Hey everybody, this is Tina again with Good Nurse, Bad Nurse. Welcome back to another episode of this podcast where we take stories from the news and use them to just kind of talk about things that are going on in healthcare, talk about things that could possibly happen in real life. Sometimes they're good and sometimes they're bad. Today, we're going to be talking about a bad nurse story that is very unfortunate and it definitely puts a huge blemish on
on the nursing world. Fortunately, though, we do have a really nice good nurse story to balance that out that we'll close out with.
But before we get into our stories, Roger, what in the world? Hello. How are you doing? Hey, Tina. I'm doing great. I'm glad to be back again for another interesting episode. We were kind of chit-chatting before this show about this episode. It's definitely one that gives you just all kinds of icky. Like, I feel like I need to go take a shower after we get done with this conversation because I am not looking forward to this. Yeah, definitely need to issue a trigger warning. We are going to be talking about a predator.
And this and this one. So just kind of keep that in mind. It's just an ugly story. I don't know what else to say. It's the ugly side. It's that ugly underbelly of society that can show up in all different types of professions, not just nursing. It can show up. Exactly. You know, everywhere. This is just a bad human. Yeah. Just a bad human in general that ended up going into health care and unfortunately into nursing. Yeah.
And then used that position of authority, that position of trust to take advantage of people. He was caught. So there you go. You have that. Thank goodness. And caught fairly quickly. Not unlike some of the stories you've told that goes on for years. Right.
Exactly. All right, I guess we can get right into this story. This is the story of Michael David Bragg. He grew up in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, about an hour southwest of Harrisburg. He was born somewhere around 1981. Other than that, almost nothing about his childhood shows up in any public source. There's no yearbook quotes, no local kid wins baseball game headlines, nothing on social media from old classmates.
I mean, for a town of only 20,000, that's unusual. And it kind of hints at how easily he sort of slipped under the radar later on. By his late 20s, he had decided to become a nurse. In 2009, he started the associate RN program at Harrisburg Area Community College, or it's also known as HACC in Gettysburg. Classmates say he was calm, methodical, and good with electronics.
He was the guy who could fix the IV pump or troubleshoot the school's glitchy charting software. So when the class held its pinning ceremony in December 2011, faculty gave him the District 15 Leadership Award and called him, quote, an advocate for patience. That praise definitely reads differently now, doesn't it, Roger? Very much so. It struck me that he...
You know, there just wasn't anything about him. I mean, normally, especially in the time frame that he grew up and everything, that social media was out there. It just, you know, that's red flag number one for me, too. He just seems like a sociopath reading this. I mean, he's just slimy.
Well, after passing boards, he worked a few years. Not really easy to track exactly what was going on. Again, a little suspicious.
considering the time, small hospitals, agency shifts, nothing that really made the news. What we do know is that by January 2016, he landed in the emergency department at UPMC Carlisle, 165-bed community hospital. I've worked at a hospital like this before, Roger. I loved my time at a hospital that was just like this little 180 to 200-bed hospital, the little emergency department.
I worked in like the little, it had like, it was like a little six bed ICU, but there was no ICU nurse there until I went there to work. And then I was, I was like, wait, hold on. Tina's running the show. I was like,
I was like, what is happening? Tina's ICU. Yeah. They had night shift nurses. They just didn't have anybody on for day shift. And then they ended up getting more people. But I loved my time at that little hospital. When I think about, when I read this 165-bed community hospital, I'm just like, hmm. I remember my time when I spent at that hospital. And it was definitely like this small town.
tiny little town. Like you have to like drive the, you have to drive down the interstate like an hour away from the closest big city, then drive like 30 minutes off the interstate. It's like way out in the middle of nowhere. It's crazy. Very rural. Kind of sounds like the hospital I started working at. I mean, they're about this size, maybe just a little bit larger. The ER was probably about that same size.
