GRATEFUL FOR OUR NURSES With Dr. Katie Boston-Leary

It's Howard Brown. It's the Shining Brightly

Podcast show. Oh my goodness, I have such an amazing guest I

always do. But I'm really excited about this show, and so

I would love to welcome Katie Boston-Leary, how are you today?

Dr. Katie Boston-Leary: I'm good. Howard, how are you? Thank

you so much for having me.

Oh, I'm thrilled. I'm thrilled. So listen, we're

hitting the end of the summer, and I just, we just recently met

through LinkedIn. And I actually, you know, was so

attracted to your LinkedIn portfolio because you work for

the American Nurses Association, and I have such reverence for

nurses being a two time stage for cancer patient, and I wanted

you to come on. And part of this is selfish. I just want to say

thank you to all the nurses out there for their dedication, for

their compassion, because they actually got me through. I spent

a lot of time with my nurses in the infusion room, and you spent

a lot less time with the docs. You spent a lot of time with the

nurses. And you know, we would joke, we would cry, and they

were my go to people for answers. So I'm selfishly having

you on my podcast. So I just wanted you to know that up

front. So let me tell people about you a little bit. So Katie

boss is married. She's got a lot of initials after her name as

PhD, MBA, M, H, A, R, N, N, E, A, B, C, that's a lot of stuff

there. So people can look on your LinkedIn for that. But you

are currently the senior vice president of equity and

engagement the American Nurses Association, and you've been an

you are an adjunct professor at the University of Maryland,

School of Nursing, and also the School of Nursing at East

Western Reserve University. You're a board member at St

John's University Health Programs, Hippocratic AI, oh my

God. You're involved in so much ingenious health and editorial

advisor in the nursing management so I'm actually

pretty sure I got the right person here. You've led a task

force for the nursing staffing Think Tank and Task Force, and

you've done a lot to forward nursing and analyze the

marketplace and understand that. And that's why you're here, by

the way, you are my nurse, subject matter expert, so I'm

just thrilled to have you. But before we dig in, I need to ask

you, okay, tell me something that you want to share that

people may not know about you.

Dr. Katie Boston-Leary: Oh, so I love that question. I will say I

MC events or weddings and some Gala, so I'm an MC when I'm not

a nurse.

So would you call yourself a celebrant or an

officiant or again? So

Dr. Katie Boston-Leary: yeah, like, and it's, you know,

usually it'll kick in. You know? The best part about that is that

you get free food and drink, but, yeah, it comes with it,

but, and you get to dress up. But the way when I kick in is

when after the ceremony and they're reintroducing the bride

and groom to the reception, that's when I take over. Um,

yeah, so I love music. I know a lot of songs because I also

connect songs with what's happening, and I work with DJ,

so yeah, I love that work, and I enjoy it. I

That's cool, and something we didn't know about

you. So tell me a little bit about your background and and if

nursing chose you, or you chose nursing,

Dr. Katie Boston-Leary: yeah, oh boy. I think I can't say that. I

guess eventually I chose nursing, but I fell into

nursing. I had no aspirations to be a nurse. I didn't have any

relatives that were I hadn't had a health scare that made me want

to which is a typical story, or for myself or a relative. So I

graduated from high school, I took a year off to find myself,

and while I was finding myself, I was working at a nursing home

with my cousin who we were roommates, and I just followed

her, because, you know, I kind of looked up to her. And then

while, after about a year working there, gentlemen came

into the lounge, the lounge where I was having dinner, and

he said, announced that the county I was we were living in,

which was in Virginia, was offering free tuition and and

the cover of expenses to build people in to pursue allied

health careers. And at the time, I said no, because I was going

to be an accountant, and this was just a for now gig for me,

and he threatened me to not show up at work the next day without

the information. From the college, and I was so

embarrassed and reluctant at the same time, but I went to the

school at the last minute, and I was running late to go back to

work the next day, and I had to take the materials with me, and

I was just going to take it to him, to shut him up, to show

that I did it and I but I was exploring another career that I

thought may be an opportunity for me, which was to be in

occupational health. But that line was so long and I was

running late for work, so I went to the shortest line, and that

was a line to become a registered nurse, and that's how

I became a nurse. I kept going. They kept calling me, and I kept

advancing further in the process. And here I am, 31 years

later in the profession.

It's incredible. So can you tell me, what do you

love about nursing? And then we're going to ask a converse

question. Is that you know what had frustrated you about

nursing? And you can answer those whatever order you want.

