The Conversing Nurse podcast

Send us Fan Mail Today’s guest is Dr. Craig Thompson , a Doctor of Acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine, with a background in kinesiology and more than two decades of experience in physiotherapy and rehabilitation. It’s hard to believe his journey into this specialty started with a good deed. His work blends Orthopedic Acupuncture with Traditional Chinese Medicine, focusing on non-pharmaco...

Send us Fan Mail There are people in the hospital who walk into the room when everything is falling apart. Not to fix it or rush through, but simply to be there. Today’s guest, Mark Wilson, lives in that space—right in the emergency room, where life can change in a single moment. Where nurses are moving fast, families are trying to make sense of the unthinkable, and patients are meeting some of th...

Send us Fan Mail I don't know when side hustles became a thing but they are officially a thing. Instead of picking up extra shifts, nurses are picking up side hustles. Enter Josh Condado, a certified registered nurse anesthesiologist who co-owns a real estate investing company with his sister Jenn and brother-in-law Colin, also, you guessed it, nurses. Now, the current annual salary for a CRN...

Send us Fan Mail There’s a certain kind of pain a lot of people learn to live with. It starts as something small—a twinge, a tightness, a bad shift at work. And then, slowly, it becomes part of your normal. You stretch it out, push through it, tell yourself it’s just part of the job… part of getting older… part of life. And if you work in healthcare, you probably know this story all too well. You...

Send us Fan Mail Meet Gwen Sledge, a retired nurse and Certified Enneagram Coach. Gwen has a deep understanding of the Enneagram and is passionate about using her healthcare experience to help nurses understand how their personality, communication style, and behavior affect their relationships.  Not sure what the Enneagram is? I wasn’t either but I learned it’s a personality typing tool that categ...

Send us Fan Mail You’re going to love this one. Today I’m talking with Seth Radnothy, a fellow nurse whose path into healthcare is anything but typical. Before he ever stepped into a hospital, he was serving as a Reconnaissance Marine—and if that doesn’t tell you something about his ability to stay calm under pressure, just wait. Seth’s worked as a paramedic and in both emergency and perioperative...

Send us Fan Mail Jennifer is an engaging person with a varied nursing background spanning almost two decades. From L&D, critical care, flight nursing, and now in a Director role, she tells us how her experiences made her a better flight nurse.  I especially love our 'Five Minute Snippet' at the end where we get to see Jennifer on a more personal level. Lots of laughs were enjoyed! Fo...

Send us Fan Mail Today’s guest is someone who beautifully bridges two worlds—science and story, medicine and meaning. Amanda Skenandore is an award-winning author of historical fiction whose novels have been translated into multiple languages and recognized by organizations like the American Library Association, Reader’s Digest, Silicon Valley Reads, and Apple Books. In 2024, she was honored with...

Send us Fan Mail Philip Layog is known as the "Work From Home RN" on Instagram, where he helps fellow nurses transition from hospital roles to remote positions. But first, he had to help himself.   Philip started his nursing career in Med-Surg, moved to CVICU, then PACU, but once he started his family, he decided to explore remote nursing opportunities. With a decade of experience, he ev...

Send us Fan Mail **Hey, before we jump into today's episode, I want to give you a quick heads-up. This conversation includes a personal story about an attempted suicide and some mental health struggles. If that's something that feels heavy or triggering for you right now, it's completely ok to skip this episode or come back to it another time. Take care of yourself first. If you&apo...

Send us Fan Mail My guest this week, Irnise Williams, has been a nurse for 16 years. Starting with her eye on medical school, she opted for nursing school, fell in love, and never looked back. Because if you’re looking back, you can’t look forward, and forward was the direction Irnise wanted to go. She could have advanced her degree by becoming a Nurse practitioner or a CRNA, two popular paths ove...

Send us Fan Mail Today’s episode is Nicole Cromwell 2.0 —and trust me, a lot has happened in the last three years. What started as a creative outlet has grown into something much bigger. In fact, Nicole’s life as an artist might just be giving her full-time nursing career a run for its money. Since we last talked in episode 46,  she hasn’t just been creating beautiful art—she’s been building pathw...

Send us Fan Mail If you're my age and can remember over 50 years ago, you might recall those lazy Saturday mornings spent watching Schoolhouse Rock. There was a clever cartoon skit called, “I’m Just A Bill” where we’d learn how a bill becomes law. This three-minute video was responsible for teaching an entire generation of kids about Civics. Enter Gilanie De Castro, also known as Citizen Nurs...