When I say I love my time there, like it's I love my time at their level one trauma center. And I, man, I have so many great memories there. And I learned so much there. But I learned so much at this little hospital because it's one thing to work at a large hospital where you have all the resources and you have everybody around you doing all these things. Then you go to this little hospital and you're like.
who's going to do this? Oh, you're going to do, oh, I'm, oh, okay. So then like, you have to figure, you have to know everything. That's where I learned what Amtella was because that's transferring patients, you know, transferring patients out. I'm calling people like you to come and take my patient because we don't have the resources at this little hospital to take care of this sick patient. Yeah. So I'm calling people like, like, like Roger. Roger is a transport nurse. So
He's going and getting these really sick patients, these ICU patients and transporting them. And so, yeah, so I had to, yep, that's where I learned what MTAL was and I really understood. So anyway, that's what kind of popped into my mind when I read this. I was like, oh, my time took me back, you know, to that time. It was so, so, means so much to me as a nurse.
I mean, looking back on him, it's just like, you know, the this second part is like my second red flag. If you could just seen this before all of this happened.
It's like, you know, he's bouncing around as a new grad, which is weird to me. I mean, you just generally don't. You settle for a little bit and then you maybe start bouncing around after that until you find where you want to be. But kind of he did the opposite. That's a really good point because, yeah, typically when you start out, you want to start out at someplace stable, right? And kind of get your, you know, get a foundation laid of your knowledge, your skills before you start moving around.
He moved up fast. He took a night shift charge nurse role. That sounds like a nightmare right there. And that happens way too often. It does. Especially lately, where they just like throw people into these charge nurse roles. And people, I feel like, are all too willing to just be like, yay, I'll be charge nurse. That just sounds so, you know...
That sounds important and great. Been on the job six months, you're charged. It's a bad idea. It really is. You are responsible when that happens. You're responsible for, and just so you guys know, when you take on that responsibility, I have done enough stories on this podcast for the past several years to know that
that you are really putting yourself in jeopardy when you do that, because you're not just responsible for the little, you know, assignment of patients that you have. You are now responsible for every patient on that floor. And if anything happens, you will be called onto the carpet. You will be asked, did you, what, so you were, you took on, you took the charge nurse role. You accepted that responsibility. Did you know what was going on? Did you ask the nurse, you know, how,
Did you notice this? Did you notice that? I mean, oh, my gosh. If you think you can get away with it by just saying, well, I was too busy. No, no, no. You took you took on the responsibility. Yes. So please don't think that you can just take on a role like that.
Take on that responsibility and then just somehow just get yourself out of it by saying you had too many other things to do. Therefore, you couldn't possibly know you are responsible for every patient on that floor. Believe it or not, it is true. So co-workers told investigators he was steady, never flustered, always willing to cover an extra shift.
I mean, I wouldn't say that's a red flag. I think a lot of people... No, that part isn't. A lot of nurses are like that, always willing to cover an extra shift, especially so much pressure gets put on people. You know they're short-staffed. You have the opportunity to make extra money and the opportunity to help out a shift that's short-staffed. So especially if you know you're going to be like the extra person, if you know you're going to fill that shift load. So it's like you know they're going to go from short to actually staffed.
No, I wouldn't say that. It's not like he was single, so that's an opportunity to make extra money. I don't know what his weird extracurricular activities were outside of work, but it gives you an opportunity to have extra money and extra experience. And if you're single, I mean, sometimes that's the attractive thing about working those positions. Just make that extra money. Yeah, absolutely. So this...
This particular ER in Carlisle has 15 rooms plus two trauma bays and a dim back hallway. So those overnight lights are great for patients trying to rest, but they have blind spots. So sometime in early 2016, Bragg took advantage of that exact fact. He taped an old iPhone, camera running,
Inside a linen cart behind Bay 6's curtain, the first video investigators found was of nurses putting a Foley catheter into an unconscious crash victim. Bragg walks through the frame, checks the angle, and leaves. It worked. So he did it again. Hundreds of times. I just...
Oh, that's just so slimy. And I just I just I can't even imagine. But I'm still trying to picture how he positioned this phone and people did not see it. I mean, yeah, weird inside the linen cart. It's so bold. It's so bold. The risk that you're taking and that probably I feel like with a lot of these people, you
The risk is part of the adrenaline rush that they get. They know that there is a possibility that somebody is going to come along, you know, and disturb the cart. And at the same time, I'm sure he was familiar enough with the frequency in which people would, you know, utilize that area. So probably didn't. I'm sure he felt comfortable that they were not going to.
