Good Black Queer Nurse Another Bad NICU Nurse
01:04:13 Share

Hey everybody, this is Tina again with Good Nurse, Bad Nurse. Welcome back and welcome back to me. I feel like I have been gone for a while. I literally just like took, I feel like all of December off. I had a kidney stone. Let's just get real. I'll just keep it real. It was bad. So anyway, I've been away for a little bit. Happy New Year to everyone and

and super excited to get 2025 started off right with one of my absolute favorite all-time guests of Good Nurse, Bad Nurse, Brittany Daniels. Brittany, welcome back to the show. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Happy New Year. Oh my God, a stone? Come on.

It was a rough one. Yeah, it was a rough one. So, yeah. I feel like when we get to, like, the good nurse portion, I'm going to, like, go on a total rant. As you should. You guys just wait. Well, I'm going to go on a rant on this bad nurse story, too, you guys. This is unbelievable. I definitely want to do a trigger warning on this one.

involves infants in a hospital. We've unfortunately done several stories that are very similar to this, and it is quite shocking, very recent. Most of you probably are at least somewhat familiar if you're on social media at all. If you're not on social media, maybe not, because it's very, very recent. This is the story of Aaron Strotman.

Erin Strotman was a NICU nurse at Henrico Doctors Hospital in Richmond, Virginia. She's accused of harming multiple infants in her care. Brittany, this is the third, third story. I've been doing this since 2018. This is the third story specifically of NICU, NICU nurses who...

And we did Lucy Letby. There was a also there was a male nurse who was, I guess, kind of forced to work in the NICU and he didn't want to work there. And he deliberately did things to those babies and is in prison now for it. Unfortunately, there's a lot of those. But specifically NICU, the absolute most vulnerable people that you could ever imagine. Took the words right out of my mouth.

Could not be more vulnerable. That's what we're about to talk about. That's what we're about to talk about. And this is alleged. I'm going to start off the show by saying that and I'll say it again. It is alleged.

But it's out there that she has been charged and she is incarcerated for this right now. So she's accused of harming multiple infants in her care. The investigation began after several infants in the hospital's neonatal intensive care unit. For you guys that don't know, NICU is kind of what we call the neonatal intensive care unit. These are babies that are born.

And then for whatever reason, immediately have to go to an ICU setting. And a lot of times they're there over long periods of time, not always, but oftentimes they're there for weeks on end, months even. If babies are born at maybe in only six months along or seven months along, they will stay there a lot of times.

And so the staff tends to get very close with the babies. They're some of the sweetest nurses you will ever... I've done so many stories, amazing stories about these nurses. So a story like this, it's heartbreaking on so many levels. But just to think about all of the nurses who sacrificed so much to work and to...

Kind of go through the mental anguish that it takes to work in the setting and dealing with parents who are just going through anguish, going through heartbreak. A lot of times there are lots of great stories that come out and everything is great. But there's also a lot of sad stories that go along with working in the NICU and that

For someone to come along and somehow infiltrate that beautiful space where you have this like almost family environment. I was watching some interviews for some of the parents and that's what they said. This is almost like a family environment. They get so close. The parents get close with the nurses, the staff, the doctors. It's just it's like a family environment. Right.

Brittany, I don't know if you've ever, I've never worked in a NICU before. I don't, I could, I'm not, I don't have the capability. Yeah, that part. I don't have the strength for it and I've never done it. I work in a pediatric ER and that's hard enough. I can't imagine working in the NICU where, you know, babies are born. I was born, my sister and I, I have a twin. We were born at 26 weeks, just after 26 weeks. And so we were, we were NICU babies. And so this story hits hard for me. Oh, Brittany.

Oh, Brittany. You know, we lived in the hospital, in the incubators. Yes. You know exactly what I'm talking about. Yes, yes, absolutely. And, you know, you think about – I think about how many people I know who would never leave their kids with anyone, right? Right.

Well, as a parent of a NICU baby, you don't really have a choice, right? You know, there's work to be done and for a lot of people, other kids to take care of at home and life doesn't stop outside of the NICU. And so these parents are entrusting the nurses, the staff with their brand new, fresh, you know, fresh baby who hasn't even seen daylight yet. And

That is part of the reason why it's so hard to wrap my head around this whole story. And I think one of the dads at one of the interviews said the same thing, that it's nauseating. And he still is trying to put it all together because it just doesn't compute. And it shouldn't. It doesn't because it is so incongruent with what we know. I've done so many stories over the years of...

Because for every bad nurse story, I do a good nurse story. And I've done so many. There are so many amazing stories out there of nurses who work in that setting and doctors and other CNAs, other, well, maybe not. Well, they're techs, respiratory therapists that work in that setting. Man, you have to be highly specialized to be able to be in there. Those tiny little tubes and little, little.

Everything is so tiny. It's microscopic, it feels like. And so for this story, I could give you

10,000 stories. Amazing people doing amazing things behind the scenes, just living their life every day, going to work, sacrificing themselves many times, literally working in during hurricanes, during times when other people are, are evacuating areas. Other people are being with their families and these nurses are there. This is so unsettling and disturbing. And it's really, really hard to understand how,

Again, it's alleged, but if this is true, that someone could somehow get into this setting and it not be that someone did not realize it.

Soon enough, but we're going to talk about it because there's some details that are so disturbing in the way this has been handled. And I know you know what I'm talking about. This is messed up. Yes. Again, trigger warning. It's disturbing some of the things that we're going to have to talk about that this person did. But some of the injuries were actually broken bones.

bones. It's so hard to even say that, like to even let that come out of your mouth to even just want to, it just almost makes it too real. And you don't even want to believe that someone could inflict that kind of pain on such a vulnerable, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny human. But the incidents actually spanned over a year and a half.

with cases occurring both in 2023 and in 2024. I told you guys this is a really recent, but it was a recent breaking, but it had, it's been going on for a while, which is

Oh, my goodness. So disturbing. The first signs of trouble emerged in the summer of 2023 when four infants were identified with unexplained fractures. At the time, these injuries raised suspicions but did not immediately lead to a formal investigation. I can't like reading that out loud in my notes. I just it boggles my mind. I don't understand it. It makes no sense.

