Real Nurse Stories

In this episode, I have the pleasure of interviewing Liam Caswell who is a nurse, a life coach and Director of Liam Caswell Coaching and Podcaster of High-Performance Nursing.

Liam and I are kindred spirits and have many things in common when it comes to coaching and nurses. We share the same passion for making coaching accessible to nurses everywhere and share an ambition to make every nurse a coach.

We talk about mindset and how it can hold you back and how to change your mindset, the importance of taking opportunities and trying out as many specialities as you can in your first three years of qualifying. This interview will also give you a great insight into how coaching works and how it can help you in your nursing career.

Liam is an expert when it comes to helping newly qualified nurses apply successfully for their first job. If you are a newly qualified nurse this episode is a must listen for you! If you are a nurse and wondering how coaching can help you then this episode is also for you!

It was a real privilege to interview Liam about his nursing career and journey into becoming a life coach.

Welcome to a new season of Real Nurse Stories.

In this episode, I interview Teresa, a nurse and an entrepreneur from Kansas in the midwest of America.

Teresa is a vocal major who never expected to become a nurse and have a 32-year-long career in nursing!

Teresa shares her journey into nursing and becoming the CEO of her own hospice that started as a $6000 investment and grew to over $3 million.

Teresa candidly shares her experience of major depression and what she learnt about herself and how to prioritise her self-care along the way.

Teresa is the founder of the movement 'Nurses feed their young' which is a global movement designed to support early career nurses.

It has been a tough two years for the nursing profession. Many nurses are considering leaving the profession and many are reporting symptoms of burnout and exhaustion. As a profession, we need to acknowledge these struggles, listen to nurses' experiences and importantly take urgent action to support nurses globally as we cannot afford to lose nurses. We all have a part to play in using our sphere of influence. This Podcast is my way of using my sphere of influence as both a registered practising nurse and a trained professional coach.

In this episode, I talk about why as nurses we struggle to ask for help and to think about how we respond to someone when a colleague asks for help.

In this episode, I interview Iris who is currently a Grad nurse on placement in Rural Western Australia.

Iris never wanted to be a nurse and always thought that she would go into paramedicine but became hooked on Nursing

We cover her journey into nursing and her experience working as a Graduate nurse in a remote and rural site in Western Australia.

Iris's interview is energetic and her adventurous, bubbly and resilient personality shines through in this episode.

She describes how she took a leap of faith, taking a graduate placement in a rural area and has developed her nursing and critical thinking skills in ways that she would never have thought possible.

If you are a newly qualified nurse thinking about a rural placement take a listen, you will not be disappointed I promise!

In this episode, I interview Nurse Jacqui as she is affectionately known by the clients that she works with.

Jacqui is a passionate nurse, a confidence coach, champion of carers and a BeYOUtiful Mentor.

Samatha's story is the final episode of 2020 where I started out to interview a nurse a month as part of the 2020 International Year of the Nurse and Midwife. Most of my interviews have been with nurses working in Australia and it seemed only right to include the experience of an Australian nurse who identifies as being an Aboriginal woman. This experience needs to be heard and understood and more importantly, storytelling is a large part of Aboriginal culture. Samantha describes  "being caught between two worlds, a love of my people and a love of the frontline and trying to find the balance."

Grace's story is one of my favourites so far! Grace is a student nurse studying to become a registered nurse. Her journey into nursing was inspired by a condition that she was born with as a premature 26-week old baby. Her love of human biology is testament to the great person-centred care that she received from her Paediatric team who educated and involved Grace about her condition with age-appropriate education throughout her childhood. Grace talks about her experience as a young 17-year-old studying to become an enrolled nurse and some of the challenges that she faced.

Grace had a three-week volunteer placement in Nepal, Katmandu, which she describes as "a shining star experience." 

Her story illustrates that despite her young age she is a natural educator with fantastic critical thinking and project management skills and there are many examples in her story that illustrate these skills. Grace was awarded the New Columbo Grant and Award from the Australian Government Department of  Foreign Affairs and Trade as a result of her volunteering experience in Nepal. Her story is truly inspiring and I have no doubt that Grace will continue to give back and contribute her time and skills, making a difference to everyone she meets. I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I did.

