforms on .
But I first want to tell our guest , jen Johnson thank you for your service . Jen Johnson is amazing because she is a registered nurse in Ontario , canada , and worked in ED and , rather than go through a whole thing , you can read her bio on the show pages , like I always tell you to , so we can have more time to chat with Jen .
Jen , thank you so much for being on the Vibe Living podcast . It's wonderful to have you here today .
Oh my God , linus , thank you so much for having me , yeah , and thank you for your service .
Seriously , I know from years ago managing nurses and being in the nursing industry for about 10 years , all the different hats that you wear , all the different things that you do and I know you're in Canada , but it's still the same in terms of patient care and putting up with so many different things that you never , very rarely , complain about , unless you're
talking to another nurse , that you just kind of take on the chin , and over time it just really becomes amazing .
And you have written a book and first of all which I think is wonderful because people need to read the book to get a perspective on what goes on in a nurse's world and it's called Nursing Intuition how to Trust your Gut , save your Sanity and Survive your Career .
So I know it's written for nurses too , but in particular , I think that the lay person should read it , you know , so they can think that the lay person should read it , you know , so they can think about the next time you know they have interaction with a nurse , before they decide to go off because the doctor's running behind or because you know the person
didn't answer the bell on the floor or whatever . Maybe we need to lead with compassion first , because you all do such an important service . First of all , tell us about why you decided to write the book .
Yeah , so the book was never something that I actually thought would happen , with COVID burned out so hard . So we ended up when COVID first started .
¶ Trusting Nursing Intuition and Gut
Daycare shut down , so my kids were four and five and a half at the time that everything started .
So I was doing straight nights so I'd be up all day with the kids , because you can't exactly just space out enough with them running around and then I go to work all night and then I come home and stay up all day , then I go back into work and then I'd stay up all day . It was something I wouldn't wish on anybody .
You know , take the sleep deprivation , then mix it with the fear and the anxiety and not knowing what's going to happen , and just it broke me . It 100% broke me .
So it got to a point where , you know , everybody was still volunteering services and offering things and the food was like nonstop , which was insane but lovely and we had lawyers come forward who very graciously offered to do all of the frontline workers wills for free . And you can't help .
You know that they're coming from a good place because , yes , I know , but I'm like my gosh it makes sense , but it's like wow .
That just lets you know how catastrophic this thing was , because I'm sure most people would not have even thought of that .
No , and neither did we . And so when that kind of came forward , we all kind of looked at each other going like oh , like we really aren't expected to survive , like holy crap , like okay . So , which again added a whole other level because you can work with .
You know we encountered deadly things all the time that are infectious , but you know we kind of get used to it Whereas this was just so new and nobody knew what was going on . That just was insane . And so it got to the point where , you know , I'm like how could you explain to your kids if you were to die ?
Like how does somebody explain to them that mom chose to continue to go to work Because we all had the option not to go ? We all had the option , and you know it would take one note from your family physician or your psychiatrist or your therapist or anybody like it would just take one note and that was it , that's all it took .
But we all just continued to come in , and so I thought , well , how do you explain to kids that mom chose this ? And so I started to write down some of my really good stories from , you know , the last 14 years at the time . You know times I helped patients , times things went well , and those stories were few and far between .
It's not typically those stories that tend to stick Writing the good stories and then all the very bad stories like everything that you hadn't unpacked in the last 14 years comes flooding out . You know patient deaths and times you thought you didn't do enough and all these things , and it all came together and I'm writing them .
And I'm listening to Llewellyn , who's a publisher out of the US , was doing online book fairs and so they were talking , their authors were talking about their books and what was going on , and one of the authors that I just happened to catch her book was Intuition at Work . And I'm like Intuition at Work .
I'm like I use my intuition all the time at work and I'm like , holy crap , that's it , that's the thread . And so I went back and , sure enough , every single story had some aspect of intuition , whether I listened to my gut or I didn't . You know , did I say anything or did I not ? And was I believed or was I not ?