Why? Unexplained fractures. Why? Did that not rise to the level of stop everything, we have to figure out what's going on? Right now.

So by late 2024, three additional cases surfaced prompting hospital administrators to take action. That, again, I'm glad they did, but why? If you know that it is highly unusual for an infant in an NICU to have unexplained fractures,

And I understand that they're very fragile. They know what is typical and what is not. I mean, if it was that common, it would be happening all the time. And obviously it's not. So if we have four incidences, then obviously,

Why would we just be like, well, maybe it was just a fluke. Right. Let's wait until three more occur. And the thing that blows my mind is that let one mom bring their child in to the ER with any sort of fracture, any bruise cut, anything.

And DCFS is called and we're doing an investigation and these kids might be removed from the home. And so it just, I, I, again, I, it just does not make sense to me how it only takes once for this to happen outside of the hospital, but it happens four times in the hospital and you, you allow it to happen an additional three.

That's a great point. I love that point that you just made because we did a story on this podcast of Maya, and I can't think of her last name, but I know you guys know who I'm talking about because it's a very, very popular story. There's a whole Netflix special on it. That whole family was just put through so much accusing her parents or mom in particular of basically child abuse.

Munchausen's. And you're right that and it uncovered they uncovered this whole thing at this hospital, where there was one physician in particular, who was basically just kind of accusing all kinds of parents of child abuse. And I have also done stories of people who, you know, home health nurses who weren't checking on on children, and then they were being actually abused. So

This is such a fine line. I grew up in foster care. I am a child of things I don't necessarily want to go into. But on one hand, you have parents who are just doing the best they can, bringing their kids in. If something happens, you're just bringing them in. And they're just well-meaning. And immediately, DCFS, turning them over, investigation, raking them over the coals. But then you have children who literally die here.

who were supposed to be under investigation and nobody was paying attention. It's so frustrating. It's so incredibly frustrating. But then you have this setting in a hospital, in a NICU, where it is highly unusual for four little babies to have these unexplained fractures. And it's highly suspicious to the administration. Somehow we don't have to let DCFS...

I know it's called different things, different states. Yeah, different states. But yeah. Department of Children's Services, you don't have to let them know. CPS, whatever. Yeah, right, right. Huge oversight. Huge.

So the growing pattern of injuries could no longer be ignored, leading to increased scrutiny and eventually triggering criminal investigation. So in December of 2024, so we're now in January of 2025, early, I guess we're going on mid now, good grief. This is less than a month ago. Well, it was actually Christmas Eve. Doctors ceased admitting new patients to the NICU to address this issue.

The decision was made on December 24th, 2024, signaling the gravity of the issue. The hospital also implemented several measures to ensure patient safety, including installing surveillance cameras, increasing security protocols, and providing additional staff training. Brittany, I don't know how you feel about this. Working in a hospital, I have mixed feelings about cameras being in hospitals, about recording staff doing things.

On the one hand, you have people who are absolute monsters that literally want to hurt people. Now that you have lazy people, you have all kinds of people. You've got lazy people that literally just don't want to work and will do anything that they can to get out of work. Yes, to get out of work.

I mean, unfortunately, those people end up in hospitals. And I do think that the percentage of these people is very small. I think that the people who literally want to inflict harm, like literally just want to watch somebody suffer. Thank God. I think that that is not a huge percentage of people that end up in health care. But there are those people. So how do you feel about that? Cameras? So I'm the type of person who...

So my upbringing was one of those, I was always reminded, you should be doing the right thing all the time, not just when somebody's watching. So when we talk about management or IDPH or JCO coming through, the things that I'm doing are the things that I do all the time. I don't have to change anything that I do.

So when it comes to the cameras, it doesn't bother me at all when it comes to my work ethic and anyone watching me. You can watch me all day. I don't care. You're going to get bored. Right. But when it comes to patient privacy, that's when it becomes an issue for me, especially. So my hospital, we have cameras in the trauma bays.

And they do that so that they could rewatch the traumas, make sure that we ran everything smoothly, make sure everything was safe and the best patient outcome was achieved.

However, think about a trauma. What do we do? We cut the patient's clothes off, right? Sorry, there's my puppy. So the patient is naked for a period of time. It's usually very brief, but in my head, I would hate to be a person on a recording after having my clothes cut off, things like that. So I think that there's a balance between patient privacy and respect and

and making sure that we can hold people accountable if we need to. Now, when it comes to the NICU, have all the cameras you want. I don't care. Because again, like we said multiple times, this is the most vulnerable population of patients. I think back to nursing school, they always said, what are the two most vulnerable groups? Elderly patients and babies, right? And NICU babies, that's a whole nother level. So...

If I were a person who was birthing a child and my child had to stay in the hospital and for any reason they had to stay in there without me, absolutely. Mic them up, camera, I don't care. Put a body cam on the baby. Do whatever you gotta do.

So I started noticing about a year ago that anything requiring a lot of mental focus was absolutely draining, like physically exhausting, even things I love like reading. And at work, I mean, just forget about it. I'd find myself reading the same sentence in a chart over and over. So Magic Mind came along and they have introduced me to the idea of mental wealth.