Dr. Katie Boston-Leary: Sure, I think what I love about nursing

is the impact that you have on people. Like we're with people

with the best with your story, Howard, we're with people with

the best and at the best and worst times of their lives. And

sometimes you're able to turn the worst time of their lives

into some of the best times of their lives. And and

unfortunately, in some cases, people get surprised. It goes

the other way, especially in, you know, maternal health and

things like that. But the impact that we have on people, and the

lasting memory that we have on people as nurses is one of the

things that I love about the profession. What frustrates me

sometimes is the fact that we have a shared vision of what

nursing should be, but we tend to differ on how to get there,

which tends to be polarizing, and we don't, you know, link

arms as often as we should. So that's the part that disappoints

me sometimes, and then I'll add a second is not all patients are

kind to nurses. Would love to see workplace violence not be a

thing anymore in terms of patients harming nurses. So

those are my two that. Wow, yeah.

So you're immersed in nursing, you're advising,

you're in academics of it, but also the American Nurses

Association. Will you share a little bit about that

organization and what they do? And I have to tell you that I

dug into the research a little bit. It's a pretty incredible

organization, and it's representing a lot of people in

nursing,

Dr. Katie Boston-Leary: yeah, yeah. We are the premier

organization that represents the over 5 million nurses in the

country. We have three arms or three factions, if you will,

within the enterprise. One is Ana proper, where it's

government affairs, nursing practice, work, environment,

innovation. And then we have our credentialing arm, which is

ANCC, where organizations and individuals who get credentialed

and and certified. And then we have our foundation, which

understandably, is where we do philanthropy efforts. So those

are the three main arms of our organization. We do a lot of

work to raise issues of nurses to those that can impact the

profession, whether it's legislative or financially. In

terms of organizations that are willing to fund a lot of the

things that we need to do to advance a profession, and we

also set up standards of excellence and for organizations

and for nurses as well with the programs we have with

certifications and some programs we have for mentoring. We are

doing work to understand the different generations and what

they need, so we try to cover the gamut, and we also partner

with other nurses associations. We have organizational

affiliates that we work with, and we have state affiliates

from around the country that we also partner with, where there's

local work being done at the state level,

I would say I'm super impressed with the amount

of education and reach and support of the organization.

It's it's quite impressive. So thanks for sharing that. I

wanted to get into a little bit of the state of nursing today,

all right, because we're coming off of a pandemic, and I was

doing a little research, and I'd like you to, you know, comment

about where things are at and where things are going, because

you also mentioned that you have a little bit of technology and

AI, you know, that. Coming down the line, and it's going to

affect us all. It's still early, but let's start with what's

going on in the workplace, and talk about couple of the big

issues that are facing nurses, good and bad.

Dr. Katie Boston-Leary: Sure, sure. Well, the number one issue

that we that has been a challenge to address is really

building work environments that nurses practice in to become

healthier and healthier, not from a standpoint of making sure

they're healthy foods, even though that would be a good

thing too, but it's really about how the system and the way

nurses work contributes to them not being healthy and healthy

from a holistic standpoint, not just physical health, but also

mental health, some of the compassion fatigue that they

have to deal with every day, and things like that. So have

building a healthy work environment is one of the number

one issues, and and rainbow chasing that we're doing to

address at least reducing the exodus of talent that's

happening in nursing, particularly in the place where

patients are the sickest, in most cases, which are hospitals.

Um, for sure, yeah. Then you have nurses overall health and

well being that needs to be improved as well. Um, where

nurses are not in their best in the best shape is as it relates

to their their overall health and well being the environment.

And we're open systems, because they're humans. We have holes.

So when the environment's not healthy, of course, nurses are

also not healthy and and even the healthiest environments,

with what we have to deal with as nurses, you had a great

outcome, Howard when you know when you had your diagnosis, but

some not so much. And and nurses carry that, and then it

compounds over time, because we see our own fragility, or how

fragile we are as human being, and frail we are because of what

we see in our patients. And and we carry that with us. I have

memories from my time in practice that I still can speak

to with as if it is like it happened yesterday.

No at Katie catering, I'm one of the miracle

men. I mean, I get a 4% chance of six months with a stage four

colorectal cancer diagnosis, and I look in the mirror every day

and say, I'm blessed, I am lucky, and I am grateful because

I my cancer burden wasn't too great. I was not called to

heaven. So I get it, but I the nurses see all sides of it, and

unfortunately they do see that. And we know that one of the

particular things that you hear about is that burnout and

stress, and it's got to be real, right, especially coming off of

the pandemic, and is that transition translating into like

shortages of nurses, or are the med schools getting filled up

again? Could you speak to that?

