How to start a career in health media? Ask Nurse Alice Explains

[00:00:00] Jared: Hello everyone and welcome to the medDesign podcast. Today we're honored to have Nurse Alice Benjamin with us, nurse practitioner, entrepreneur, and media personality who's become a trusted voice of reason and compassion in healthcare. We're diving into her role in educating the public on a national stage during some of the most challenging times in health care.

Nurse Alice has been at the forefront, deepening to find complex medical information and empowering communities through her platforms, AskNurseAlice. com and TheMediaRx. com. Her journey from the bedside to becoming a media personality and entrepreneur is incredibly inspiring. We'll explore how she transitioned from clinical practice to the public eye, balancing multiple roles and maintaining her dedication to medical education and advocacy.

Nurse Alice is master of translating these medical concepts into actionable knowledge has not only benefited her patients, but also millions of viewers and listeners nationwide. So welcome Nurse Alice. We're happy to have you on the show.

[00:00:53] Nurse Alice: Thank you so much. I'm delighted to be here.

[00:00:56] Jared: Thank you. And so, as I mentioned, you're a voice of reason and compassion in the media during really a very challenging time in health care these days. And so what's been really a moment that's most impactful your journey while you're educating the public? On such a, yeah, national stage.

[00:01:15] Nurse Alice: You know, I think I have several moments, but I would say, one of the most, I'll say what the two are.

One is with COVID 19 pandemic and the other was with the launch of the Affordable Care Act, health exchange. But I'll, I'll talk about COVID 19 most recently. That was, I mean, the whole nation, we were all frightened or fearful of what was happening. And as a nurse, as a nurse practitioner, being able to rise to the top, by educating the public about, what was going on with the pandemic pandemic?

What is this virus? That's what's happening. Where the symptoms? What do I need to do if I feel I have covid vaccines and, you know, really dispelling myths and providing clear and compassionate information. In the midst of this fear, I mean, literally, people were afraid of we, no one wanted to die.

We were just like, Oh my gosh, I don't want to die. People were, unfortunately, that was happening left and right. And in this era of where there was so much fear, we were shut in, in our homes, glued to the televisions, afraid to go anywhere. Being able to lean into something that, was important for me as a nurse to educate the community, to help empower people with important information to make healthier choices.

And it's such a critical time, was a very, very impactful moment. And it's one of those moments where I didn't realize the impact that I was having on so many lives across the nation. During the pandemic, I literally was on television, maybe three, four times a day, every day. Fortunately, I had a, an employer.

Who was supportive. I worked at a federal COVID testing and vaccine side. It was an emergency room, all of which were places where they said, Alice, people need to know this information. So it was really impactful for me. And I kind of like going through it. Sometimes you don't know what you're going through until you you're finished and you look back.

But I would say during that time, I was so involved with the California Public Health Department, the CDC, National Institute of Health. I was on phone calls with national leaders about COVID and the latest and greatest things. So I was really, like, I immersed myself in this content or in this information because at the time, no one was a COVID expert.

No one was. We were all learning as we go. And so I think that experience. Jumping in the deep end, and immersing myself and then being able to advocate and educate people at such a timely, and devastating moment in our nation and being able to be of help, a resource, to the nation was something that was impactful.

I really didn't know, that it was going to make that much of an impact on people's lives. But so I'd have to say that's probably one of my career life career top, impactful moments.

[00:04:15] Jared: Yeah. And, you know, really just , from the public side of things, like, thank you so much for helping us all out during that time and being a resource.

And, another way that you've been a resource is with AskNurseAlice com. It's super robust. Like what do you have going on there? Like you go there and look for your disease state and you just got so many things going on of like how to help people, recipes. And it seems like that must have been like a whole lift to put that together.

And then you have TheMediaRx. com, which is essentially helping people following your footsteps. And that's also really, really robust that you have there too. And so how have you, how long did it take you to really set those up? And, yeah, just tell us a little bit about those sites that you have.

[00:04:52] Nurse Alice: Okay.

So some people may not know, but ask nurse Alice really was something that was organic. I, you know, as, as any nurse may say, you know, you have families ask you all the time, well, you know, why is my elbow hurt? Or what does this mean? Or, you know, my, what should I take? And so it was just ask nurse Alice. So my family and friends kind of just said, well, ask nurse Alice, ask nurse Alice.

And so it was really organic. And then one day, one of my good friends and I were kind of sitting down, she's like, everyone is, it's like, it's always asking, asking ourselves, you should have a website, you should do education like that because you literally, you do it for everyone and like, my family will call their friends and I'm like, this is, I'm talking to a stranger.

I mean, it's my friend's friend, but, and so it just kind of organically came up, wanting to be a resource and help for people who, obviously I would direct them to their, their healthcare provider, right, encourage them to have one if they don't already have one. But we know that in our nation, sometimes that's a barrier.

People don't have access to a health care provider, maybe they don't have insurance or they can't get the day off to go to go to see their provider because they can't afford it like variety of barriers. So I came up with the Ask Nurse Alice website, and it's developed over time. I originally used to contribute to other platforms, like Dr. Oz or the doctors or someone else's, a health blog , and then so I just decided to put bring it all together and list on my website, which now recipes articles. There's a health tools on there. There's a section where a health library. We can look up any disease process, which, by the way it's powered by one of those companies that actually whitelist their, patient education for hospitals.

So it's robust evidence based it's reviewed. And so I felt like, you know, that's something that is good to have in case people want to know. general health information, because my mantra is I like to talk to people before they become my patients. Now, the other website, TheMediaRx. com, really stems out of kind of my pain and passion that, from my journey.