It's all about building habits now that give you the mental strength that you'll need later, kind of like a savings account for your brain. But you can only withdraw, of course, what you've deposited. So what helps build that up? Things like sleep, diet, exercise, managing stress, and lifestyle.

of course, certain supplements or external supports that you can take. That's where Magic Mind comes in. They've got an amazing way to help you build up your mental health with 24 hours of support for mental performance. In the morning, their focus shots help you start the day with clarity and energy. And then at night, their sleep shots help you wind down for better rest. So you can recharge and wake up ready to tackle.

the day. As you guys know, I've been using Magic Minds Focus Shots in the mornings this past year. My whole family has been using it and we've really noticed a difference in our clarity and ability to focus. So for the first time, Magic Minds is offering their 24-hour pack, a bundle of Focus and Sleep Shots

at 45% off exclusively through magicmind.com/gnbnjan. That's magicmind.com/gnbnjan. So what about you? How are you investing in your mental wealth?

There's no better time to start than now. Join me in this mental wealth challenge and make 2025 the year you build your mental resilience. Improve your sleep and daytime clarity with Magic Mind at magicmind.com forward slash G-N-B-N-J-A-N. When it comes to cameras, I think I have mixed feelings about it because I worry about deterring good staff because people start to feel uncomfortable

like they're under this microscope all the time. And like, they're so vulnerable if you make a mistake, if you're just being a human being and doing the very best you can, but you make a mistake. Now it's on camera and you could literally go to prison for just making a mistake. And it's, it's, um, I worry about if, if you do have like, okay, let's just cameras in all the hospitals, cameras in all the rooms, let everybody know. And it is what it is that,

we're already having a hard time getting good people to work in the hospital. I feel like there could be a balance there between you have the cameras, you have the surveillance, but maybe you have some laws protecting healthcare workers for good faith errors. Like they're literally just doing their job. You can tell they're just doing, they always do the right thing. They're just being a good healthcare worker, but then

In a moment of just making a mistake, something happens. I don't know. Yeah, I know. I absolutely agree with you. And I think that, well, from what we've been hearing over the past few years is right. Health care in general is moving towards a non punitive sort of approach.

for medical errors, medical mistakes, and things like that. And at least that's what I've seen at multiple hospitals that I've worked at, especially in travel nursing. When you make a mistake, it's important to bring that mistake to your superior so that we can figure out how other people can avoid making that mistake in the future, right? Moving away from that culture of fear. So I absolutely agree with you that if there were cameras online,

or surveillance in all parts of where we work, it would be incredibly important to make sure staff know that, you know, we're still continuing that culture of learning from our mistakes versus, oh, you're negligent. Yeah. And, you know, something that you said earlier about how you were raised to do your job the way you would do it

when no one's watching as if everybody's watching. And one of the things that I have always said to people as I precept is do your job as if you're on camera, just assume you're on camera. Assume there's a camera following you around because it probably is. You never know. There, there probably are cameras everywhere. There, there are cameras these days all over. You don't know. There could be a family member, a patient could have, have an, a hidden camera there. There are surveillance, you know, to, to,

It's called integrity. Do your job with integrity. And then you really don't have to worry about it. But the thing is, we are human and we can make mistakes. And it's a lot of times we are put in impossible situations in hospitals where we're told this is the very what, you know, this is the best way to do this. And so you're going to get pulled into a court of law and you're going to have a nurse who is, quote, extradited.

expert, you know, nurse. And the prosecutor is going to be like, well, would you have done this in this setting? And they would say, no, I would not have done this in this setting. And I just want to yell from the, you know, from the gallows, like, no, you

You wouldn't have in a textbook world, but you might have had you been working under the circumstances that this nurse was having to work under. Context is everything, right? Right. So I sometimes get, you know, like I try to, because I want to be an advocate for patients, but I also want to be an advocate for nurses as well and other staff. Not just, it's everybody is under this kind of pressure in hospitals. In this case, I mean, NICUs are,

prisons, nursing homes, these places where people are so, they can't speak for themselves. Even in prisons, even though they're adults, you lose your voice when you get behind those prison walls. You're an adult, but you don't have a voice in there. Your autonomy is stripped. Yeah. So I do believe that cameras and surveillance should, and that are recording at all times should be absolutely everywhere. And people who have those intentions, they're,

At least if they if they wanted to do some, at least they know they're being recorded all the time. So I think I'm 100 percent for it for vulnerable populations at the very least. Definitely agree.

Authorities began this comprehensive investigation, reviewing medical records, interviewing staff, analyzing surveillance footage. The process uncovered enough evidence to identify Erin Strotman, a 26-year-old nurse, as the prime suspect in the case. Investigators found that her shifts coincided with the times that the injuries occurred, raising serious concerns about her actions while on duty. I have a hard time...

believing that that's the only, you know, I feel like they're probably holding a lot of things close to the vest. I really hope that it's not just this coincidence of she happened to be on, you know, every single time. I hope that that wasn't enough to go and arrest her, put her name out there, attach these accusations and have her literally in jail right now. Right. Mugshot and all. Right. I'm sure there's more to it.

So on January 2nd, 2025, Erin Strotman was arrested and charged with multiple counts, including malicious, wounding, and felony child abuse. The charges stem from her alleged involvement in causing fractures and other injuries to at least seven infants in the NICU. She is accused of deliberately harming these vulnerable patients, all of whom were under her care during her shifts.

So there has been some speculation on social media that this could have been racially motivated. I know I follow a couple of different nurse influencers on Instagram who I just love because they're just so good to just get on there and tell it like it is. And one of them, she came right out and said,

She sometimes gets some behind the scenes information, like people will get into her DMs that know what's going on. And so somehow she got information that all of the babies were black. But the police department was asked about this. And they said that there is no evidence to suggest that the alleged abuse by Aaron Strotman was racially motivated and stated that these claims are, quote, not factual.