Dr. Katie Boston-Leary: Yeah, I can speak to more nursing

schools, because in nursing programs, we do know that we

have another dynamic, where nurses, aspiring nurses, are

turned away somewhere in the neighborhood of 70 to 100,000

nurses, aspiring nurses that are turned away every year because

we don't have enough faculty. So we do have that, but we do also

see that there's a potential because of what the public has

been exposed to in terms of the challenges that exist in

healthcare. Some people are actually saying maybe not, and

we also have nurses that are saying maybe not, and they're

keeping their license, but they're doing other things so

but yes, well being and staffing are correlate very much. So we

collect data and we do research to understand what it

contributes to nurses overall health and well being,

positively and negatively, and staffing was one of the number

one issues that nurses outlined that impacts their well being

while they're at work, because that really means that you have

to work harder. You're worried that they're you're worried

about the care that you're going to provide. You worry about your

license. There's so many things that come to mind when you don't

have the right staffing. Nurses want to be safe. They also want

to be seen, and they want to be supported. So those are key

things that has to be addressed for nurses to want to stay in

the profession.

Yeah, no, very, very valid. Also, you know, the

hospitals themselves, they listen you're treating patients.

So they tend to get dirty. They need to be cleaned. There's

sometimes lifting involved. I know that if you're you know,

turning patients over, no one's around. You're doing it

yourself, and that's probably not the smartest decision, but

the patient needs to be turned over so they don't get bed

stores and so safety on the job and all that as well. And so.

I've, you know, spent quite a bit of time. And you know what?

I have to tell you, they're the nurses are one of the best and

busiest multitaskers. I know they're doing like, seven things

at once, unfortunately. And that's a hard, hard burden to

keep up constantly and to keep up. And, you know, everybody

thinks they want the nurse right now. They want their nurse. Wow.

And the nurses like taking care of potentially five to seven, I

don't know 1010, assigned bodies. That's a lot, so I see

that

Dr. Katie Boston-Leary: probably not 10, but yeah, that's one of

the research shows that it and you make a great point, nurses

have to contend with so much at the same time. But our data also

shows that's part of the moral distress that nurses have,

because they leave every day realizing that they didn't get

to the things that they really should, should do during those

shifts that they have to work. And it's important to understand

that that is contributing to their that burnout piece,

because you don't feel that you're contributing, you don't

feel that you're making a difference. And I'll never

forget, a nursing student mentioned to me in one of my

talks that she's been she's had a number of careers before she

got into nursing, and she said there's not a job that I've seen

that requires so much from one person within a short period of

time. So there's so much that we have to address in that space

and and we have to address how we can reduce the physical

burden and cognitive burden that nurses have to carry. We

acknowledge that the the emotional burdens will be there

because we want to absorb your pain and a lot of what you're

dealing with when you are not in your best state, but the

physical and cognitive burdens. We can certainly do work there

to remove those, or at least mitigate those.

Yeah, well, I say the compassion that they offer

to me, I was trying to offer that back because they have

families and lives outside of the workplace. It's a job, it's,

it's, it's income, but we need to have that compassion, you

know, go two ways. It's that. So I, you know, when I think of,

you know a nurse, you know, you think of Florence Nightingale,

but you have a nurse role model.

Dr. Katie Boston-Leary: I do i and this is someone in our

history, particularly for black nurses, but Mary Mahoney is

mine. She we there. There's very limited that's out there in

terms of her history, but she was the first black nurse to

graduate from a formal program in the US. And from what we know

about her, she was a small in stature type of person, but big

in terms of impact and power, particularly towards the end of

her life and and organizing and really being a part of the

efforts for women to be able to vote and and even though she was

trained formally in an institution because of her race,

she wasn't allowed to practice in those same institutions that

impacted her livelihood. And when she died, she didn't have

much to her name, but she was a proud woman, and she was known

for always buying burial plots for people that could not

afford. And even though she passed away without having much,

she made sure she had hers. But there's so much in between birth

and death for her in her story that really makes me want to

stand tall because I didn't have it as bad as she did. But also

know that that pride and, you know, sticking my chest out and

and having my chin up during bad times, I think of her, and I

say, I I, these are, these are, these are now nowhere near what

she had to contend with. So I can, I can win this battle of

war. And if I don't, I'll come back another day.