You know, I, I get a lot of questions and I'm happy to mentor people and I offer classes on how you too can become a health expert in media. But let me tell you, when I started this journey in 2009, I didn't have any mentors. I didn't have any mentors. It was almost like Hollywood is so tight knit, no one wanted to tell you anything to increase your chances of getting on television because they were so worried about their spot.

And I also recognize that there weren't a lot of health professionals on TV, but a select few, right? You had your chosen folks, and then that was it. And so, and even more, myself being a nurse. Being a woman and a person of color. Also, you didn't see that type of representation on television. And so, I, quite honestly, I spent lots of money trying to take every media training class I could.

I mentored with folks in the financial industry, legal, attorneys, because, you know, there's always a legal case on television, but I cold called reached out to people, attended conferences where I can learn more about media, signed up for broadcast classes. I went to UCLA and did their journalism certificate program and just thought, I'm a health expert.

I want to help educate people. And so I'm going to learn this. And so what I decided to do is kind of once I've been on this journey, I had a chance to look back and realize people also wanted to do it. I decided to create the MediaRx. , dot com to help other people who are interested in doing this and hopefully get a more streamlined from point A to point B versus my scenic journey through all this.

[00:08:19] Ty: I'm just curious, where did that drive come from to just, like, you had so many barriers you were up against to just push through those. I mean, that's, that's a herculean amount of effort there.

[00:08:30] Nurse Alice: Yes. So that actually kind of stems to my whole inspiration of becoming a healthcare provider, which was my dad.

My dad was retired Navy and in the military back then, the way people got breaks is they would say, smoke them if you got them. And obviously that promotes the behavior of smoking cigarettes, which we know is unhealthy and can lead to heart disease and a multitude of other things. And unfortunately my dad, picked up smoking, had a, had a very fruitful career in the military.

And once he retired, even though he had great, you know, great insurance. He now had heart disease, was in and out of the hospital for a variety of things. He had high blood pressure, he had TIAs, he had had heart attacks. Heart failure. , and, you know, and someone who has that kind of who develops that we know that there are certain elements diet, exercise, medications, and other things that, you know, you really got to change your lifestyle around.

And so starting off as my dad's cheerleader. Unfortunately, there was, you know, that one visit, he went to the ER, and because he was a frequent flyer, there wasn't a, the surveillance and this is something for healthcare communities and now I work in the ER, but there was, you know, Oh, Mr. Lee, he comes in all the time.

Just come over here. He'll be fine. We'll give him some Lasix. He'll be out of here, blah, blah. And that one visit was the time where he actually needed more surveillance. Long story short, he died of sudden cardiac arrest and I was, I had been my dad's cheerleader with trying to get him to, you know, correct what he could from all of the years of damage of smoking.

So that was my passion to become the best cardiac nurse in the world, partially because I wanted to help other people to help their loved ones or help themselves make healthier choices, but then also on the flip side of that is to also work with my health care providers because we should never become complacent when someone comes into the emergency room or into our care, that we do our due diligence, provide optimal surveillance, and not just because someone's a frequent filer.

So that drive to also correct and improve upon the systems within health care also kind of, threw gasoline onto the fire that I already have. And so it was just really this genuine passion that I had in my belly, if you will, it's like a, just that just. I wanted to make a difference. I wanted to change and not just change the patients that I see and care for on a day to day basis, but on a more , grand level than that, because I know that I can change.

I'm the leader of my, you know, captain of my ship for my patient load, but when it comes to healthcare, we really need, folks who are loud, consistent, who will, you know, shake, rattle, and roll the systems that are there to make improvement. And so, that was really what kept me going during the times of adversity, when the times where I was turned away, to, you know, There was a doctor who was an OBGYN.

I, at the time, had eventually became a cardiac clinical nurse specialist immersed in cardiology. And they said, Oh, we're going to go with the doctor for your, the heart segment about, and I said, excuse me, I'm sorry, I'm a cardiac clinical nurse specialist. I work at the hospital that does the most heart transplants in the world.

And so this, I have the information that people need. , I believe that I can deliver it just as well, if not better than the OB GYN position, sorry, respectfully, right, but it was just, it was just always a challenge, but my quest to represent, women, nurses, diversity, and do so in a way that could be delivered in a way that may be more translatable, especially to certain populations of people, you know, obviously, as a woman of color, I'm black and Filipino, there, there's, I have an insight to the culture that I could deliver in a way as a health care provider that might be better received by, by that patient.

And so it may be that little bit of a difference that they then say, you know what, I'm actually going to make this change. So I was just eager and hungry and just really passionate at the end of the day.

[00:12:25] Jared: Yeah. And also during this transitional period that you had of you know, in practice, you're going to transition into being a media personality.

That's not really just a clear, like, okay, I'm just going to do this. And now all of a sudden, you know, I'm on KTLA. Like there's no way that that happens. And so tell us about. What are some of those skill gaps that you had to like shore up in the early time? And then I'm sure you just kind of had to continually build up skill sets, you know, throughout time as well.

But, and then also just even then building connections, like how did you even get that your initial shot, you know, who gave you your first, your foray into it?

[00:13:03] Nurse Alice: I love this question because I have to be quite candid with people. I never set out to do this. Honestly, I never did.

And even if you ask me now, even though I may have the classification of media personality or TV health expert, I really, at the end of the day, am a health care provider who wants to educate patients. And I just use, different platforms in which to do so, so I can reach the masses. But at the end of the day, it's patient education.

So, you know, I, what happened was because I was so driven based on my dad, you know, my, my experience with my dad, I threw myself into everything cardiology and innately, naturally and authentically, I fell into I'm becoming a volunteer with the American Heart Association. And it's through the work, I started off as a nurse at a, doing blood pressures at a fair and, you know, being really engaging, trying to get people to come over to get their blood pressures taken.

