Radical Nurse Talk

This episode of Radical Nurse Talk features Dr. Aric Rankin sharing his nearly 20 years of experience working in Indigenous health care across remote and urban settings. The conversation explores building trust and therapeutic relationships with Indigenous patients through humility, cultural respect, and ongoing learning. Dr. Rankin highlights the influence of place and history on care delivery an...

In this episode, we explore the sensitive and complex topic of Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) in Canada, a legal medical procedure that can raise profound questions for nurses, health professionals, and the public alike. Our guests, Paul Magennis, RN and Kim Carlson, RN, are experienced registered nurses and educators from British Columbia who bring years of expertise in palliative care and MA...

In this episode of Radical Nurse Talk, Patricia Strachan is joined by Jennifer Campagnolo and Mallory Peters to discuss the “Be Prepared Guides”, a practical resource designed to help family caregivers recognize and respond to palliative care emergencies. They share how these tools can reduce unwanted hospital visits, ease suffering, and empower caregivers to provide compassionate support at home....

In this episode, Dr. Connie Schumacher, RN, PhD and Associate Professor at Brock University, explores how nurse-led conversations can support people with chronic illness to manage their health, avoid emergency department visits, and live well at home. Drawing on over 25 years of clinical experience and current research into caregiver burden and chronic disease, Dr. Schumacher offers practical insi...

In this thought-provoking episode, Dr. Elise Tarbi invites us to move beyond traditional models of clinical communication and explore the deeper, more human side of nursing. Rather than focusing solely on information delivery, Dr. Tarbi emphasizes the relational and existential aspects of serious illness conversations — the kind of dialogue that helps patients and families feel truly seen and hear...

How do you effectively communicate with people who require prolonged mechanical ventilation and thus cannot vocalize? How can we better connect with people who cannot speak for themselves? What assumptions do we have that need to be challenged? What practical tips and tools could improve and humanize communication and therefore patient safety - for you, the nurse and for patients and their familie...

For generations, people have been judged, shamed, and blamed for their weight-by families, friends, healthcare practitioners, and society at large. These messages become so deeply internalized that many of us don’t even recognize when we’re turning that judgment inward. Why do so many patients describe themselves as “bad” for what they eat? How did food choices become a moral issue? In this episod...

Although much of the conversation around health focuses on illness, this episode takes a different path—delving into the complex realities faced by pregnant individuals navigating socioeconomic vulnerabilities. We explore how precarious housing, mental health crises, substance use, past trauma, and intimate partner violence can intersect to put both mother and baby at risk before and after birth....

Throughout any given shift, regardless of the practice setting, nurses regularly provide care to individuals who are grieving or have experienced various forms of loss. But what about the nurses themselves? How are they coping? Nurses grieve too. In this episode, Cory Burdock shines a light on the often-overlooked reality of nurses’ grief, acknowledging it as a normal and genuine part of the healt...

Birgit Umaigba is a registered nurse and PhD student at Queen's University's School of Nursing. She is also a thought leader, speaker, health equity advocate, nurse educator, and consultant. At the heart of her work is a commitment to integrating an equity-focused perspective into nursing, particularly in addressing the needs of Black, Indigenous, and racialized communities. Patricia Strachan, hos...

In this heartfelt episode, Mahoganie Hines delves into the critical role of nurses in advocating for patient-centred care at the end of life. With passion and expertise, Mahoganie highlights how nurses serve as the steady presence—the calm in the storm—when patients are facing decline and when families are overwhelmed by difficult decisions. She passionately argues that advocacy is not just a role...

All over the world nurses work with seriously ill patients and their families, often in significantly under resourced conditions, difficult geographies, and within diverse cultural contexts. How can these nurses be supported to optimize their relational work in serious illness? In this episode, Erin Das, a Canadian-trained advanced practice nurse based in Nairobi, Kenya, explores the challenges an...

