The Handoff

Our guest for this episode is Dr. Patricia Pittman , a Professor of Health Policy and Management and the Director of the Health Workforce Research Center at George Washington. Dr. Pittman is part of a team of researchers working on the Moral Injury Project, the aim of which is to inform the healthcare industry and the broader public about the challenges facing nurses and about the importance of sy...

Our guest for this episode has a truly remarkable story. At 26, Paul Coyne suffered a stroke while working as a derivatives analyst at Goldman Sachs. Rather than slowing him down, the stroke and the nurses who cared for him inspired Paul to pursue a career in healthcare, and over the next four years, he earned five degrees, including a Doctorate from Columbia University School of Nursing, an MBA i...

Our guest for this episode is Nan Henderson, DNP, MSN-Ed, RN, a former critical care nurse who is an expert in patient safety, particularly as it relates to handoffs.  After a series of internal surveys revealed that handoffs were consistently an issue within her organization, Nan and her team focused on completely overhauling their process. Starting with a literature review and focus groups with...

Our guest for this episode is Jana Bitton , the executive director for the Oregon Center for Nursing . Jana is as passionate an advocate for the nursing profession as you will find and is focused on helping the nurses in her state find work and advance their careers.  Today Jana gives Dan an update on the situation in Oregon and what she's hearing from nurses on the frontlines as the state battles...

Tiffany Gibson likes to refer to herself as a troublemaker and a nurse agitator -- two labels that Dr. Nurse Dan can absolutely get behind!  Tiffany is a pediatric nurse turned professional development specialist who helps nurses become more effective leaders. Her focus is on asking hard questions, disrupting old narratives and empowering a new generation of culturally competent nurses.  In their...

"It starts with you, but it's not about you." That's the mantra of today's guests when it comes to nurse leadership. Dr. Lucy Leclerc and Dr. Kay Kennedy are passionate about helping nurse leaders improve their skills by focusing first on personal transformation, and they have a book on this topic coming out before the end of the year. Lucy and Kay's work is inspired by the idea that healthcare le...

Our guest for this episode has spent his entire career in healthcare education, trying to close the gap between education and practice and give clinicians and healthcare leaders the skills they need to be successful.  Today, Geoffrey Roche is a Senior Vice President at Dignity Health Global Education, where he helps create professional development and higher education programs that are shaped by t...

Workplace violence against nurses has been a longstanding issue, particularly in the ED. A landmark study published by the Emergency Nurses Association in 2011 found that more than half of emergency nurses had been the victim of workplace violence in the preceding seven days, and a third had considered leaving the profession as a direct result.  My guest today is a 20-year veteran of the ED and th...

The Handoff will return from summer break in September with a brand new season. The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed the nursing profession into a new and uncertain chapter. Nurses have never played a more vital role in our healthcare system, but they've also never faced more challenges, including burnout and mental health issues, massive generational differences amongst nurses, staff shortages and st...

In honor of Pride Month, we're re-releasing our interview with   Dr. James Simmons , a nurse practitioner and thought leader who has appeared everywhere from Good Morning America to CBS and NBC to People magazine. He's also amassed a large social following on Twitter and Instagram, where he answers health-related questions from the public at the handle @AsktheNP.  James is an outspoken advocate of...

We're wrapping up season three of the show with a very special episode in honor of Nurses Week 2021 and Mental Health Awareness Month. Joining Dr. Nurse Dan are two very special nurses who have been working on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic: Tayler Oakes and Tina Vinsant .  Tayler, Tina and Dan had a very candid conversation about what the last year has been like for them, how their menta...

Our guest for this episode is one of the leading voices in the conversation around clinician mental health. Dr. Bernadette Melnyk is the Vice President for Health Promotion, the University Chief Wellness Officer, and the dean of the College of Nursing at The Ohio State University. She is nationally recognized as an expert on evidence-based approaches to a wide range of healthcare and wellness chal...