Cause usually no one comes to those things, right. Or very few do, or the people that do are the same people all the time. But I was able to, you know, lean on my personality, my education, and really just be a normal person and get people to come to the blood pressure station and talk about their wives and explain things using health literacy.

And that was, you know, just really engaging, made it fun and less threatening because we know that health care can be a scary thing for some people. In that experience, being consistent and doing that, always volunteering of my time, , the PR folks at American Heart Association one day kind of, they, I didn't realize I was being observed, and they said, you know, Alice, you know, you're really engaging, you get people to come over, they seem like they, they enjoy getting their blood pressure taken, they walk away like they really have information.

Would you mind going on radio, for KJLH radio and talk about how to be heart healthy during the holidays? Boom. Did it. It was fabulous. Hey, can you come back and talk about signs and symptoms of a stroke? And it kind of started that way. I started doing radio, for American Heart Association while I was, you know, that's when blogs were starting to come out.

Started blogging for outlets , and then it kind of just took a life of its own. The radio segments then led to other, me going to other stations. And then those, I don't know, kind of word of mouth, Hey, we're looking for a health expert. Then it kind of landed into other things because next thing I know, I'm getting a call from the Dr. Oz show and they're like, Hi, we'd like to know if you'd like to come on our show. And I'm just like, I said, how did you find me? They just said, well, we see you online. It seems like you do a lot of education at all these different events. And what I didn't recognize. Is that my consistent my volunteerism, you know, obviously it would get documented on flyers events find its way online radio segments would circulate and it started to create a digital footprint online, which made me discoverable.

So when producers would go and look for health experts. That's how they found me. And so, when people ask me, you know, kind of how did I do this? I didn't set out to do it. Media actually found me. And so, but there was definitely a gap because I'll say my first live television, my first television appearance was America Live with Megyn Kelly.

I didn't have any media training. What I, I didn't, I didn't ask the right questions and I found myself in New York walking to studios unbeknownst to, well, they asked me, Alice, can you come talk about, the importance of healthcare because President Obama during it was preparing, they were preparing to launch the state exchanges and that's what I was presenting.

I didn't know what to ask a producer. I'd had no media training. I arrived and it was myself, Meg and Kelly, and a panel of nine other people, all of who were politicians in some sense, former legal aid to so and so, and I was just like, oh my gosh, what did I get myself into, but fortunately, I was able to naturally answer the questions, pivot those that were there.

More political, political and not relevant to the importance of health care, and I survived it after I survived that experience. I said, No way. No, how I'm going to do media training on this. I found myself looking for nurses and doctors who would do this and I couldn't find anyone. So I just started going to journalist conferences and meeting people and just kind of learning that way, like just want, I just wanted to be in the room.

If I can get in the room. And if I can ask one question, just point me in the right direction. And I just started doing that and made lots of friends and network. And so when you ask, you know, how did you kind of also branch out to the other places when I would go to those journalism conferences, always introducing myself, you know, hi, I'm nurse Alice, America's favorite nurse is kind of my tagline and people are like, Oh, you know, I don't have a health expert person in my Rolodex.

And then just kind of, I made friends naturally and authentically through the network. And then. Usually they would call me and say, Hey, Alice, we have a story or something would come up some new evidence, new research. And I'd say, Hey, you know, this would probably be good for your outlet. And I had learned by that time how to produce a segment.

So I knew how to make a producer's job easier. And so it just kind of naturally fell all together. Now that sounds like a beautiful love story, but I want people to know I bumped my head throughout the way, just not knowing. It's like going, trying to get from point A to point B, but not really having a roadmap.

I took a very scenic route. I probably made, I don't say probably, I know I made a lot of mistakes along the way, but I wouldn't change anything. I really wouldn't.

[00:18:30] Jared: Yeah, it got you to where you are now, you know, and so it's something that I thought was interesting that you talked about was that, so being entrepreneur was not what you initially wanted to do in life ever, but it's just kind of what happened, huh?

That's interesting. And so as an entrepreneur, like you balance a ton of roles, you know? And so for people, what I am curious of is. People that are listening. So what are the roles that you're kind of managing through today? And also, like, how do you manage your time? Are you like 40 hours of work week?

That's it? Or was that way out the window years ago? And just, yeah, how do you kind of manage everything that you do?

[00:19:08] Nurse Alice: So I, let me first say, I am not the poster child for work life balance. Let me be very clear about that. But when you're so passionate about something, it almost spills over into a, the likeness of a hobby.

But fortunately I've been able to, with an entrepreneurial spirit, been able to monetize. the things that I'm most passionate about. And these are things that I learned along the way. So like, for example, I mentioned American Heart Association, but I've also worked with agencies like the American Nurses Association, the National Urban League, American Diabetes Association, AARP, and a lot of other organizations.

And what I've learned is I used to question what consultants do. I don't really understand. Right. But when I would volunteer with these organizations and go to their meetings and things like that, and they talk about what do they need to do for the communities and this and that I, I would sit there and listen, like, well, that's not how that works.

That's no as a, you know, as a nurse, I had this information about, you know, how to take care of patients, what works with patients, what doesn't. And so I found myself offering ideas and suggestions and things like that. So I, I actually kind of learned and practiced in this volunteer space. And then later was able to pivot that into more of a consultant role.

So if you ask me what hats I wear today. Here they are multiple. I'm a full time nurse practitioner. I work in the emergency room and I do family health. I'm also chief nursing officer and consultant at nurse. com. I am also, , founder of asknursehouse. com, themediarex. com. , and then also I do consultant work for, for brands and companies who are in the health industry with helping them to optimize their marketing and relationships so they can better understand their clients. And not just do so with profits in mind, but also do so in a genuine way, which actually benefits the community that they're trying to service. So a lot, a lot there.