Send us Fan Mail Today, we’re talking about something that most nurses have felt — but few organizations are willing to name honestly. Burnout. But what if burnout isn’t about resilience? What if it isn’t about self-care? What if it’s actually an ethical issue? My guest today is Aimee Ellis , nurse executive and author of Flatline Ethics . Aimee argues that when nurses are chronically overwhelmed,...

Send us Fan Mail I've often said on this podcast that many nurses choose this profession for reasons that aren't noble or lofty. Alisha Sandidge-Renteria changed that for me.  As a teenager, she witnessed the economic disparity in healthcare after seeing her mother, who was fighting cancer, be forced to choose a cheaper, experimental, and less effective regimen which ultimately ended her...

Send us Fan Mail If nursing is consistently ranked as the most trusted profession in America… Why do so many nurses feel unheard inside their own workplaces? That question has been on my mind. On this podcast:  We talk about burnout.  We talk about staffing.  We talk about leadership. But underneath all of it is something deeper — culture. And culture is hard to change. Not because nurses don’t ca...

Send us Fan Mail Enjoy this short! Sit back and laugh with me and my girl, Jessica, as we have a bit of fun in the closet! Jessica's Instagram   https://www.instagram.com/dream.2.b.free/ ICYMI: Conversing with a Flight Nurse: Jennifer Caposella : https://www.buzzsprout.com/Conversing with a Flight Nurse: Jennifer Caposella Contact The Conversing Nurse podcast Instagram: https://www.instagram....

Send us Fan Mail Heather Vails, MSN Ed. RNC-NIC, is definitely in my badass nurse category. She has lived with the rare genetic disorder Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, or EDS, for decades. She has not only lived, she’s thrived. After a long career as a NICU nurse, she recently left the bedside, a place she loved dearly to venture into teaching our new generation of nurses as a Professor of Pediatrics. Li...

Send us Fan Mail Today’s guest has one of those careers that doesn’t follow a straight line—and that’s exactly what makes it powerful. Julie Smith’s professional path looks a bit like a zig-zag, but every turn adds depth. She began in communications, pivoted into emergency nursing, focused on safety net populations and disaster relief, moved into education, and now serves as a clinical product lea...

Send us Fan Mail I really enjoyed talking with Kirby Williams, a Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner.  She gave us the deets on where a PMHNP can work, the training required, the subspecialties, as well as the heaviness of the job, and how she cares for her own mental health. Her students are lucky to have her as a mentor and her patients, as their provider. In the 5-minute snippet, I abs...

Send us Fan Mail This week, my guest is Tracy Hicks , a doctorally-prepared and dual-certified family and psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner. She also holds an MBA, which is particularly useful in her role as a CEO. Tracy is the founder of C-Trilogy Comprehensive Clinical Care and C-Trilogy Outreach, a certified community behavioral health clinic that provides mental health services, sub...

Send us Fan Mail **CAUTION** This episode discussed suicide, suicidal ideation, drug dependency. PROCEED WITH CAUTION. This is a chronology of my serious health scare in 2025 and my subsequent dependency on Xanax.  During this time I suffered suicidal ideation. I was aware of the resources available to me and I didn't reach out. Please don't make the same mistake and suffer needlessly. H...

Send us Fan Mail If you've been listening to the podcast for a while you’ve heard me say that we would be discussing bullying and, I’m happy to report that after over 65 episodes, I'm finally doing that.  And I'm not only talking about it, I'm talking to the expert about it. My guest, Dr. Phyllis Quinlan, a Ph. D.-prepared nurse,  literally wrote the book on Bullying and Chroni...

Send us Fan Mail Tiffany Gibson is a radical nurse leader who has been featured in Oprah Daily and Ebony magazines and proudly shares her two cents on social media and through her podcast. So when she manifested her goal on LinkedIn to book twelve speaking engagements this year, I jumped at the opportunity to invite her to be my guest because her wisdom for nurses cannot go unheard. Tiffany is an...

Send us Fan Mail Dr. Bonny Kehm is the Founding Dean and Assistant Provost of the College of Nursing and Health Sciences at Columbia Southern University. She’s an accomplished nurse educator, researcher, and leader whose work has had a substantial influence at both the state and national levels. Appointed to the Missouri State Board of Nursing back in 2017, Dr. Kehm went on to serve as board presi...