And so , going back , I'm going okay , like I know this now , being 14 years in that this is something that I do use . You know , every single time I'm at work whether or not it's a full blown like I , my feet are stopping as I'm walking down the hall because I see somebody , I'm like what is going on .
But I'm walking down the hall because I see somebody , I'm like what is going on , but I'm always using it , and so I'm like , okay , well , I know that we've talked about this .
You know , 3 am conversations when the ghost stories come up and everybody's little teachable moments come up , but we never really talk about it out loud , even though it's like an understanding , this concept that we all know and trust , but we don't talk about it because , again , it feels very woo-woo .
So I thought , well , in August of 2020 , I can't put this out without science behind me , because all the misinformation , disinformation was really starting to pick up at that time and so I did a deep dive into all the different angles of intuition you know , insight versus pattern recognition versus experience , and then behavior and all this kind of stuff and what I
found was that there's not just information that's purely science based on intuition , but so much information on intuition in nursing that's supported by science . You can't help but go like let's do this , let's teach .
That's amazing because that is such a niche in terms of the nursing piece , but the information that you found out it could be transferable to just about any situation in terms of how we use our intuition and you would think , because this podcast is mostly for midlife women , at this stage of the game , we should know about the idea of our intuition and that we
have and that we should use it . But I don't think it will come to anybody's surprise . Is listening to this ? How many times have you had that voice but you did something else and it ended up being a hot mess ? You know , so many times we do not lean into our intuition for a plethora of reasons when it comes to trusting our gut .
But what , first of all , what does trusting the gut really mean to you and what does it feel like how did you begin to learn that ?
you know it was okay to trust your gut , yeah . So thankfully I had one professor in fourth year who mentioned it one time to just trust your gut and go with it , and that's all that was said . It was kind of a little bit out of context and I didn't really put much stock into it at the time .
But I remember , after working five years up north in a very , very rural hospital and moving back down south to a huge stroke center and all of a sudden seeing 80 to 100 to 120 patients in 12 hours , you know , I thought it was just a game that I was playing at triage where I would start to guess what people were coming in with .
You know , obviously if they're having their hand on their chest , it's going to potentially going to be chest pain . They've got it on their stomachs , probably abdominal pain . But it was just a way for me to stay interested for 12 hours , like hearing story after story after story and trying to figure out who's sick , who's not sick , who's really sick .
And the more I practiced on it , the more I would trust when something would kind of ping in me , so a heaviness in my gut , or an idea that would pop in my head , or just a sense that , holy crap , I need to stop and I need to do something now because something's coming down the tracks . And so the more I leaned into it , the more I would be right .
And I'd follow these people through their journey through the ER and you know , were they admitted , did they crash ? Was it nothing ? And I was completely wrong . You know , it was interesting to see .
And then I also got to order blood work because we've got medical directives that allow us to order certain sets of blood work at triage , depending on what your chief complaint is .
And working with my docs for a long time , at that point we kind of went a little off script and we kind of would add things here , there and everywhere that we wouldn't typically order .
And again those tests when I was like , okay , well , I want to order this test because this person you know it sounds like they've been potentially on the floor for a lot of time and you can have a lot of muscle wasting and this one enzyme can be released that can really cause a lot of damage if it's not flushed out of your system .
And I was right again , and somebody was like who's ordering CK ? So creatinokinase , who's ordering CK on , like this patient over here , and I'm like oh , that was me . They're like oh , because it's through the roof . So thank you so much for doing that . I'm like okay , I'm like all right , I'm like I'm not going to get in trouble today .
Like okay , like let's keep continuing on . So it's been a journey to not only figure out what it feels like when it's not like your own . You know women's intuition where , again , you're walking down the street and something get off . You know move , go down this side street or cross the street or pop into a .
You know there's somebody behind you that you really shouldn't . I don't have a great feeling about this . You know , when it's your own wellness and when it's your own life , you know , you just , we trust it without any sort of hesitation , we just go with it .
But when it's other people's wellness and health and that kind of thing , we're not as in tune to it . So getting to a point where you know you have ideas pop in your head and you trust it and you go with it , is huge .