That's more than 40 hours a week. But I was, if I had to be honest, I would probably say my work week is probably closer to 70, 80 hours. But that's because I just can't leave the bedside. I love being a direct care provider. And although my entrepreneurship is really what takes on a kind of a full time capacity.

I love taking care of patients. I just do.

[00:21:34] Jared: I can see that. I, I saw that you emailed us at like five in the morning and I was like, Oh, she's definitely one of those CEO four in the morning, five in the morning types, you know,

[00:21:42] Nurse Alice: four, I got up for four.

[00:21:46] Jared: That's the only way you can do it. We also got a sweet message from, somebody in the Q and a from, and, she says, congratulations, Alice.

You're a leader in nursing and know you're impacting others to use their nursing skills and ability to make change happen. Nurses have so much potential. I love seeing nurses groups and come into their own. Much success. Okay, sweet little message.

[00:22:09] Nurse Alice: Oh, I appreciate that. I think sometimes nurses don't understand the fully, maybe they know some more after the pandemic, but you know, there's really a lot of power in being a nurse.

And I don't mean power, like, you know, trying to like be a dictator or anything like that, but just the knowledge, information, training skills, the things that we do. Can be obviously direct patient care from most nurses. I think about 80 percent go into direct patient care settings like the hospital.

But there's so much more with our knowledge that we can do because in my consult a role now, and I've done a lot of things outside of nursing that have helped me to develop the things that I do now, but I've done leadership programs with CEOs across the nation.

Anything from sanitation, nursing, there's we have input. There are things that we could advise in that area. You know, the sanitation truck water system as a nurse. We know a lot about infection control. We have we can give, you know, share knowledge there when it comes to at the time. It was , at the time it was Sheriff Baca, Los Angeles, the prison systems, with a group of leaders.

I took a tour of the prison system and I identified areas in which, you know, health, you know, talking about mental health, physical health, infection control, medical. There are things that folks there just don't know. Because they mean well, maybe well intended, but they're not nurses or, you know, our doctors, they don't have that direct patient care experience, so I think there's a lot of power in nursing and we don't necessarily harness or operationalize that outside of our inpatient hospital.

And so I'm hopeful that in the work that I'm doing outside of encouraging people to amplify their voices using media, that they take that skill set and they're able to place it in other areas. Another mantra that I have is wherever there are, people, there are problems, right? Wherever there are people, there are problems.

So wherever there's a problem, there needs to be a nurse.

[00:24:03] Ty: And like we had a previous guest who had done some research into the trust level that nurses have, and it's off the charts compared to like institutions. So I think just that, there, I don't think you become a nurse without having being there for the right reasons.

Because, you know, just the amount of workload that's put on nurses, the amount of just like, the amount you give up in order to practice nursing, just, you know, as a cohort, like selects for a certain type of person who on the other side of it just carries so much trust with just the general population.

And I think that's, it's just something that you seem to embody.

[00:24:43] Nurse Alice: Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. Nurses, I think we're on our, what, 23rd year? Don't quote me, but 23rd year of being the most ethical, profession per the Gallup poll. So, we're still, still number one.

[00:24:56] Ty: That's so that's so cool. I hadn't heard that.

That's so cool.

[00:24:59] Nurse Alice: Yes.

[00:25:00] Jared: And onto the number one spot. And we also got another sweet message from Melissa McCabe. She says that she agrees and she loves your innovative spirit and passion. Thank you for leading the way. And so something else I wanted to talk about is just like the educating the public about medical information about complex medical information and how, we live in an age of tick tock now right where you know people go on their phones and they're, you know, getting stuff from whoever is out here confidently saying what they think they know about, medical information.

And what I think actually is that I think it might be a bit detrimental to people nowadays because they're not actually getting it from necessarily trusted sources, you know, versus like how you got on TV. You were a trusted source. There was a lot of barriers for you to jump through where people were like, she should be on TV.

We trust her as somebody that is a trusted source of information. And so, do you feel like that it's, it is a strange time or do you think we're in a great time where people are like, you know, there's so much access and I guess it's a double edged sword, maybe to some degree.

[00:26:05] Nurse Alice: I believe it's a double edged sword. So obviously when I started my media journey, social media, wasn't what it was today. I think maybe Facebook was kind of just getting its feet, you know, launching around that time. And so we really, at that time, you had your main broadcast. So when we talk about media, that's kind of can sometimes be a very umbrella term.

So there's mainstream media, then there's social media. So as I was really focused on mainstream media, you know, cable network, TV, radio stations. And even then, like there were, you know, there are websites out there, but people weren't necessarily having their own websites at the time, right? It was, so it's really hard to kind of break in and become a trusted voice.

So I came in that time but now fast forward, thanks to technology, social media, you know, everyone has the opportunity to amplify their voice or share a message, which can sometimes go unchecked because while we, we would hope most people are well intended. Sometimes Information is incorrect. Sometimes it's, misinformation where maybe someone is sharing information, not realizing that it's incorrect or it's not the latest guidelines.

And then also there's disinformation where someone is knowingly inserting information that's incorrect and that can be harmful to the public because the public may not always know, who to listen to, who to follow. Oh, it's a nurse. It's a doctor. They must, you know, they're, they're trusting our professions that we're going to be honest and truthful.