So I think that maybe not all of them are black. But then another thing that she came back and said was that they were all male. And none of that has been really disclosed. It does seem like there were at least two men.

Because the parents have spoken up. Yes, there were at least two. And everything that I've seen was stating that the babies were black or it was said like babies of color or something like that, right? And so, of course, the police are going to say, you know, there's no evidence that this is racially motivated. Nobody wants there to be a hate crime going on in a NICU, right? But...

You know, the first family that I saw was black. The nurse is white. Right. And so there's there's a power dynamic there already. There's nurse versus baby. Right. There's white nurse versus black baby. And so all these power dynamics suggest that there is in my head. Right. This is all my just my personal opinion to me is just something that is racially motivated. And so we'll see what comes out in the coming weeks, months, whatever.

How many more families speak out and things like that. But it would not surprise me whatsoever, right, if these were all Black babies or babies of color.

Yeah, and I don't know a lot about the hospital. Like, is it a hospital that's in an area where there are a lot of babies of color or like the whole hospital? Like, is that the demographic? That's a good point to make. I know that Virginia is a military state, and so a lot of military families live there. I have a lot of family in Virginia. I know that it's a very diverse state.

state in general, but I'm not sure about the specific hospital in this specific town. Again, these are things that are alleged. More information will come out. I'm sure it will go to trial unless she ends up

Well, and a lot of times with these cases, they do. They do just do a deal because they don't want, you know, specific details coming out if there's evidence of things, which you almost have to assume there must be something. They've just got to have something. She's currently being held without bond. That tells you something right there. She's been ordered to have no contact with children under the age of 18. I don't know if she has children or not.

Her next court appearance is scheduled for March 24th, 2025. They're reviewing additional cases from 2023 and 24 to determine whether there may be more victims. I would have a hard time believing that if she in fact was doing something like this, that it was limited to only the very few that they've discovered. Right, right. Absolutely. Yeah.

All the different stories that I've done. Crazy stories. Insulin, nurses, air, you know, air embolisms, all of the different things. A lot of times there's things, there are more patients, but they have to hone in on the ones that they have evidence of that are very clear. So they kind of like, they focus in on those, but they know that there's more, you know, that happened.

Enrico Hospital expressed shock and sadness over the allegations emphasizing their commitment to patient safety and cooperation with law enforcement. The hospital is providing support to affected families and staff while working to rebuild trust with the community.

This case has really sparked widespread outrage and concern, particularly among parents and health care professionals. As you can imagine, many are questioning how these incidents could occur in a setting designed to provide specialized care to, obviously, what we've said, the most vulnerable patients, the communities demanding accountability. The number of times that those words have come out of my mouth, but...

People get something like this happens and people start demanding change, systemic change. We got to prevent similar tragedies in the future. All the nursing home stories that I've done. Again, this is the third story I've done about a NICU in particular, but also pediatrician offices and just...

I'm so tired of it because nothing ultimately really ever seems to happen. There's no true change that I've seen. No, it feels like there's this fuse that's lit and then it dies out and then it's back to the status quo. And that's when everyone's vulnerable again.

Yeah, and that I've seen that cycle through so many times, you know, I started this in 2018. And there are lots of issues that that are really, really important when it comes to healthcare, nursing, patient advocacy, nurse advocacy, healthcare worker in general advocacy, etc.

Sometimes it all rolls in together, you know, just patient safety, you know, we're all potential patients. So, right. And so I get so sometimes discouraged when I do some of these stories. And at the end, I always try to like talk about how we've got to be fighting for change. And I'm just like.

Sometimes I just... Exhausted. Yeah. I just feel like, hmm, I keep saying this over and over again. I don't know what else to do. So anyway, that's... This story is new. You sent me a message on Instagram and you were like, hey, I want to talk about this. I was like, this is perfect. I didn't even know how perfect it was for you to come over here and talk about this. You literally... You...

And your sister could be these babies laying there, vulnerable, born at 26 weeks. 26 weeks. And trusting, and your parents trusting in the staff to take care of them. It's exhausting for parents to have to try to be, especially with twins, sometimes one will get to go home and the other one will stay. Right.

Right. You know, I spent the better part of my life bragging about how I got to ride in a helicopter in my first week of life. But come to find out, Whitney, my twin sister, was the one who rode on a helicopter because she was more unstable than me. I went in a regular ambulance to the hospital. And so my whole life was a lie. Oh, God.

I've never been in a helicopter. Oh, my goodness. That's so funny. You've been lying. You need to go on a tour to apologize to everyone. Right, everyone. Yeah.

Oh my goodness. So, well, I'm really glad that you reached out to me. I'm glad that we were able to talk about this. Once again, as we're kind of wrapping this story up, I want to emphasize that people in our country are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. And that is the way it is. But at the same time,

you know, there's some countries where this, her name would be protected. Lucy Letby, we did not know who she was for a long time. We knew there was a nurse who was, who had been arrested, but they did not release her name for a while. And sometimes I wonder if that's not a good thing, because it's kind of bad. You get accused of things and your face is out there for so, you know, now it's everywhere. Social media, your face is everywhere and you're associated with

that then you're acquitted of, but nobody is around at that time when they drop the charges, you know? Right. Listen, it happens so often for Black men. I just can't feel bad for this girl. Yes. She'd be all right. She'd be all right. Because the thing is,

The thing is, is even if she were acquitted, homegirl could probably go get a job in a heartbeat after all of this, right? Whereas black men are accused of things every day and it takes them years to be acquitted. And after that, you know, they've missed the better part of their family's lives and they're trying to put back together what they had before. So I don't feel bad for her whatsoever. I know it's mean. Yeah.