see it however it was set up and i'm sure he had an excuse in his head about you know oh well i lost my phone i didn't realize you know i had some some weird excuse that that uh environmental services yeah that he could say oh where oh there's my phone right it accidentally got taped to that linen cart you know just like wonder who did that yeah so but hundreds of
Hundreds of times. I'm just, I don't know. My mind is absolutely blown. So from early 2016 to April 19, 2019. Okay. 2016 to 2019. Bragg headphones and tiny, quote, nanny cams all over the unit in supply drawers, under sinks, even just propped on a shelf behind a stack of Chuck's pads.
which are just basically those pads that you put under patients, you know, for people maybe that aren't as familiar with the hospital. There are these pads that are not disposable. They're actually the ones that get laundered in, but they're just a pad that would go up under a patient. That way, you know, if they leaked or something, you could just throw the pad into the linen cart
Change it out and it doesn't just mess everything up. So that's what we call checks pads. He filmed at least 206 patients. About two dozen of them were children. Did they have the ages listed anywhere? I mean, I don't remember seeing ages, actually. I mean, it's sick either way, but I mean.
I mean, either way, it's just like it literally I don't think he cared. I think you just like he had the camera up and it was whoever's there is there. And it just didn't matter. He actually sedated women. There were two sedated women that were also that were sexually assaulted. One was intubated and couldn't have called for help if she had tried.
Every device was saved to a private folder. On breaks, he uploaded the clips over hospital Wi-Fi and then backed them up to a cloud account. He labeled each file by date and room number and watched them again and again at home on a big monitor he bought two weeks after his first assault. Mm-mm-mm.
Very methodical. Very diabolical. I'm having to laugh just because this is just so sick. You know, and you hear this stuff. It's just crazy. It's so unbelievable. You just it sounds like something that would literally be out of a movie that's fictional. And it's like, surely there's not a real person out there who would do something like this.
Well, I mean, and just like, even if they don't care about other people just risking their own freedom, risking getting caught, risking being exposed to their friends and family as being this person. But.
That's exactly what happened. So his downfall started in Harrisburg at the Attorney General's Child Predator section. Analysts caught a 90-second bathroom clip of an eight-year-old boy that had been shared online. The IP address traced back to Bragg's house in Chambersburg. They got a warrant early on.
April 19th, 2019, agent searched his place on Buttercup Drive and found three external hard drives, two laptops, several SD cards, and piles of charging cables. About 40 gigabytes of video was split into two folders, home and UPMC.
Veteran investigators were absolutely stunned. Some clips showed kids in exam gowns climbing onto x-ray tables. Others were close-ups of elderly patients during catheter insertions. Two files were labeled, quote, special.
Those showed Bragg assaulting the unconscious woman or women. One clip's timestamp matched a note in the ER log about unexplained bleeding after intubation. So this is not just an incidental, just like a one-off kind of thing or just like some little phase he went through where he was just sort of like,
you know, experimenting and putting the camera up. This goes way beyond that. And he was targeting everybody. I mean, kids, sounds like male, female, women. I mean, he was just indiscriminate about what he was filming. I'm sure the FBI profilers have some sort of term for him. Yeah, well, and the fact that the way that they found him
was through that clip of an eight-year-old child. I wonder how many more they found that he had shared or sold or whatever he was doing with them. Yeah, and that just tells you right there that he's taking these clips and then he's posting them somehow to these sites and somehow, I'm sure, benefiting in some way to sharing all of these clips, whether it's exploitive or just like exploiting them or...
getting money from it i don't know but in one way or another he's definitely getting some sort of satisfaction from it um and does not care at all not yeah he was very brazen he was very um you know i it seems like over those period of time he didn't get caught so i guess he continued to think he wasn't going to get caught and if he hadn't shared he probably wouldn't have or for a while
until he just got so over the top that somebody discovered cameras or whatever. I'm still trying to figure out, I'm thinking back to all the hospitals and units that I've worked in, I've been in and out of. How you had a camera that somebody's not going to see after a while? I mean, we do terminal cleans on ER rooms after we have, you know, an infectious patient or something. You know, housekeeping tears those places apart, right?
It's just unreal that something that is obvious enough to videotape somebody on a stretcher or in a bed, but yet nobody sees that.
During that period of time, that's just boggling to me. A whole phone. And back in 2019, and it was an older phone, it was an iPhone. So I'm sure probably one of the smaller little rectangular type phones. But still, that's a pretty good little chunky thing. Yeah, to be trying to hide in what we understand is a pretty, I mean, it's a pretty conspicuous little area, like a linen cart. Yeah.