And that can be scary sometimes. And I think, now mind you, this has changed, but it used to be like the blue checks that they had on social media were validations that this is truly indeed this person, they are a trusted source, but now you can buy the blue checks. And so it makes it a little more difficult for the health consumer to identify who is, who should I listen to, who should I not listen to? Because here's the skinny of it. And sometimes it's not necessarily the most popular message. Hospitals, well intended, they have social medias, they, you know, they have their, their media team, they put out things, but it's not always interesting or engaging.

And sometimes It's kind of dry, if I can be honest, right? So when you have folks who are really passionate, animated, and can share that same information, they would rather that person. But now in a world where everyone's animated and maybe they put on the lab coat, you would, you're not sure, you know, the lay person may think, Oh, well that's nurse.

I'm going to listen to what they're saying. And the truth is that may not be correct information. So I think there are definitely some opportunities to improve upon that. I think that if we as a profession, I'll say healthcare profession, more fully adopted using media as vehicle to educate, then I think, you know, we could set some standards in place and actually support people who want to use their platform for this.

But right now you have hospitals who have. You know, all these rules and regulations about, you can't be on social media, you can't do this, you can't do, it's always what you can't, can't, can't, can't, can't do. And I think what we really need to focus on is what can we do? How can we take this generation of healthcare providers who are TikTokers, who are Instagramers, who, and help them deliver information that our patients can use.

So, I actually have some ideas on what hospitals can do for that. And I would love to see it come to fruition. I'd love to see hospitals kind of have almost like their. They're blue checks for, for their staff to be speakers. I think long gone are the days where hospitals now cherry pick who their spokespersons are.

They're worried about their brand. They don't want anyone to misspeak on their brand. I understand that. But if you can take these very passionate group of nurses and doctors and other healthcare providers who want to share important health information. Let's work with them instead of working against them.

[00:29:54] Ty: I mean, is there like a quick resource for like communication training? Because that seems like that's not part of the medical education process. But yet it's such a neat skill from a public health standpoint, right?

[00:30:07] Nurse Alice: Absolutely. And so it kind of falls under the category of communications, speaker, you know, public speaking type of thing, which is an important element of it.

But now you have to kind of marry it with like social media tech savvy and other things too. I will say this, nursing, I have not seen a program, if you will, that really fully encompasses that. And also, that's part of the reason why I wanted to launch the MediaRx. com. And by the way, if there's a university out there who'd love to partner, I think this is something that really is worthy of educational credit.

But side note, I have not really seen that in nursing. In nursing, I've seen a lot of more , theory driven papers about media and what nurses should do, but not as much practical exercises, that kind of thing, which is what I think people need to do. It's one thing to read something, but there's another thing to do it.

So, having that type of mentorship and program is something that's significantly needed. I will say this for physicians, and it's not in every school, but there are internships that actually provide this. Good morning, America actually has a medical internship for physicians. I've been in touch with their folks there because I would ask my wife, what about a nurse?

And I remember they were entertaining and at the time, but then we went into a pandemic, but I'd love to see that for nurses and internship, which is really what's needed. I mean, we can talk about it in theory. We can talk about stats and say what you should do. And I think there are lots of PR and media companies out there that can really help, partner with some organizations as to how to present on camera and the things you should and should not do.

But I think the element that's missing, which is why I launched the media rx. com is it takes a healthcare professional to be in that space, to experience that, to really tell you the idiosyncrasies of what is it like to be a media expert as a healthcare professional, because there's some really slippery slopes.

Although I am a nurse practitioner, I've not developed a patient , provider relationship with the audience who I'm speaking to. So there are certain kind of catchphrases that I need to make sure that I always mention. I could talk about a disease process and signs and symptoms and what usual treatment is, but you know, it's going to be very important that you talk to your healthcare provider.

Blah, blah, blah. Like there, and it seems like it's so simple, but there are things that if left off can really put someone probably In a potential legal situation, you know, someone says, you know, I listened to nurse. I'm not gonna say my name nurse, Larry, and he said to do this. So I did that.

And then, you know, you could find yourself in a situation made where if the information was incorrect, or it's outdated that nurse Larry could find themselves in trouble. So there's some legal aspects of it that one needs to be concerned about. And then as a health care provider, some of the things you only get two, three, two, three minutes to really talk in a new segment, you can't possibly think you're going to talk about everything you need to know about congestive heart failure.

And that's so what do you need the public to know how to drive them, you know, inserting a call of action, providing them follow up resources. So there's, you know, media folks can teach you some of the basic elements camera site lighting sound. It really takes a healthcare professional or someone who's done it to teach you all those other things that aren't in textbooks.

[00:33:23] Jared: You also something I wanted to also talk about when we're talking about like the public health side of things and, misinformation in the media and something that reminds me of just what happened with COVID in a way, you know, where it was like, there was all the, you know, I, I feel like we started to experience a lack of trust in scientific evidence after COVID happened, like you just started to see it from the corners of the internet of people starting to, you know, I guess, discredit, medical evidence.

And I still see it to these days where people are very brave about, sort of that, you know, wave of thinking. And one of my questions to you is, was this something that, you also noticed even before COVID, like, were people kind of already like that, and then COVID kind of gave them the reason to start to maybe be more brave with, you know, that sort of discrediting of, I guess, evidence based information, and then have things gotten better from your perspective since COVID, or do you think it's still a bit like that, where there's a little bit of a lack of trust?

[00:34:22] Nurse Alice: Yeah, well, I think, and I think the lack of trust stemmed from seeing such a division in the healthcare community when you saw like vaccines are good, vaccines are deadly. So then it left the health consumer like, well, what, what is it? Like, we saw a division, we weren't unified as a health care, profession during COVID and we're seeing so many mixed messages.