If you're on a jury, you kind of have to, you have to be, you have to be impartial. You have to. Which is why I can't be on a jury. Right. But you're, if you're not on a jury, you're, you can use your kind of common sense and go, look.

You don't just go arrest somebody for no reason, usually. So there has to be something there in this particular, because a hospital, that's the thing. A hospital does not want to bring this kind of publicity on themselves. This is bad. You know how much money they lost having to shut down the NICU? They had to stop admissions to the NICU. So this, there's no way they wanted this to happen. Right.

This is not the same thing as a police officer pulling over someone for a busted taillight and then forcing them to get out of the car and then forcing them to the ground and arresting them for resisting arrest and getting them to the jail and then have a huge list of things that they're going to now charge them with just because they didn't like that they didn't treat them with respect.

The respect that their badge deserves and all of that garbage. That's not what we are talking about here. But that's what you're talking about that happens all the time. Every single day, every minute. Yeah. Every single day, every minute, every county of every state in this freaking country. So, yeah. But, yeah, that is not what we're talking about here because there's no way.

That this would have left that hospital. There's no way that it would have gotten as far as it did had there not been something there. It'll go through the court of law. It is, you know, she's innocent until proven guilty. And we will be following this one closely for sure. Yeah, we will.

So I have to tell you guys about an experience I had with a nursing student. So you know I've been doing travel nursing. Well, this hospital where I'm at has a lot of LPN students doing their clinicals there. So one of them was following me around one day and she noticed my stethoscope. And of course, y'all know the Echo Technology Company that sponsors our podcast. They teamed up with Littman to make the stethoscopes, to beat all stethoscopes, the 3M Littman Core Digital Stethoscope. And this is the one that I use now. So she said, oh my gosh, I've been wanting to try one of those. So I said, okay, I'm going to try one of those.

So of course I let her use it and she just could not stop talking about it for the rest of the shift. It was so cute. She was like, you know, I can't hear anything with my normal stethoscope because I have tinnitus. And so she was so excited because she could actually hear what heart sounds were supposed to sound like. She said, I'm going to ask for one of these for graduation. And I was like, yeah, you definitely should. So just so you know,

The Echo technology that makes Testescope so amazing. You can enable it with a flip of a switch. You can turn it on and off. It has active noise cancellation up to 40 times amplification, wireless auscultation using Bluetooth technology. It connects with Echo's free app and software.

so that you can visualize, record, share, live stream, analyze heart sounds, lung sounds, and whatever body sounds you want to listen to. So you can go to echohealth.com and use the promo code GNBN to get $50 off your order. And that's echo is spelled E-K-O, by the way. So it's echohealth.com and use the GNBN promo code to get $50 off your order.

Let's get to the good nurse story. So Brittany is a, she's an advocate for all sorts of different types of people. She's not, I mean, she's not just a nurse advocate or she's a person advocate, she's a people advocate. Tell everybody what's going on in your life right now. Yeah. So if y'all have met me in previous episodes, you know that I published a book in 2023. It's called Journal of a Black Queer Nurse. I

I have been kind of all over the place this past year, talking to different universities, different organizations about the work that I do, my book, of course, and sharing different stories to sort of bring a different perspective to different communities. Because I think that it's really important for us to see the world through other people's lens in order to really understand what they go through.

And, you know, right now I'm finishing up my DNP finally. I shouldn't say finally. I did that. I got my associates and then I got my bachelor's and my master's and now I'm finishing my DNP. I did it all consecutively back to back.

And my project is on sickle cell in the pediatric emergency department and making sure that we're using our resources to objectively treat sickle cell pain when patients check into the ER and making sure that folks aren't waiting three and four hours for an IV and getting some pain meds. So that's going really well. And, you know, next year, well, this year, oh my God, it's 2025. Yeah.

So this year, you know, for Black History Month, I'll be going around and having some great discussions about health equity and making sure that folks sort of understand the disparities that exist in our communities and what we can do to help. And, you know, sort of just continuing that in that realm.

And I'm going to be teaching a foundations clinical class this semester in Chicago. So I'll be hanging out with some nursing students on the med-surg floor, which I've never been on the med-surg floor outside of nursing school. So this should be interesting.

Yeah. So you brought up a couple of really interesting things that I want to kind of like hone in on. One of the things is sickle cell and pain management and how they're treated when they go into the ER. And anytime I get an opportunity to talk about this, I always want to talk about it because it is something that I think very few people know and understand, and especially people in healthcare. And unfortunately, I'm going to try to not...

Paint everybody with the same brush here. But unfortunately, sometimes emergency department staff can be put in conditions that can make them kind of like cynical. And I feel like I get myself in trouble sometimes because I know not everybody is like this. I know that. Right.

Let's be real. There are lots of people that go to the emergency room that I know that emergency room staff get frustrated over because they feel like they don't really need to be here. They're taking up our resources for people who really need it and all that stuff. And I

I understand. I empathize with them and I wish it wasn't like that. But I always want to remind them that there are lots of people who are coming there that it may not always be real obvious to you. You may not be able to just look at someone and tell whether they are in pain. And I feel like a lot of times some pain for emergency staff, it's not an emergency to them. Yes. Yes, absolutely.

And I don't know where that, I don't want to say stigma or that assumption or that culture comes from, but pain is an emergency, right? It's something to be taken seriously. One of the stories that I told in my book was a woman that came in who was in so much pain that she couldn't lie on her back. And I just remember the nurse yelling at her saying, well, you need to lie on your back or you're not getting anything for pain.