I don't know. Somebody had to see these little cameras too and not just ignore them or what did they think? I mean, they've got to be, their battery operated and...
You know, if I saw something like that, I would be like, okay, this is weird. Where this is supposed to be here. What is this here for? And this is, you know, also like a little bitty hospital. I'm sure they probably had like certain areas that they used over and over again all the time. And maybe there was just one area where,
That just didn't get, you know, nobody ever bothered that particular area. Nobody ever bothered that linen cart. It just like literally sat there all the time. Or maybe he was always the person. If he's the one working, no one else is going to mess with it because he's the nurse and he's always the one, quote, cleaning up the mess, cleaning up the room. If he's a charge nurse, that's very likely that he was going around after patients were discharged, getting rooms ready and rooming people up.
And bringing that so he would have an opportunity to just pick the phone up and relocate it or do whatever. So 15 bed ER, if you're doing standard staffing ratios, ERs for staffing purposes.
Four to one now for ERs, five to one, maybe some of them. So if the 15 bed, if we just went off the off chance that it was five to one, that's three nurses and then a charge nurse. It's not a lot of people. You know, you got techs in and out, but there's probably not a lot of them, x-ray, respiratory.
I would almost be surprised if there was even one in a 15-bed ER unit at a little community hospital. And they were shared, you know, the whole hospital, you know, especially at night. I mean, you go down to a skeleton crew, you got one RT and one x-ray tech for the hospital. And they're in and out. Yes. And if it's anything like the community hospital that I worked at, the, you know, housekeeping would come by once a day. You'd get them once a day. Everything else...
Taking out linens, taking out the garbage. I was Tina doing that. But also he knew when that was going to be happening. So, I mean, it's not like this great big ER where he is like, I don't know what's happening in bed 60 and 70. Yeah. You know. He was king at the castle. Yeah. He was pretty much on top of everything. He ran the show and he took advantage of it. He knew that he had...
Full control. Nobody was questioning anything that was going on. Nobody wants to touch the linen cart. Right. Who wants to touch the linen cart? Mm-hmm.
And he's a predator. So he had predatory activity. And so he took full, like you said, full advantage of how the situation was presented. And he controlled the roost. I mean, he was in charge. So, you know, I'm just surprised he was able to get away with it as long as he did. I am too. I mean, he probably has a little narcissism built in with his sociopath.
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UPMC fired him the same day the Pennsylvania Board of Nursing suspended his license within hours, calling him, quote, an immediate and clear danger. Staff started piecing things together. He always volunteered for catheter insertions. His phone was forever, quote, playing music on a shelf. Oh, there you go.
Yeah, his phone was forever, quote, playing music on a shelf, and he disappeared into the bathroom every hour without a coffee cup in sight. After seven months of digital forensics and victim ID work, the AG's office filed a 440-count criminal complaint in December of 2019. Indecent assault, child pornography production, invasion of privacy, felony wiretap,
the works. Reporters said the charge sheet alone took more than eight minutes to read aloud in court. A detective later said Bragg looked confused anyone cared about a few videos. He was just so confused.
Well, one is too many. Yeah, Roger. Just a few videos. Just a few videos. Why are you so worried about a few videos? All along that there's hundreds. Oh, yeah. More than just a few. UPMC mailed letters to hundreds of former ER patients offering counseling. Lawyers started lining up.
civil suits. Currently, eight are still active. The hospital banned personal phones from treatment areas and mounted dome cameras to spot hidden devices. COVID slowed the court calendar and the flood of evidence slowed it even more. In the end, no one had to testify.
On November 18th in 2022, Bragg took a plea. 58 consolidated counts, aggravated indecent assault, child pornography felonies, invasion of privacy, wiretap,
Prosecutors dropped the rest, saying the deal spared victims another trauma and still locked in decades of prison time. Sentencing was April 5th, 2023. Judge Albert Masland gave Bragg 15 to 30 years the max under the plea and labeled him a sexually violent predator. That means a lifetime under Megan's Law's registration, quarterly address checks and polygraphs if he ever gets out.