I love it, and I'm going to actually put that in

the show notes and incorporate that, do a little research and

and share that with the audience of listeners and people watching

as well. Fascinating. I again, I learned something new, and now

I'm going to pursue a little more in depth there. So I'd like

you to we're coming close to the end of the show, but I do want

to mention this community that you guys have, healthy nurses,

healthy nation. Could you talk a little bit about

Dr. Katie Boston-Leary: that? Yeah, healthy nurse. Healthy

nation is a free program open to anyone. Even though it's for

nurses and its title is such, it's open to anyone to be be a

part of our community. We do challenges every month where

we'll do drink water challenges, and you get a text message that

will say, this is a challenge to drink water. So make sure you do

this is how much you drink every day. We have a challenge right

now where nurses should see themselves as patients. And you

know, initially you read that, you think about that what we

don't want that. But actually it's really to help with

stimulating self care for you to really care for yourself as much

as or close to the way you care for others. We have that, we

have a social media community that we've built that's 400,000

nurses strong or. People strong, where we hear people exchanging

ideas on how they maintain their health or sustain their health.

And we also offer a heat map survey that you can complete

that we just revised, where you can see how you compare in six

domains of health to other people in our database, other

nurses in our database. So you can take it again after you make

some changes to see whether you've improved. So I invite

everyone to check it out. Check it out. Our website is hnhn.org

easy. Hnhn.org That's awesome. Well, we are at

that time of the show. I'm going to ask you to put on your

glasses. You've got some cool white ones like me. So we're

together here, and this is the shining brightly spotlight on

you, Katie. And I want you to tell people how the best could

reach you, get in touch with you, and then share some

inspiration as we close out the show.

Dr. Katie Boston-Leary: Well, I'm on LinkedIn, so you can

certainly find me there. And then I'm also on on x, which

used to be Twitter, Katie K boss, with the ad sign before

it. And what I would like to share, hmm, I would say it's

about leading. And this is a quote that I did get from

Reverend Raphael Warnock a couple years ago when he won his

election. He talked about leading and loving. And he says,

to lead the people, you need to love the people, to love the

people, you need to know the people and to know the people

you need to walk amongst the people. That's what we should

try to be. Because, after all, we're all just trying to be

better humans every day.

I love it. Wow, wow, wow. That was impressive,

amazing. I want to actually close out the show and just tell

you that. I have to tell you that nurses and people that

choose that career and way of life are just angels on earth,

and I'm so thankful that I've been able to be blessed in the

two different cancer bouts, and even when I go into the

emergency room that you know, normally getting very great

compassionate care and and I just, this is why I wanted to

feature you on the on the show. So this has been the shining

brightly show. You can reach me, Howard Brown, Mr. Shining

brightly. At shining brightly.com. And there you can

find my book. And it's, it's really a life guide to living a

resilient life with hope. Hope being the key there. There's

just fantastic stories that you can apply to your own making

Dr. Katie Boston-Leary: Hope is making a comeback that was in

Michelle Obama's speech. So there you go. They get

a huge comeback at the DNC, right? And so it's

exciting times. And so I think I was a little ahead of the game

there. But hope is so important. It's the fuel that gets us

through the darkness. And Ben also, if you want me to come and

speak at your event or fundraiser or workshop, always

willing to entertain that as well. And then certainly this

podcast is reaching lots of people, but my advocacy is so

important to me in the cancer world, in the entrepreneurship

world and interfaith world as well. So please, I'm

interactive. Reach out to me, and we'll close out the show by

just letting you know that if you choose to shine brightly,

just a little bit each day for yourself, make sure that you're

all you're all feeling good, you know, emotionally, physically,

you know career wise and in relationships, and if you

actually go lift up others, which nurses do, and Katie, you

do all the time, lift up others, use that light, okay, we become

a force multiplier for good and positive change. And yes, okay,

the world will become a better place. It's just been a

pleasure. Thank you so much, Katie Boston-Leary

Dr. Katie Boston-Leary: Thanks for being the miracle that you are.

I am blessed. So I am lucky. So keep shining

brightly out there always, and I will say thank you to my read

the spirit magazine as well as front edge publishing, and then

amplify you and the diamond moments magazine, who helped me

look good and feel good all the time. So again, you've been

listening and watching to the shiny, brightly podcast and

again. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.