And once you get to a point of then , okay , I realize that this is happening and I'm having these ideas and I want to go through with this , you know . Next thing is how do you bring it forward to your coworkers or your physicians and then begin advocating for patients ?
Because if a lot of people aren't really comfortable with the word intuition again very woo-woo concept but we all are allowed to advocate for our patients . We're all allowed to say , hey , I'm just not sure about what's going on with Mrs So-and-so , can you just come and have a look ? That's completely acceptable and the science even says that .
You know , if you're a newer nurse and you think something's wrong with somebody , you have the doc come and have another touch point on that patient , even if you're wrong . So the patient's not as sick as you thought , or you know , you're just not quite there yet . The physician having another touch point on that patient still improves patient outcomes .
So why not play with it and bring it forward , ladies , are you ?
ready to vibe your life ? The Vibe Wellness Woman Network is your go-to space for holistic health , empowerment and community , created just for women over 40 . Inside you'll find expert-led workshops , wellness challenges and exclusive coaching , and a sisterhood that supports your journey to being vibrant , intuitive , beautiful and empowered .
Join today and get access to fitness tips , spiritual renewal , menopause support and more all designed to help you thrive in midlife and beyond . Visit thevibewellnesswomannetworkcom and start your journey to wellness today . You know you mentioned something that I thought was very interesting . You said , basically , you were sleep deprived during a lot of this whole COVID thing
¶ Navigating Nursing Intuition and Trust
. So how did sleep deprivation impact your intuition , or did it ?
Oh , I was a mess . I shouldn't have been nursing , I should not have been at the bedside , I should have been at home and sleeping as best you can with a four and five and a half year old sneaking into your bed all the time .
But you know , when I finally did reach out to a counselor or a psychotherapist and we started talking , the very first thing she said was like well , how's your sleep ? And I'm like you know , it's not great , it's fine , whatever . Like thinking that was not such a big deal . But man , she like grasped onto that . She's like no , like this is .
This is priority number one right now . You know , keeping you safe is also related to sleep and you know you can't function through the day and there's a reason why it's used as a torture method .
Like you need your sleep and I'm going because again you think that , oh , I can , I can push through , I can , I can keep going , it's fine , whatever , and I'll get through it . But in reality , like no , like I was nowhere near my baseline , let alone even my low points previously , like I was so far past it what was some of the ?
yeah , well , I was also thinking sleep deprivation . Your immune system has to be compromised as well . That's a whole , whole nother can of worms . But what were some of the things that you found were interesting through your research ?
when it comes to intuition , that was science based and experience , but a lot of the medical stuff was , you know , the difference between those who trusted their intuition and those who didn't .
You know , nine times out of 10 , it was the critical care nurses who used their intuition and ran with it , for the simple fact that they didn't have time to not trust it .
They didn't have time to second guess themselves , so they just went with their intuition and ended up , you know , then things went right and then you ended up leaning on it again and things went right .
So you end up in this positive feedback loop when you're finally trusting your intuition versus anybody who's potentially not in a critical care scenario where you've got the time to talk yourself out of it . You know , oh , do I really think that this person's as sick as they are ?
I don't know , and it's 2 sick as they are , I don't know , and it's 2 am and I don't want to wake up the doctor and I don't want to get yelled at and all these kinds of things . So you talk yourself out of it and then , potentially , you're putting yourself in a situation which you want to talk about resilience and all this kind of stuff .
You're putting yourself into a position where you know what happens when the patient crashes or something , an adverse outcome happens .
Then all of a sudden , you've got to live with that guilt of I didn't say anything .
I didn't come forward Like I should have said something , and the guilt . And then you're potentially carrying that for an entire career .
Right , and I would imagine that guilt kind of undermines your overall self-confidence .
Oh for sure , Cause . Then all of a sudden it's like well , instead of growing with trusting your gut , you start to shrink back . You're going . Well , you know , I was wrong last time and the doctor yelled at me , and so why would I put myself in that position again willingly ? So I'm just going to shrink back .