And again, someone says they're a doctor, someone says they're a nurse, the health consumer on the other end watching this has not gone and checked your credentials to see where you went to school. Maybe you are a doctor of basket weaving and not really a doctor, a physician, right? so unfortunately, one of the things about media is once someone says doctor or nurse, it's kind of like, that's it.

No one's who's watching really is going to go down your resume to say is this someone I should really listen to or not in that two, three minutes, right? That's the really the duty of the media outlet that they should vet you. But I'll say this when it came to COVID seeing such, you know, this conspiracy theories and things like that, we all know that it really generally takes , new studies, sometimes five, seven years before it's actually into like, kind of the mainstream for even healthcare professionals to really be aware of it once from the time the study is completed to the time it's published.

Right. It's completed. Then it's written up and it's being has to be accepted by a magazine for publish. Then when it's in publish, then that's when other health care professionals who subscribe to that magazine, then get it. Then what about the providers who don't subscribe to that? So information can be delayed one, right?

That's one of the issues. And during the pandemic. A lot of people, and this is something else that's also very important in media, that you can't just look at one news article and then just use that and then build your whole segment off of that one article. You really do need to do your due diligence.

And so people weren't doing that. And although we also are healthcare providers, we're, at the end of the day, we're still health consumers. We're not you know, even though we were kind of, said, Oh, we're soldiers on the front line during the war of COVID. Yes. But at the end of the day, I'm still, I can be a patient just as much as you can be a patient.

So we also allowed some of our own biases and thought processes to creep in into some of the messages that I've heard online. And so, you know, that was, I felt like that was a really tragic moment. There wasn't a lot of guidance or direction from any, any of our professional nursing organizations about where to go for COVID information until, until after all the steps was already spewing all over the line.

But for myself, for someone who does understand and use media as a vehicle to educate, I found myself on those morning calls with the National Institute of Health, on those national calls for the CDC. I'm listening to it. And mind you, sometimes I have it playing in the background, but there's decks and you can watch the replay, watching the scientists, watching and listening to things that, Dr. Fauci is saying and teasing out, asking for public input as healthcare providers. We were actually invited. The healthcare community was invited to participate in these conversations and many people didn't show up. And so, someone gets kind of a, the cliff notes, if you will, of a meeting. They take one sentence out of context and then you found it on the internet.

And that was very sad. And I wish there would have been more guidance to say, or a place where people could go like, Okay, we're all learning COVID at the same time. CDC webinar, National Institute of Health, California Public Health Department, Los Angeles Public Health Department. I found myself regularly attending those, but no one told me to go to those.

I just organically, with my reporter media person hat on, wanting to be objective, wanting to have the facts, knew to go there. And I just, I didn't just rely on, oh, I'm a nurse, I know this. I could figure it out. You can never wing it. Even the most accomplished, contributor analysts, person on television still till this day, every appearance you're researching and setting as if you're new to everything is new.

You should, I, I've never been so comfortable and, Oh, I've done this for a while that I just rely on. Oh, I'm a nurse practitioner. I'll figure it out. You know, I know what to say. I'm always looking. What's the late, even up to an hour before my segment appearance, looking to scour the data, like any new, any new updates on these vaccines.

What's going on? Because we saw, right, the CDC didn't do the greatest job with communicating information. So if they're not communicating information correctly, how could we then as healthcare professionals do that? So it was, it was a mess.

[00:39:09] Ty: Yeah. I mean, one of the consequences of the pandemic just to kind of shift gears slightly is the, just the number of nurses, like, you know, 20 year experience nurses that left the profession.

You know, we were already having a shortfall of nurses going into the pandemic, and then now just nurse turnover has been a factor, and I think there was one staff that said there's enough, like, nurses who have gone through training in order to meet the need that we have, but the, you know, a lot of nurses are leaving, and, you know, Ann mentioned that nurses are leaving because they're not recognized for their value, and she's promoting that nurses have to toot their own horn.

But I guess, like, we've been, like, digging into and curious about just safe staffing ratios of, for me, I, like, if I or one of my parents or family members goes into the hospital, like, how do we make sure there's enough provider there? Because there's no way to know at the outset. That's something that kind of concerns me about the current state of health care, and I was wondering if you could chime in on that.

[00:40:13] Nurse Alice: Staffing ratios are extremely important. I'm here in California, so we're fairly a progressive state, so we've had that established for quite some time, but not so much in other states, which I really feel bad for because even with the ratios that I, that we have in mind, do, the ratios aren't perfect because it doesn't take into account the acuity of the patient.

It really takes that charge nurse to really take into consideration how involved a particular patient is. Right. But then you often sometimes don't have the staffing that allows you to kind of flex those numbers as needed, because maybe, and I'm, and I'll just use an example in the, telemetry, in the cardiac telemetry units, usually it's one to four, patients.

But if you have someone who's very involved, requiring frequent surveillance, frequent interventions, maybe two hour neuro checks for a period of time, Q2 blood sugars are managing or insulin drip, all of these things. I need more time to spend with that patient. The surveillance, the care, the things I need to do are more involved.

So I might not really be able to do four patients because my other patients may get neglected because I'm doing this. So, but we don't always have the staffing for that. It's really important. I'll say this to your points. If you look at the number of license nurses we have, are there enough nurses to take care of patients?

Yes, but that doesn't take into account how many, um, exactly where they work, right? Some may work from home, some may work in clinics, some may just be retirees and just keeping their license up, you know, so it, I think the real meat and potatoes of this is we don't have enough nurses in those acute care settings to take care of people who are coming in and out of the hospital.

Not that other patient care isn't outpatient surgery, outpatient clinics, public health. Those things are important too, but if we, if we think about life or death things, those are usually in the hospital. So that's what, for this example, I'll focus on that. We don't have enough nurses and especially during COVID.