Victim spoke, a 15-year-old boy quit baseball because he can't handle locker room showers. A 72-year-old woman said she now questions every male nurse she meets. The mother, you know, Roger, you and I talked about that. And that is so unfortunate. It really is. Because, you know, I think the last time, I don't know the last time I checked, I want to say it's like something like 20%, I think, of the nursing force. And it depends because...
As you get into more rural areas, there are more females, way more females than males. If you look into like the larger level one trauma centers, especially in the ICUs, it's probably more 50-50, I would say, just based on where I worked. I know it was 50-50. It was, I would say 50-50. I worked with men just as much as I did women. So we're a good 30 to 40 percent male in
In general. I remember thinking it was weird when I went to this community hospital and patients would be freaked out about a male nurse. I would just think, why are you worried about that? But they're not as used to it in more rural areas. I'm a female and I can appreciate, you know, having a little... You know what's really funny too is I remember when I first started working as a nurse, working alongside...
male nurses and male CNAs, sometimes, you know, these males, they would say things and it wasn't, I wouldn't say that it was like inappropriate, but they would be uncomfortable. Okay. Example, a male nurse who didn't want to take a patient who had a breast augmentation, like a flap procedure. And I was like, why do you care? I don't understand that because as a female nurse,
I think absolutely nothing, nothing about taking care of a man and that has any issue with his penis or scrotal area because it's literally so frequent that there is just no thought to it whatsoever. So I'm kind of baffled when I'm talking to this, and he was young, I have to say, but at the same time, I'm still, I remember being kind of like stepping back going, wait, why are we even discussing this? Like, you don't want to go assess this woman's
Right. What? It's a surgical site. That's weird. I'm like, go make sure she's got good pulses, you asshole. Well, you know, there's always a way to do things that is respectful and dignified. Even when I put Foley catheters in a female, you know, one, you have somebody else there with you.
But you're still respectful and you get consent, you ask for permission and you let them know whenever you're gonna touch. I mean, okay, you're gonna feel me touch, you're gonna feel cold soap, whatever it is, so that they know what is happening is what you're verbalizing. I mean, there's just a way to do it to preserve somebody's dignity.
And, you know, it's and that goes a long way. I mean, the trust and having somebody in that that awkward position, it becomes like you said, we do it so frequently that we don't even think about it anymore. But for somebody that's first time being in a hospital, first time having, you know, anything like that done.
It's a bit unnerving and I would want somebody to talk me through that. Okay. You know, you're on, you know, if you're just down there grabbing and touching and all, and you're not explaining why, I mean, it's like, oh, okay, hold on. You know, what are you doing?
You know, I really would even being a male. I mean, please tell me what you're doing. I mean, if I'm having to lay flat for some reason because of the procedure, please tell me that you're fixing to touch me. I mean, you know, it's a mutual respect goes both ways. Show me that respect. Absolutely. It's my body. You don't have a right to touch it just because you're a nurse. Right.
Yes. And I think I do like on one hand, I can I can appreciate those nurses that are just like so like unaware of what's going like that. Literally, like those private areas to you are no different than like the top of your head to them. Right. Like I kind of appreciate that, too. But at the same time, like stop and remember that this is a human being, you know, stop and think they have body autonomy. I mean, yes, please allow people.
to have their autonomy. I just feel for these, you know, for these women,
who, I mean, as a nurse who's worked, like I said, in a hospital, in an ICU where there are like, it's like literally 50-50 nurse, male to female nurse ratio. Like literally it's just at any given time there could even be more male nurses than females depending on the shift. I worked in an ICU that had only male nurses. That was not unusual to have only male nurse staff members working.
the whole shift. I mean, that was just our staffing pattern. 100%. A lot of males, they want to go into ICU because it's just, you know, higher adrenaline. It's just like, you know, I guess it's just the environment. So a lot of times male nurses do tend to navigate just sort of like naturally to that area. ER, ICU, procedure room. ER and ICU procedures. Yes, absolutely. So
And if you are in that situation and you have a patient who's like, oh, I'd really rather have a female. Well, you know, I'm sorry. I wish we had that luxury, but we don't always have that luxury, you know.