Our guests for this episode are pushing healthcare leaders to shed their old ideas about leadership and develop a new, healthier and more collaborative approach to managing teams and facilitating change. Dr. Kathy Scott and Bridget Sarikas are the founders of L3 Fusion, a boutique consulting firm whose approach is informed by their dual clinical and business expertise. They are also the co-authors...

Our guest for this episode is Dr. Scharmaine Lawson , a nationally recognized and award-winning nurse practitioner. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing and the American Association of Nurse Practitioners, and a winner of New Orleans magazine's Healthcare Hero award.  Dr. Lawson has a thriving housecall practice in New Orleans, which she started in 2004. She takes a non-traditional,...

The pandemic has upended many things in healthcare, one of which is the way we think about nurse staffing. Our guest for this episode is Betty Jo Rocchio, Senior Vice President & System Chief Nursing Officer for Mercy.  Mercy has been in the midst of rolling out a new hub-based approach to their nursing workforce that allows them to more flexibly staff up and down with full-time and contingent nur...

Our guest for this episode is Dr. Joanne Spetz , a professor of Health Policy Studies, Family and Community Medicine, and Nursing at UCSF. She's also a researcher who focuses on the economics of the healthcare workforce, and her insights into the nursing workforce are more relevant than ever in the midst of a pandemic that has stretched our supply of nurses to the breaking point.  In this conversa...

In recent years, the issues of moral injury and moral suffering have become widely discussed within the field of nursing. These conversations have taken on particular urgency as the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed many nurses to death and patient suffering on an unprecedented scale.  Our guest for this episode is Dr. Cynda Rushton , a Professor of Clinical Ethics at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institut...

In the spring of 2020, Duke University hospital adopted a restricted visitation policy in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, making it impossible for patients to see their families in person. Two nurses in the ICU at Duke's Heart Center quickly created a program to empower virtual visits via iPad.   Working in partnership with Duke's School of Nursing, frontline staff and the Heart Center's leader...

The state of North Dakota has been an unlikely area of focus in the second half of the COVID-19 pandemic, first for the state's incredibly high infection rate, then for the governor's controversial decision to ask nurses who had tested positive for COVID-19 to continue working, and now, as one of the states with the highest vaccination rates.  Our guest for this episode is Tessa Johnson. Tessa is...

For nurses with a passion for technology, the time has never been better to explore non-traditional career opportunities. Early in her career, our guest for this episode, Molly McCarthy, did exactly that -- stepping away from the beside to pursue her passion in medical device design and health technology. After stints at Philips and Natus, she landed at Microsoft, where she served as the Chief Nur...

To wrap up our interview series for Black History Month, we are re-releasing a very special episode from our archives with Ashley Sayles . Ashley is a pediatric nurse practitioner living and working in Baltimore who has been very open about her brushes with racism and her experience being the only black nurse on her unit. She joined Dr. Nurse Dan late last year to talk about how pivotal conversati...

Our third interview in honor of Black History Month is with Dr. James Simmons , a nurse practitioner and thought leader who has appeared everywhere from Good Morning America to CBS and NBC to People magazine. He's also amassed a large social following on Twitter and Instagram, where he answers health-related questions from the public at the handle @AsktheNP.  James is an outspoken advocate of both...

Our second interview in honor of Black History Month is with Dr. Ernest Grant. Dr. Grant made history in January of 2020 when he became the first-ever male president of the American Nurses Association. Across his long and storied career, Dr. Grant has worked tirelessly to advocate for nurses and attract more people to the profession.  In this conversation, he tells Dr. Nurse Dan about the ANA's pr...

Today's episode kicks off a series of interviews in support of Black History Month. For the next four weeks, we'll be featuring conversations with leading voices in the Black nursing community around topics like building a more diverse nursing workforce, creating inclusive workplaces and providing equitable patient care. Our first conversation is with Dr. Rumay Alexander . Rumay is currently a pro...

The challenges facing nurses and nurse leaders are bigger and more urgent than ever before, and our guest for this episode is an expert on a topic that is on the minds of nearly every healthcare worker: how to process the collective trauma that has been inflicted as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.  Dr. Diana Hendel is the former long-time CEO of Long Beach Memorial. In 2009, one of her employee...