And just with, and with that tone too, that, that very condescending tone and turned out, sis couldn't lay on her back because sis had a ruptured ectopic pregnancy. Right. And so we, we as nurses, we, you are right. What you said is right. We are put in what we put ourselves in environments and situations, right. As ER nurses, where we can easily become cynical, but it is

our responsibility to remind ourselves in those moments of why we're doing what we're doing, why we punched the clock, why we went to nursing school, why we sat for NCLEX,

And remembering that we are there to take care of vulnerable people. Everyone who comes into the ER is immediately vulnerable because we are the person in a position of power over them. We are the person taking care of them. We are the people that are responsible for making sure they have their needs met. So when someone comes in with pain, it is our responsibility to remember them.

you know, the very foundation of nursing is basic human respect and making sure that we're meeting basic human needs. So it is, you know, although, you know, we are in those situations, it is our responsibility to remember why we're there. Yes. And sickle cell is something that it's misunderstood. It is misunderstood. And I think it's

I've seen too, I've heard too many staff members kind of roll their eyes at sickle cell patients. And it's just like, read up on it. It doesn't take that much. You can read up on it pretty quickly. And once, if you just give you, take 30 minutes and look up sickle

some really good legitimate research on sickle cell and the sickle cell pain crisis and what they go through and try to put yourself try to as what we're that's what we're supposed to do. It's supposed to try to empathize, try to put yourself in there. Have you what's the worst pain you've ever felt in your life before? You know, have you? Maybe you've never been through that. Maybe people just can't do that for some reason.

You know what I wish we could do? You know how they have those labor simulators for people? I swear I wish there was a sickle cell one. Whoever's listening, somebody invent that, please. Invent a sickle cell pain simulator. Where you can just like feel the pain for just like 30, like 30 seconds, 15 seconds, even just enough to be like, whoa, are you kidding? Yep.

Yes, because that'll make people shut the hell up and start treating their pain. Yeah, and it's something that you can't just... You don't just treat it immediately. A lot of times, it's like a regimen that you have to give them. And if you don't stay on top of it, that exacerbation will happen. And that's what... Once I learned that...

when I became a nurse and I started really learning about different types of patients, once I figured that out about sickle cell, if I had a sickle cell patient, that was my priority. That was my priority. Obviously, you know, if somebody's coding of somebody, you know, the obvious things, but if I have a sickle cell patient, it's going to be at the top of my list to stay on top of the pain meds. And I just don't think a lot of people understand it. They just don't get it. So

So I told you I was going to go on a rant about my... Yes, please. I'm going to talk about my kidney stone for a second. You guys could just like drop off here if you want to. I don't care. Do it. Look, in December...

I work from home now. I'm sitting here working and I don't call in sick. I never have. I've just never been the kind of person to call in sick or like not go to work. Same. Ever. I just don't. I can't, you know, like that's a few times that I've had to do it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. But I mean, let me just tell you something. It was usually, it usually involved a stomach bug, which typically happens.

or COVID. Yes. Like you literally just can't go. But I was in here working and I'm like, I can't, I can't sit down. Like I would, I would try to sit down and I couldn't get comfortable. My side was hurting. My right side was hurting. Lower right quadrant. Okay. So I start thinking like, what the heck? Do I have like

Like, is it possible I have like appendicitis? I didn't, it did not occur to me at a kidney stone. At some point I was like, I keep everything to myself, never say anything until it gets to the point where I'm going to die. This is so bad, right? This is so me. And so I finally told my husband, I was like,

I might have to go to the hospital. And he starts looking at me like, what? Where did this come from? I'm like, I've been in pain all morning. I just told my boss that I can't work. And he's looking at me like, what? And so he goes, okay, okay. I go and I told him which hospital I wanted to go to, which was kind of farther away, but I trust them more. But then we got in the car and then I was in so much pain. I was like, we got to go to this other one.

I couldn't do it. I was like, I'm going to die. I literally thought I was imploding. I felt so bad. And so we went to the ER. Let me just tell you, I got there at three o'clock and

I walked up to them and I was just being super, just being myself, just trying to be strong. And I told him, I was like, I'm in a lot of pain. I feel like I'm dying. And of course, they look at you like, you're crazy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sure you are. Yeah. And so I was just like, okay, fine. Get on the floor if you're really in pain. I know. When I say I wanted to lay on the floor, I really did. I believe it.

I wanted to so bad. I couldn't sit down. I would stand up and walk. I would go to the bathroom, try to get relief there. I couldn't go back, talk to my husband. I'm just like, you know, so miserable. They took my blood pressure. It was like 170 something. I have like very, I am the chillest person you could ever meet. My blood pressure is low all the time. I am just so chill. It was like 170 something. I was like,

I am in so much pain. And so they were like, well, we're going to take you back and put you in a room with other patients, but your husband can't come back there. And I was like, just get me back there. Right. Just give me, let's go. Yeah. So I go back there. I'm sitting there with all these other people. When I tell you that like there was like eight other people in this room and none of them

Looked like I felt there's no way I mean they were all just sitting there talking to each other about how bad their situation was and I couldn't talk.

I'm sitting there. I can't talk. I can't do anything. All I can do is get up and try to go to the bathroom and come back and I can't communicate with anybody. I didn't look at my phone. I didn't, there was no consoling me. There was no making me feel better. And so I walked with the nurse. I was like, they put an IV in me and took labs. So I

I'm like, I was like, could you please give me something for pain? And then he was like, well, I can, I'll put it in, but I don't know if they're going to give it to you. That kind of thing. So I go back. I'm so humiliated and just so like being treated like, I don't know. Like you're pain seeking. Like I'm just nobody. I'm just nobody. Yeah.

I am. I'm nobody. That's true. I'm just, I'm no better than anybody else. But I was in so much pain. Exactly. And I never told them I was a nurse. I never tried any of that garbage. But they came and took me to get my CT. When I came back from my CT, I went to the bathroom, vomited everywhere. I was just so, so sick. Came back, told my nurse. I was like, I just vomited. Okay. Wow.