I can call the AOD for you, but that's about the best that I can do. Yeah. And there are some things we can do. And I would like to say that to people who are listening to this, who are kind of wondering, like, what if I ever find myself in the situation? Definitely ask for a patient advocate if you are ever feeling uncomfortable. If you're just in that situation where you just feel like, oh, my goodness, like this is my nurse.
male or female, like whoever it is, and you're feeling uncomfortable, just say, may I have the patient advocate number? And just, you don't even have to make a big deal out of it. Just ask for the patient advocate number. They absolutely have to give it to you. And every hospital has to have one. And you can call them and you can just say, you know, I would just like to have a female present. It doesn't have to necessarily be a nurse or even
even a healthcare professional, but just to have a female present while anything is being done. And they can provide that for you. It might be the unit secretary. Who knows who it might be? It might be the CNO. I don't know. You will have a female escort, yes. Someone will show up
If they're needing to do something like place a Foley catheter, you know, whatever it is that you're uncomfortable about. And let's face it, whether you're male or female as a nurse and you're in doing something, an intimate procedure, you probably should have an escort of some sort. I mean, you know, grab a tech, grab, you know, protect yourself. Yeah. Bring them into the room and say, you know, I just need your help. You don't have to make it like you said, you know, there's no big deal.
It's like, you know, hey, I'm going to put a Foley catheter in. Can you just come in and help me? Yeah. You know, and they're there. Protect yourself. Yeah.
Because as a nurse or whatever role you're in, you could be accused of something you're not even guilty of. So just think about that as well. Things can be taken the wrong way. You know, just thinking about in terms of like protecting yourself, but then also advocating for your patient. I've taken care of patients before who...
have been victims in the past and therefore they just have like an aversion to certain things. And you have to be very conscientious of that. And also try, you know, just be a good human. Don't take things personal. I mean, if somebody says, you know, I don't want you to be my nurse.
You know, don't don't get all up in your feelings about it. Just make it happen. I mean, it's not all about you. Yeah. You know, because at the end of the day, guess what? You're clocking out going home. This person is still in the hospital having having some issue that they're having to deal with. And.
That's just one issue that they don't have to deal with. Nobody wants to be in the hospital for the most part. So they're not having a great day as it is. If they're saying that they don't want you to be their nurse, there's something going on with them, whatever it is. Just let them have that and move on. Don't take it personally. The mother of one of the assault survivors called Bragg a surgical strike on dignity. I agree with that. Bragg's statement was one line.
His statement was one line. I'm sorry for my actions and the pain I caused. No, he's not. No, I don't think so. Not at all. I don't think so. He's serving his time at SCI Somerset. Earliest parole date would be April 18th, 2038. He'll be 57. I mean, to me, that sounds pretty early. I mean, that doesn't sound like very long.
You know, I think we've talked about it in previous episodes. You know, he'll be 57, which in normal time, you know, I'm 59. He still has a lot of life.
to lead. But we also know that penitentiary does aid you. And, you know, he may not survive to 57. I mean, it's a rough world in there, especially as a child sex predator. You know, they have their own code, from my understanding. And, you know, he may not make it out alive. Yeah.
Yeah. He inflicted pain upon older females and young children. And my understanding is that does not go real well in jail. And that 2038, that's his earliest parole date. And they generally don't get. Yeah. Yeah.
Most sexually violent predators are not going to get an early release. And even if he did, he'd be under GPS monitoring and barred from living within a thousand feet of schools, hospitals, playgrounds or churches with Sunday school. Nearly impossible restrictions in rural Pennsylvania. UPMC's policies changed fast. Any catheter, pelvic exam or intubation now requires two staff members to
and phones to go in RFID lockers at the door. Since Bragg's arrest, the AG's tip line for covert filming has seen a 43% jump in calls. The civil suits say that the hospital missed warning signs. Bragg's odd badge swipes into supply rooms, unexplained chart edits, and a respiratory therapist's note about a phone that, quote, kept showing up behind the same curtain. See? Yeah. Yeah.
That just is weird. Why didn't you...
Why are you not reporting that there's a phone that keeps showing up? I mean, go to somebody. And you know what? Him being a charge nurse, maybe they went to him and said, hey, what's up with this phone? Yeah. He's a charge nurse. And he's like, oh, that's fine. I'm just playing music. Or, yeah. Or I don't know who that belongs to, but I'll take it. I'll figure it out who belongs to it. Yeah. Yeah. Forensic teams still use Bragg's files to train new analysts.
Metadata-wise, frame, rate, Wi-Fi tags, even battery health mapped every move he made. One instructor tells rookies, quote, insulin cases need C-peptide, voyeur cases need EXIF. Simple, modern, and chilling.