I'm just going to not say , I'm going to keep my head down , I'm just going to do what I'm told and go from there .
And you're going no , no , no , no , no , that's not good either , right , and we're going to take a quick break , and when we get back , I got a question to ask you about that very thing . Okay , okay , we're back and you were talking about . You know that's not a good thing to back down and not say anything as well .
How did you learn what your sweet spot was in terms of when to let intuition rule or when to maybe not beat upon yourself as much , because you didn't communicate the intuition ?
Yeah , it's one of those things where it just takes time . You know it takes a lot of time to figure out what's going on and then even more time to voice it , because we all worry that we're going to .
You know the doctor's going to think I'm nuts or I don't know what I'm doing or you know , I'm being oversensitive or any of this kind of stuff , whereas in reality the physicians call it spidey sense and that's an acceptable term for physicians .
And so in talking to physicians , you know , throughout Ontario over the last 16 years , the more I open up about it and talk about it and I go , hey , if I were to come to you and say , hey , I've got this patient XYZ , this is what I think is going on . But I don't know , is that valid ? And they say absolutely ?
And they say , okay , what if I said it ? You know my gut's telling me that something's wrong . They're like absolutely , we'd 100% listen to it .
¶ The Reality of Nursing Experiences
Fun fact , the ones that would say that they didn't want to listen to it , or what I've gotten pushed back personally is residents , and so residents go like oh , what are you talking about ? Like I need data , I need you know hard .
Well , that kind of makes sense to me because they don't have the benefit of a whole lot of experience yet , because I would imagine your experience or your experiential set kind of feeds into your intuition , what it calls to your reference , but also to your belief in your intuition because you have that experience to back it up .
It's fine because really you'll go to the physician , you go to them as many times as you want and I have no problem bugging the heck out of them because that's your job and this is my patient and I'm covering my behind . So if you see ever in your charting you know , doctor notified no new orders received , that is the nurse going .
I said something and I got nowhere . So I'm just charting this at this point in time to say I said something and I got nowhere . You know if I'm mad mad if I actually use the physician name , because I tend not to use a physician name because there's that level of like .
We want to protect each other because we all know how hard it is , but it's when these residents , you know , put you off and and then something does happen and then you go back to them being like so , um , maybe next time , maybe give me a little bit of credit . And it's hard because it takes a critical . Put a light up there for the crosswalk .
It just seems to be part of the human condition and I know that our listeners there could be nurses . There's a whole lot of different people from different backgrounds that listen to this , but the majority of our women between the ages of 45 and 55 . So they've had a frame of experience to be able to reference , to maybe help them with their intuition .
Could you tell us about a time when , with all your experience , you didn't listen to your intuition ? What happened ?
I don't know if there's one that sticks out recently because again I've gotten to the point where I've fully entered my villain era . I am starting to give no cares as to what anybody thinks .
It's a glorious feeling that I'm trying to impart on newer nurses and not to like support the ego or anything , but like we are here , we're watching , we notice the changes , like this is it ? But when I first started , there was a patient who probably my first patient this was my license , I had my own license .
At this point I was finally working on my own out of orientation and had a patient with pancreatitis that was alcohol induced , who had been in and out of this very small hospital multiple times through the years what we lovingly refer to as a frequent flyer .
And you know , taking his vitals first thing in the morning and everything's fine , until he in front of me doubles over and cries out in pain and I'm going , whoa , this is not right . What's going on here ? And you know , redo the vitals and they're starting to trend in the wrong direction . But I'm like , okay , well , maybe it's just because he's having pain .
Call the physician Physician kind of puts me off . She's like , oh yeah , he's been in here before . His one enzyme that relates to his pancreatitis has been higher before . It's actually not that bad this time , so don't worry about it and just brushes me off . I'm like , okay , I'm new , what do I ?
And you know , continuing through the day , you know , every hour I'm checking him because I'm like I don't know about this , and just his vitals keep getting worse and worse and worse and I'm continuing to call the physician and continuing to get put off until the point where 11 o'clock-ish rolls around , she finally comes in .