Athol grew up on a dairy farm and never dreamed of becoming a nurse. He had a love of anatomy and human biology and thought that he was going to study exercise science. His Grandmother suggested Nursing to him and the rest is history as they say!

In this episode we talk about Athol's nursing journey, men in nursing, his struggles with burnout and how understanding his 'why' helped him to recover from burnout and resume his nursing career after three years of pain and turmoil. Athol's story is a great example of how seeking to understand who you are as a person and what drives you to become a nurse and making wise choices for yourself rather than what others might expect of you can help you to grow as a nurse and learn to deal with the challenges of nursing.

This is a fabulous interview with Jacquie who started her nursing career wanting to make a difference to the care of pregnant women by becoming a midwife. Jacquie describes her career path as a spiders web with many twists and turns, seizing opportunities as they arose and always learning from the opportunities that presented themselves. Jacquie gives an honest account of some of the struggles in her career and how she learnt to be a better leader. Jacquie passionately believes that partnerships are the key to changing culture and that "culture changes culture". Jacquie has evolved to be a fantastic people leader and loves to get out on the floor growing, nurturing and connecting with people. Her philosophy of paying it forward by encouraging her staff to look out for each other is a great one to live by. Jacquie's team are very lucky to have such a fabulous role model and leader. 

It was a real pleasure to Interview Jamie about his nursing career for this episode. I learnt about the Losada Ratio which is something I didn't know before interviewing Jamie! Jamie is a passionate advocate for creating positivity at work as a leader and in his life generally. By his own admission studying positive outcomes has taken up his brain space over the last few years. Jamie has had a diverse nursing career to date. He came into nursing after volunteering in Malawi aged 18 and being inspired by hearing the stories from the Doctors who worked for Médecins Sans Frontières. Jamie shares some insightful tips for Grad nurses and talks about the importance of mentoring. Jamie is a secret musician at heart and in the early days of his training, this was what he wanted to do. There are so many takeaways for the listener in this interview my biggest takeaway is that positivity is infectious!

In this episode, I interview Wes who works in the emergency department in Resus. Wes started his nursing career more by accident than planning. He began a business degree and then realised that he hated numbers! He enrolled on a nursing degree course as a way to get into radiology and after one year was hooked on becoming a nurse. Through a series of personal events in his life, it took Wes 5 years to complete his nurse training.

Wes qualified as a registered nurse at the end of 2018 and like many newly qualified nurses in Australia, he struggled to get a graduate placement. There are always more graduates than there are placements and Wes describes how he used LinkedIn as a way of connecting to a Nurse Unit Manager on LinkedIn and how connecting led him to secure a graduate position.

We cover a range of topics from how to deal with traumatic events, debrief both formally and informally, nurses and social media, tips for staying resilient, nursing as a gendered profession, and public perception around gendered roles in health care.

I had a lot of fun interviewing Leonie for this episode. Leonie has had an interesting nursing and midwifery career in Perth Western Australia. Her career began in Geraldton and finished in Bunbury Regional Hospital. Leonie is a great storyteller and has a great sense of humour,  there was a point in this episode where the tables were turned and Leonie interviewed me! Leonie describes a bygone era of nursing that was very regimented and routinised care was the norm. She describes how she preferred Nursing administration to hands-on clinical care and talks about her experiences of midwifery along with her Director of Nursing role.

In this episode, I interview Hazel who is a registered nurse working In an Emergency Department in Perth Western Australia. Hazel has a very gentle, caring and empathetic nature and is passionate about being an ED nurse. She shares how she manages stressful situations with her team through debriefing and self-reflection as well as looking after her own self-care. She talks about death, grieving and caring for family members when a loved one has died.

If listening to this episode has raised some personal issues for you around burn out and stress management, please contact me to learn how I can help you through confidential 1:1 coaching eva@evastorey.com.