I was like, okay, I get it. You don't care. Where's the bedside manner? I know. There was just none. They just didn't care. Well, then they had a new shift came in. And then I guess another nurse took over my care. That nurse was still there because I saw him. But he handed me off to her. Then she, I went up to her and I was like,

When I tell you, I mean, I feel like my side is going, like, I can't take it anymore. Like, I was, I was, I can't describe to you how bad it, it hurt so bad. I know you can't. She opened up the computer. She looks in and she was being, you know, she was, she was doing her job. So she opens the computer. She looks in there and she goes, well, let me see if your CT results are in. And she goes, oh, you have a, oh. She goes, oh, you have a one centimeter kidney stone. Oh, do I? Yeah.

Do I, Rebecca? So how about some pain meds now, Rebecca? Like, why do I have to prove that there's something going on with me before you all will treat my pain? I'm sorry, go ahead. Yeah, that's exactly how I felt. And I was just like, I said, well, I'm not, I'm honestly not surprised. I mean, that's 10 millimeters. I had back several years ago, I had a seven millimeter kidney stone that I thought I was going to die for. Jesus.

This was a centimeter. That's a massive kidney stone. And it was blocking. It was right at the UVJ. Oh, yeah? And so it had gone all the way down. And it had gone as far as it was going to go. And here you are just being dramatic, throwing up and stuff. Yeah, just being so pain-seeking. And well, here's what's really funny. They gave me morphine.

And Zofran didn't ask me, did not even tell me what they gave me. They just gave me more. They gave me something for pain, something for pain. And so then I'm sitting there and it did not do anything for my pain. I'm still sitting there dying. And now I'm so sleepy. I wanted to. Thank you. Yep. Where's the tort all? After like another hour, I think.

Maybe two. I went back up there and I was like, look, she goes, you know, I talked to the urologist and they said that that thing's just not going to come out on its own. You're going to have to have surgery. I just wanted to be like, OK, Rebecca.

And so I said, okay, yeah, I kind of figured that. But she goes, if we can get your pain managed, I said, could I have some Toradol? And she and this is to the nurse practitioner. And she goes, sure. Yeah, we can try that. Yeah. Okay, great. Thank you. Like, how do you not know that's the go to you've checked my creatinine level. So you know, my kidney function is okay, you're not going to kill me with the Toradol. Why would that not have been the first go to?

Why can't you just give somebody Toradol if you took their blood and you checked their creatinine? Why can't you just give it to them if they say they're in pain? Even if I was pain-seeking, you could give me Toradol if you know my kidney function. Exactly. Okay. I just wanted to rant for a little bit. Sorry. I just had to. No.

No, it was so bad. It was so bad. And it's just that one experience. Like I never go to the hospital. I never like it's very, very rare. I did end up having to go see a urologist and they were amazing. They were so amazing. They just took it out. Everything was great. But it makes me think of like people who are chronically ill, people who have sickle cell.

Oh my gosh. Every time you have a sickle cell crisis, this is what you have to go through? Yep. Really? Every time? Every time. No. And it's probably, it's probably, not probably, it is worse for sickle cell patients because the second they get checked in, someone's digging through their chart and digging through their history to see how many times they've been there and, you know, this and that and they're passing judgment and they're

There's just this look on the provider's face, not the provider, the healthcare provider, I mean, nurse, check, whatever, doc, whoever it is. And you see the pain shift from just pain to pain and fear, right?

It's heartbreaking to know that someone with a disease that they can't, they have zero control over. They did not ask for. No. That they live with everything they have. This is not something they did to themselves. Exactly. Not that that's an excuse to mistreat someone. Right. But still. But damn. Right. And this is a predominant, it's a disease that predominantly affects African-American people.

But for you, every time you have a sickle cell crisis, you're going to go in and get treated this way. And not only is it... See, I got a CT scan and they saw a 10 millimeter kidney stone. Yeah.

They can't see. They can't see anything. Exactly. There's nothing. It's not like, oh, oh, look, we ran this lab and you're in a sickle cell crisis. So now, now we get it. We need to give you all this pain. No, you've got to convince them. And then you might get a healthcare provider or healthcare professional that is like, whoa, sickle cell, I get this. Let's get on top of it. And then bam, shift change. Yeah. And then that's it. Yeah. Yeah.

Back to square one. I had norovirus a few weeks ago. And it got so bad. Yeah, yes. Right around the same time you had your stone. Oh my goodness. And it got so bad that I was so dehydrated. It made me think of... I thought of this when you said you were in that room with all those people, but they were talking and you couldn't. That's how I felt. I felt like I couldn't even communicate with people properly.

in front of me right you feel like you're just in this like sunken place um and I I ended up going to the ER because I'm I I thought to myself that I can't keep anything down this has been going on for 48 hours I need fluids right hopefully I'll just go to the fast track they'll throw some fluids at me some zofran I need it and send me home

I got from the parking, you know, I live in Chicago, so it's from the parking garage to the ER. I vomited on the way there. Could barely keep myself up to the ER. Get to the ER. It's completely, I mean, completely packed. So much so that the security guard is telling people, you can't have anyone wait with you in the waiting room. It's just the patient, right? And...

I mean, it had to have been 15 minutes. Maybe it was more, maybe it was less. I have no idea. I was sick that passed and...

I got myself a vomit bag because before then I was using a pot from an old plant. And it took so long for them to check in, not triage, but check in the patient that was at the desk that I started to feel like I was going to pass out. And then thinking, I have to be in here by myself. No one can be in here with me. It's completely full. It's going to be hours.

I literally took my vomit bag and went home. And I, you know, I just...