I'm like , hey , like you got to see this guy , like please , like it's all I can do not to shake you at this point and drag you physically to go see this guy because I'm worried , I don't know what's going on . And so you know she finally sees him .
We get a little blood work , we get a little fluid into him just to try and support his blood pressure , because now his blood pressure is falling and his heart rate's up and now he's got a fever and within the hour of her being there , you know we've moved him into our one cardiac room in the entire hospital and we're getting them all set up and he's
starting to tank and he's just the vitals are going into the crapper and he just looks worse and then all of a sudden his heart stops and so we're doing compressions , we're trying to bring him back , but it's too late and by 1 o'clock he's gone .
But it's too late and by one o'clock he's gone , and it took all of me to put myself together enough to continue on working the rest of the day . But , you know , trying to reach out for help to be like what did I miss ? You know , did I not push hard enough ? You know what could I have done better ?
Because I feel like this is my fault and , you know , nobody really said anything . And it wasn't until I left that job , five years later , that that physician actually kind of reached out to me and said like hey , like don't let anybody tell you , you don't know what you're doing . And I knew in an instant what she was talking about .
And I'm like you're joking right now , like you've waited five years to tell me this only as I'm leaving . Had I never left that job , would you have ever said anything in the first place ? And you've let me live with this guilt for five years , wow .
And so it's one of those things where it's you push through and you're like , okay , well , if nobody's going to listen to me .
That's a very interesting story and a cautionary tale , because we , as lay people , don't realize how much support nurses don't get work when they're going through all of that .
And I wanted to ask you because I do believe that there are nurses that might hear this , and definitely people who have children as nurses If you're a new nurse in particular , what is it that you want them to know ?
It's okay to cry . It's okay . I cried every day after my shifts , at least for a year , probably two . It was a mix of bullying issues also , but it's hard . It's going to take time to get comfortable . There's so much that nursing school doesn't teach us . It barely scratches the surface of what it's like to work at the bedside . So give yourself grace .
It takes time to learn not only a new language of medical terminology but to get comfortable and to get skills and to get experience . So don't cut yourself short because you feel like you're not learning fast enough , hard enough , pushing or knowledgeable enough Like it . Everybody feels like that when we start , so please do not stress .
If you can find somebody on your unit or in your team who has some experience and is willing to teach , latch onto them and do not let go , because we're out there and we we understand how valuable our understanding and our knowledge is to those coming in , and that support means the world to somebody coming in , because I would have killed for that support and
I didn't .
Well , it hurts my heart to hear that you would think that would be just an unspoken , that they would provide that , but it's really not that way . In fact , I have to ask you this question . You know what I want to ask you what show on television best reflects the role of an ? Er nurse , or is there one ?
so the newest one that just came out , the pit pi I was watching that the other day it is so good and the fact that you know they do each show is roughly an hour long and they do it like 7 to 8am , 8am to 9am , 9am to 10am , and because I binged it all in one go so far , I think there's three episodes out right now
¶ Appreciating the Nursing Profession
.
I got lost in the fact that this was just three hours into a shift , because this is absolutely what this feels like and you know the pushback to the administrators by the physicians I was just thinking of the administrator , because I know what that's like because I worked for a nurse's registry but I also worked for an HMO in administration in charge of nurse
recruitment , so I know what it feels like nurses to see me walking on the floor .
You know , even though I was an advocate for nurses , I still know what that feels like and many times I would have just gotten out of a meeting having to deal with butts in beds , which is crazy , because we're supposed to be helping to heal people but we got to have so many folks that are sick in order to keep going because of how our American system is .
I know , maybe Canada's system is a little different , but I've always had a heart for nurses because of all the time I spent talking with them when I was in a nurse's registry and then talking with them when I was in charge of recruitment and then when I became in charge of hospital staffing the whole thing .
It just gives you a completely different viewpoint and it was one of the reasons why , when I got to the top of that , I left that environment because I had a full-fledged anxiety disorder . I just couldn't sit in one more meeting about butts in beds . I just couldn't . A lot of those nurses have my undying respect .