Have you ever asked a patient about their resuscitation preferences? Or what we refer to as code status—whether they would want their heart restarted if it stopped? Most nurses have asked this question in some form during various practice encounters. While it might seem like a straightforward inquiry, there is much more beneath the surface. In this episode, Dr. Sharyn Milnes, an Australian critica...

In this episode, we explore the intersection of nursing and the arts—a rare but powerful combination in healthcare. In January 2024, The Telegraph, a renowned UK news outlet, featured an article titled "The Nurse Who Helps Dying Patients Write Poetry." The nurse at the centre of this story is Rekha Vijayshankar, a trailblazer in the field of palliative care. Rekha joins us to share poignant storie...

How can a Chief Nursing Officer influence conversations about serious illness? In this episode, Patricia Strachan explores this question with Dr. Leigh Chapman, a dedicated nurse and leader who is advocating at the highest levels across Canada to improve working conditions for nurses—helping them not only stay in the profession but thrive. And when nurses thrive, patients benefit too. Leigh Chapma...

How can nurses be involved in decisions that patients make about innovative heart valve interventions for which they may be eligible? In this episode Dr. Sandra Lauck thoughtfully describes her work and that of others in supporting nurses to have opportunities and language that open spaces for patients to question, understand and consider possible therapies. In this way she offers radical possibil...

How can we show up in our relational work with seriously ill patients, and for ourselves as nurses in the moments that are available to us? Grounded in professional and personal experience and yes, even the theoretical, Marie Cooper calls on each of us to stand up, use language and claim the relational work that makes what we do, nursing. Her passionate and articulate commitment to that effort wil...

It is well known that despite our best intentions preventable harm continues to happen to patients in healthcare systems. Further harm to patients, their families and to healthcare professionals, including nurses, can be made worse by the ways we then handle and/or talk about this unintentional harm. How can we talk about it in a way that doesn't incur further harm? In this episode, Jo Wailling in...

What do we mean when we talk about a good death? How can we describe the meaningful communicative work that nurses can do with dying patients and their families? In this episode, Patricia Strachan welcomes Dr. David Wright, a registered nurse, educator, and researcher. Dr. Wright is an Associate Professor at the University of Ottawa, and academic lead for Palliative Care and Nursing Ethics within...

As a practicing Registered Nurse with extensive experience working in acute, critical, and community care settings, Janet Lovegrove has heard many caregivers' stories about feeling alone, overwhelmed, or invisible when providing care to people living with dementia or other progressive life-limiting illnesses. Sensing a real need that what most of them wanted was to be heard, to belong, and to be a...

Context is very important in healthcare. In this episode, we explore the context created at the intersection of geography, history, language, culture, and healthcare resources when Indigenous people in Canada’s far north require care for serious illness. Our guest, Lianne Mantla-Look, is a Registered Nurse currently living and working in northern Canada. She has worked extensively in clinical role...

Have you ever thought of communication as a vital sign for patients in the intensive care unit? In this episode, you will hear Kali Dayton, DNP AGACNP and critical care outcomes consultant, share her passion for using evidence that promotes what she terms "Awake and Walking ICUs." Communication is key to the ABCDEF bundle – a group of interventions associated with helping patients do better in the...

Communicating with people living with advancing dementia and who require care can be challenging and frustrating for everyone. Despite our best intentions, dementia is a serious progressive life limiting illness that has major consequences for the person diagnosed with dementia, their families and family caregivers. In this episode Mary Buck, an expert in fostering more effective communication pra...

Having a baby is supposed to be a very happy event, but when a baby is diagnosed with a potentially life-threatening condition in the perinatal period, families are faced with new realities and require special support and understanding. Jennifer Callen is a Nurse Practitioner with 20 years of experience in neonatal intensive care. She currently works with the Quality of Life and Advanced Care Prog...

Everyone needs access to an inclusive, equitable palliative approach to care. Palliative and end of life care is regarded in the western world as a necessary service to which everyone is entitled, and yet if we look closely, significant inequities exist in people living on the margins of societal norms, such as those who are homeless and without support who do not have equal access to such care. I...