I thought to myself, I can't even imagine. I have resources, right? I can call someone and be like, hey, come over and give me some fluids and some Zofran. But normal folks can't do that, folks who don't work in medicine. And, you know, I just can't imagine what it would have been like to sit there all night waiting and then probably be judged, right, for checking in with a very contagious virus that, you know, I...

I technically could have just waited out at home. But, you know, getting to the point where you feel like you can't stand on your own two feet, you know, you need some help. Yeah. And I called urgent care and said, hey, can I come there? Nope. You need an IV. Don't come here. Oh, no. Don't come here. But yeah, we're going to make a better world for our sickle cell patients. I'm glad that we were able to have this conversation because I feel like so many times on social media and on these health care podcasts, we're

And we are trying to bring awareness to the public about how difficult it is on the healthcare staff, on these ERs. I mean, for that packed ER that one I was going to, there's a reason that they had to put me in a room with a bunch of patients. It was packed. They're overwhelmed. They have compassion fatigue. And I know that. That's why I didn't say anything. That's why I didn't, which I'm, like I said, I'm a chill person. It takes a lot for me to...

I'm not going to go off anybody. I'm just not. He's probably a new grad. He was young. So that's what I said. That's where my mind tends to go. I try to figure out like, why, why would someone treat another human being this way? I don't think that most people are that mean. I think that they are conditioned that way. And it's,

you know who we want to be mad at? It's the people running these freaking hospitals. They're not giving them enough resources. That's why they're under a pressure cooker in there. You've got all these patients who are miserable. But I'm glad we kind of like,

gave the healthcare professionals as a patient perspective on this episode, because we both kind of had these recent experiences. And just to kind of remind people that, look, I get it. I know you're under a lot of stress. I know you don't have enough resources. And I do appreciate you working there. I really do appreciate everything you're doing. But try to remember. Yes. Try to remember to have compassion for people. Right. Somebody who says they're in pain, please take them at their word.

Please don't, you know, judge people. Just try. Just try to find it within yourself to maintain that compassion. Don't let your coworkers have that attitude. Like educate your coworkers. If you're doing handoff and you got a sickle cell patient, educate them. Look,

tell them. If you've got a sickle cell patient that's in a sickle cell crisis, take it seriously. Don't be like, oh, sickle cell patient. Please don't do that. I know it's tempting because you're so stressed out and you're tired, your feet are hurt, you're exhausted, but hand that patient off in the right way. Give them the information that they need to take really good care of that patient and tell them, stay on top of it. I just gave them their payments at this time. Be

Be sure and get in there. If you stay on top of it, you know, it'll be a good shift. Whatever, like give them incentive that they need to be able to take good care of their patients. Absolutely. Yeah. A lot of what we say is you brought up a really great point. A lot of what we say during handoff can really

I mean, for some people, it can really dictate the way the shift is going to go, not just for the nurse, but for the patient, right? So if you're talking smack about your patient in handoff and you're already like planting these seeds of negativity regarding your patient to the next nurse, you're not doing anybody any favors, especially the patient.

It's true. That's very true. Do you know what a dermoid cyst is? Of course you do. I had an eight centimeter dermoid cyst removed from my ovary on Tuesday this past week. Wow. And it had, trigger warning, I'm going to say something gross. It had hair in it. Oh, okay.

Yes. So apparently, I never knew what a dermoid cyst was until I had an ultrasound and they told me I had a cyst. And they said a dermoid cyst is special because it has random, like solid tissue. And sometimes it's teeth, bones. Oh, my. Hair. Yes.

And so the one thing I asked them was to please take pictures for me. Please. So the first time I was intubated, it was the first time I was intubated, the first time I had general anesthesia, first time I had, you know, a real surgery. And it was fantastic. And they took really great care of me. And I got to see pictures of the cyst afterward. And, you know, one of the things that I try to do as a nurse is make my patients laugh all the time.

And my nurse knew that I am a woman who only dates women. And when I got there, they had to do a pregnancy test. And I was like, oh, whatever, you're wasting your time and resources. But sure, let's go. Let's go. And so they did it. And she came in a few minutes later while someone from research was talking to me. And she goes, oh, and by the way, your pregnancy test was positive. Yeah.

I love it. I could not stop laughing. That was my favorite part of the entire day. That's great. Yeah, I was very, very grateful to have someone, you know, making jokes with me and being the type of nurse that I am to other people. But that's the type of stuff that, you know, is really beautiful and something that was really scary for me ended up being one of the best medical experience I've ever had in my life. So.

Wonderful. Well, that's what we want to hear because there are so many people out there doing a great job. Like I said, the urologist's office that took care of me for the surgery from start to finish, it was amazing. And I just never had one. I mean, they were just great. And so...

I'm so thankful for people who go into health care for the right reasons that maintain, you know, maintain that that level of compassion that it takes, you know, to be able to do the job right. You know, I just want to encourage everybody to just remind yourself that.

you're taking care of people, you know, human beings and you can really have a huge impact on somebody. But just like that one little thing that that, that that nurse did for you and kind of helping to get you through that, you know, that day. Yeah.

Well, I guess that wraps it up for this episode. Thank you so much for coming back on the show, talking about these difficult subjects. Thank you for having me. Remind everybody where they can find your book and find you. You can find me on Instagram at Black Queer Nurse, all one word. Same with TikTok. I make a lot of TikTok videos. And my book, Journal of a Black Queer Nurse, you can find it everywhere books are sold online.

It was published through Common Notions. So it's pretty cheap there, Common Notions Press. All right. And you guys know you can find me at Good Nurse, Bad Nurse pretty much anywhere. You can send me an email, Tina at GoodNurseBadNurse.com. I love hearing from you guys. And before we go, I got to remind you, even if you're a bad girl or a bad boy or a bad loony buddy, just be a good nurse, okay?