In fact , we had this little thing in the registry that we used to say and it was kind of mean , but it was kind of true too there was always a reason why a person's working registry , and part of it was because those were the nurses that couldn't get jobs anywhere else and we had to send them out .
But the other part was before we got to a certain level here in California where nurses were making pretty good money that they would be working on the floor and then they would sign up for additional shifts just to make ends meet , because so many nurses were single moms because relationships and holding down a marriage .
Moms because relationships and holding down a marriage so difficult , or they had issues and had to go out on diversion because of all the other things that happened on the floor or in their personal lives . They're trying to handle it all and so they try to help with drugs , just a lot of things .
And these are all the things that go on that nobody talks about . And I haven't read your book yet , but I'm going to and I wanted to tell everybody . First of all , if you're a nurse , if you know someone who was a nurse .
Share this podcast with them I think everybody knows someone who's a nurse and then tell them to go to Jennifer Johnson's website because in there is something that's so beautiful . It's journals journals to help people kind of work through what they're going through , because sometimes , for so many reasons , that might be all that a nurse might be able to do .
Because families , when you get home , it's all about what they need , right ? And your girlfriends ? They don't want to hear that stuff . They've heard it all while you were going through your practicum and everything else . And so it's like come on , you're a nurse . Now stop it .
It's part of your job , but it's so beautiful that you have the presence of mind to do that and to write that . And I'm so glad you said that about the pit , because I was thinking well , this kind of reminds me I was kind of having trigger responses about when the administration person walks on the floor , it's all chaotic and they're talking about stuff .
It's like what ? This has nothing to do with the fact that I have a patient that's dying here and you're asking me about what .
So , wow , jennifer , thank you so much for writing your book , thank you and for sharing that and thank you for sharing those little tidbits about intuition and , as I said , for those of you who want to find out more , just make sure that you read the show page and go to the links there and find out more about this wonderful tool that we could all use more
of when it comes to our intuition . One more thing I just have to say about nursing , and I should have asked before , but I have to ask it right now , why nursing versus being a doctor . A lot of people wonder about that .
Honestly , I fell into nursing . This whole nursing's a calling was not my journey . I fell into it after going into biology and failing out of the first half of my organic chemistry course in second year , so it was never on my radar ever .
It was never offered as an option in high school , like they never once talked about nursing , which is kind of hilarious now . But no , I've thought about nurse practitioner .
I applied , I didn't get in , but you know , in Canada , depending on where you're working , as a nurse practitioner , I almost have more autonomy as an RN working the floor or working a merge than a nurse practitioner .
The RNs just got a big wage increase and so , yeah , so they've changed a few things , they've upped our wage and so really I'm making more as a staff nurse than I would as an NP . So I'm happy where I am and people ask me like oh , so you've written the book , when are you leaving your bedside ?
I'm like I'm bedside for life , but you know , per diem and part time and there's a lot of agency work , and so branching out into agency work has been the thing that allowed me to write the book and to publish it self-publish , because it's roughly about ten thousand dollars to publish a book between editing costs and design and pr and all this kind of stuff ,
so it's's costly .
Absolutely Well . I'm so glad that you landed here on the vibe living podcast . It's been wonderful having you here today . You're welcome . And thank you to all of you who are listening . Please share this podcast with someone that you know and love and care about , especially if they're in the nursing profession . I think that we don't say enough .
We always talk about first responders , first responders , everybody . You know there's a lot of people in there and we do appreciate them , but the next time you get an opportunity to tell a nurse , thank you , please do so .
They don't hear it as much as you might think they hear it , and it can go a long way towards how they view their profession , and we want the good ones to stay in for sure . So , thanks a lot . Have a fantastic day , everybody . Don't forget to like , comment , subscribe and to share this podcast . Have a fantastic day , everyone , and don't forget to vibe .
Bye-bye everybody . Thanks for listening to the Vibe Living Podcast and don't forget to subscribe , like and comment and share this podcast . Have a fantastic day and don't forget to vibe . Bye-bye everybody .