I would say those nurses who were close to retirement were probably like, I'm getting out of Dodge. I don't know what's happening. I don't want to increase my risk of getting COVID and myself even dying because I'm seeing a lot of things out here and let's, you know, if we can be candid, we as healthcare professionals, we're learning as we go, we were doing the best that we could with what we know, but we didn't have all the answers.

And I think that's a scary, that's scary for anyone. And many nurses didn't want to subject themselves to that if they didn't need to. So those that could retire. Or could go elsewhere did now for those who were just entering, we had a lot of new grad nurses, some people who maybe had graduated, but didn't even pass NCLEX in some States.

And I forget which ones, but back East, you finish, you finish nursing school. You haven't taken NCLEX and that's okay. We'll take you. And so nurses were being thrown into environments. New nurses were being thrown into environments where the senior nurses were like, I'm out of here. And having to just figure it out during such a chaotic time.

And that has been very, distressing physically, mentally, emotionally, now, mind you, at the time, they were throwing high dollars at nurses and maybe some, you know, many nurses took advantage of that, but at what cost, right? And so now that the pandemic has settled out. Salaries have kind of returned to more baseline pre pandemic nurses are finding themselves in a situation where, hey, I can make a lot of money, but I don't necessarily need to be in the hospital, right?

And if you were paying this much money originally, why can't you keep paying it now? So now it's, it's opened the doors to a lot of conversations and not going to sit. I'll go and step out a limb and say, more so probably the newer generation of nurses, which we also know are care and I forget what is it, gen not what's the newest generation of folks?

It might be gen, I

[00:43:55] Jared: think for the working. For like Gen Z? Yeah, I think so. Okay. Gen Alpha is too young.

[00:44:00] Nurse Alice: Gen Z is more about self care. They're more you know, I don't have to tolerate this, you know, where back in the day, like maybe baby boomers, like, well, I'm just going to stick around. I'm going to stay in one place and I'm gonna retire for 20 years.

The mentality is different. The loyalty to employers is different. The entrepreneurial spirit, it's different. And so I think we have to really fix. We really have to tackle what's going on with the environment in our workplaces and really get a handle on safe patient ratios. In order to retain nurses in those workspaces, because I'll be honest, sometimes it's not, although we all want to get paid top dollar.

Sometimes I know that if I can work somewhere where I feel supported, I enjoy coming to work. Maybe I make a little bit less than the hospital down the street. I'm okay working there because I know why the hospital down the street pays more. It's because they can't keep nurses because it's crazy over there.

So, nursing leaders really need to come together. And not just nurse leaders, but, people outside of nursing as well, because at the end of the day, you know, you have chief nursing officer, we kind of have our hierarchy in nursing, but that's not enough. We need more nurses on boards, decision making boards.

We need nurses to network with other leaders who can influence, decisions that are made in that C suite. And that's some, one of the things I've been able to do also with my media platform is. If you think about it, whatever people are watching, they're listening to, they're reading, they're taking in information.

That information influences their thought processes and influences their feelings, which can then influence their behavior. And so one of my goals And it's always been I never led with I'm a nurse. I've always led with the information. And oh, by the way, I'm a nurse. And so, you know, kind of keeping my nurse ego out of the way.

I want always wanted to provide service and inform people. So as I influence people, then maybe when they're in other settings, it'll influence how people vote, it'll influence what people support, it'll influence legislators on how they enact in the legislation, maybe they'll be more supportive of particular legislation that we as nurses need to do our work.

So whenever I've been in media I've always tried my best to not browbeat anyone when something's not going the way I feel it should go but really present, present the problem, present solutions. So do I foresee our staffing ratio being solved? Eventually, I hope so. I hope so, especially with as technology is hopefully expanding how many people we can have in nursing schools, and getting information out and also helping to make our job easier.

But we got to work on the culture and I don't think there's any technology that can help us on working with the culture. That's a people problem. So our nurse leaders, hospital leaders. We need to really tap in and at the end of the day, be kinder to one another because If we're kinder to one another, we'll recognize, okay, this isn't the best environment to work in.

This is really hard. I wouldn't be able to do this, so why should I expect nurses to do it?

[00:47:02] Ty: Yeah, and you mentioned, like, policy having, like, public policy having an impact directly on something we're talking about with safe staffing. California's led the way in a lot of the safe staffing ratios that they've set.

But, you know, it was just you and I were talking a little bit this morning about like the article that just came out in JAMA, which introduces this topic of administrative harm, which seems like is a kind of that disconnect between policy writing and then like what's decisions are happening at bedside.

And, you know, this concept of administrative harm, like talks about like the disconnect between policy and the impact it can have. I was just curious, like, you know, we're kind of absorbing this new concept of administrative harm. I was curious if you had kind of with that as a label, if you had run across those kinds of like policy impacting bedside and kind of what, like how you're reacting to that.

[00:47:52] Nurse Alice: Yes. And I'd have to say, finally, it has a name because this is something that has long been it's not new. Maybe the term is new and labeling of it, but, and that's helpful, right? Cause now that we can identify it and we're able to pinpoint it a lot better than just kind of qualitatively describing what's happening, but, and just kind of just a little background.

So my nursing journey, I was a CNA, became a licensed practical nurse. With associate's degree. Went back on my bachelor's, became a clinical nurse specialist first, which is an advanced practice nurse, and then went back, for a postmaster's and became a family nurse practitioner. Throughout the entire time I've always, because of my dad's story, have been very involved with community health organ, obviously I was part of my professional organizations, American Nurse Association, Critical Care Nursing, but I worked with outside agencies and it was actually there kind of where I got to see how observing outsiders and then coming back to work and looking in the hospital, see how much disconnect is.

In the leadership realm, there's always kind of this leadership meeting. Oh, these are our strategic initiatives. This is what we're going to roll out. Here's the strategic one, two, three, four year plan, and policies and procedures are created. And I was very much a part of that work as a clinical nurse specialist, as a clinical nurse specialist, I had one foot in the boardroom, if you will, with the nurse leaders, and then one foot at the bedside where I would literally do real time teaching at the bedside, especially for high acuity, low flow type of patient cases.

And I would always see the disconnect from what leadership says we're going to do and roll out and how it gets operationalized at the bedside. There's a complete disconnect and it creates a frustration and a level of dissatisfaction and it actually can make people feel like they're not doing a good job when that happens.

So there's some moral distress that actually happens with that. But I saw that consistently. And one of my roles as a CNS at the time was to identify that and bring it back to leadership to say, okay, this is not happening the way you designed it, right? Conceptualize it.

And then go to the bedside nurses and say, listen, I know it doesn't seem practical, but this is the vision. This is what we need to do. So there's definitely a disconnect. And I found myself often in the middle of bedside and boardroom, but I was able to minimize some of that administrative injury, if you will, and help people to meet a compromise there.

But I don't know that that always gets done. And quite honestly, I don't know that I'm an advocate. I'm okay with being an underdog. I'm going to keep going. You can't rain on my parade, but not everyone has that type of outlook. If once they're shut down with an idea, they don't want to keep barking up that tree.

And so I don't know that this, there's always champions to help minimize that administrative injury in many places, because I could have easily, now I look back, I'm like, Alice, you really were that bold in that board meeting to tell the director that this ain't going to work. And not everyone's going to do that.

Not everyone has the, the cojones to do that, right? So it can be a scary place to do that, especially if you've not been equipped or you don't feel supportive. We're already short staffed in a lot of things. There's lots of work to do. And who wants to tell their boss? That their idea is not such a great idea or it's not going to work.

So that is a difficult place to be in, but it happens that's how it's happening every day. It happens every day. There's completely a gap between policies and what, happens at the bedside. What nurses are expected to know, the rules to follow. Cause even if you look at it this way, how many policies are there in an organization? Who has read every single policy there, unless you're on the Policy and Procedure Committee, which I was.

I was a co chair of the Policy and Procedure Committee, which is why that work was, I could thrive in that type of work, but it's very complicated. If I dare say it's not always the most stimulating work to go through policies and identify the gaps. Because we all, you know, it's just.

Anyways, I hope that I hope that answers your question.

[00:52:07] Ty: Does. It's such a great

[00:52:08] Nurse Alice: question. Okay. Yeah. But let me say this and to nurses who are experiencing that do not feel discouraged. I always encourage nurses who might be feeling a little kind of. Air is get let out of your tire to join your unit practice council committee.

Or to join a professional nursing organization to realize that you're not alone in some of the things that you're experiencing and to find support in the community, because in the community, it's a great place to vent. It's also a great place to bounce ideas off of each other. So maybe you tried something that didn't work.

But if you go somewhere else, oh, this worked for them. Let me try, you know, bring that over here. As we try to tackle on these problems, because it's going to take more than one person to solve these type of issues.

[00:52:49] Jared: Thank you for your time today. I know you've been very gracious to bless us with your time. And so for everyone that's listening that wants to learn more from nurse Alice, you have a fantastic podcast. This is literally called ask nurse Alice, and you talk about literally everything under the sun regarding the healthcare.

And so I definitely recommend anybody to go check that out. And so I guess as we're wrapping up, what's sort of like a final message about, the state of health care today that you could give people? And I guess just, how can we really make things better for people? It feels like everything feels a little bit dreary sometimes in health care.

And I wish that we could just kind of be more positive and have a more positive outlook on things.

[00:53:24] Nurse Alice: Right. And I'm hopeful for a more positive outlook and very, and I'll say this, health care is something that does not discriminate everyone, gender, age, nationality, religion, and at the end of the day, while I'm a health provider, I'm still a health consumer.

And I think it's really important for, people to understand that you can only. I'm speaking to my health care providers here. You can only do so much as long as you go in doing your best every day. That's, we couldn't ask for anything more than that. So, you know, if you're feeling down and out, I really encourage people to find community, but it's also in those communities where we can come together and help give health care a louder voice so we can advocate not only for ourselves and our practice and the things we need to be better clinicians, but to help advocate for better care.

We're currently, obviously, it's an election year. Healthcare has often been politicized, and we're going to see a lot of that unravel as it comes, as we come through the election, and I think it's important that, we really stay true to what's in the best interest of our patients, because at the end of the day, we're patients too, I encourage people to not shy away from conversations about healthcare, regardless of your political position, but at the end of the day, what's best for our patients, because that's going to be what's best for you.

[00:54:45] Jared: That was wonderful. Thank you, Nurse Alice. We really appreciate your time. And, yeah, just, I'm really excited for also the next generation of nurse leaders that you're training in your program as well. We deeply, deeply look forward to that.

[00:54:57] Nurse Alice: Oh, yes. And if I may just leave on this note, I would gladly invite people who are interested, whether you're a yoga instructor, a physician, a nurse who could be retired, but you want to amplify your voice and share important healthcare information using media, please check out The Media Rx. com. We have a great newsletter, tips and, information that, you would need to help you along your journey. And then if you're interested, there are classes, that can, that, and there are classes for everyone from podcasting to medical script writing and consulting, to being an on camera personality.

There are lots of ways in which we can communicate health information. So I invite one and invite all.

[00:55:33] Jared: Fantastic. Thank you so much. Thank you for joining us.

[00:55:37] Nurse Alice: Thank you.