You can't get away with anything. So if you're wearing an Apple device or an Android device, you're being tracked. Yeah, you think you're trying to do something. I mean, yeah, whatever. If you're literally trying to do something illegal using your Apple iPhone or whatever, you know, Android, whatever phone you have.
You're literally create you're using the thing that's going to put you in prison because it's going it's you're creating evidence by doing that. Anyway, I always say I'm not in the business of like giving advice to criminals. And at the same time, I'm just like, why are you being an idiot? Don't you? You're never going to get away with this stuff. You might get away with it for some. You will victimize someone.
But you will be caught eventually. And, you know, this day I know with the hospital, you know, this is a smaller hospital in a different time period. And we keep, you know, technology keeps catching up with what we're doing and the safety of everybody within a hospital system. But I know our hospital, they could get rid of it. I could walk in and not have a cell phone on me. My watch is off of me, have nothing on.
you know what, I got a little device on my badge that I can press twice and it alerts security that I need help. Don't think that they don't know where you are. They can say that that device does not show your location until you press the button for help.
No. No. I always tell new nurses that I precept, I'm like, just assume everywhere you go and everything you do, you're being videoed because you probably are being recorded everywhere you are. Like there are video, you know, there's cameras everywhere. You don't know where they could possibly be. Live your life with integrity. But if you don't have integrity, everything's
at least have a false sense of integrity where you're just assuming you're going to get caught. If you, you know, hopefully you've got integrity and you want to do the right thing anyway. But, you know, if you're that kind of person that doesn't, at least do the right thing because it's for self-preservation. How about that? Do the right thing when nobody's looking and don't do something that you've got to explain to your grandmother because you're on the news.
Two rules to live by. And you know what? It feels a lot better. You know, you're going to feel a lot better about yourself and be a lot happier person if you're living your life with integrity and doing the right thing because it's the right thing to do. But, you know, if he's a narcissist and a sociopath, he's not going to have that part of his brain that's not going to be working. He doesn't understand that. It means nothing to him. No, nothing. It means nothing to people like that. Yeah, that's true. Very true.
Well, I guess we can talk about this good nurse story. I always like love it after we haven't had to talk about some icky story like that. I love that we get to talk because man, I just, oh, those stories are so disgusting. I just almost can't wait to just get through them and get to talk about all of the wonderful male nurses out there who are literally just doing a fantastic job taking amazing care of our patients and
We need them. We need all kinds of nurses. We need all nurses. We need all nurses at the bedside. Please come back. If you're at home and you're a nurse, please come back to the bedside. We need you. For this good nurse story, we can, we're going to get to talk about this. You know, Roger, we were talking about this before. It's kind of the beginning of summer.
Everybody's going to the pool, going to the lake, going to the beach, to the ocean. And so it's just a perfect time to kind of talk about water safety and what can happen. And so we've got a great story to talk about this nurse, a flight nurse. Love flight nurses. Chris Wright is his name, who's winding down at the Scott City Community Pool on June 10th, 2025. This was like nine days ago.
It just happened. Just happened. He'd already told his kids it was time to go. And this is this always happens. I've got three children, so I know I know how this is. You know, when you tell your kids it's time to go, that you're not really leaving right then. You're wanting to leave in like 30 minutes. But you're like, guys, it's time to go. And, you know, they're going to. Yeah, because they start they start in 10 more minutes. So just 10 more minutes. Of course, that won the vote.
While he was mentally planning dinner, of course, he's sitting there thinking, okay, 10 more minutes. And he's like going through his mind, like what they're going to do for dinner. A lifeguard's shout cut through the chatter. Seven-year-old Emmett Fowler had drifted off the shallow shelf and was now limp under the water. Chris bolted around the deck, helped haul the boy out, and went straight into rescue breathing mode. After two good breaths, Emmett Fowler
Emmett coughed up pool water, but his airway still wasn't clear, so Chris repositioned and kept ventilating until EMS rolled in. By the time the rig pulled away, the kid had a pulse, spontaneous breaths, and even a weak cry about the best outcome you can hope for after a drowning scare.
Emmett spent one night in the hospital and walked out the next day with no neurological damage. Five days later, the pool staff staged a reunion. Emmett flew across the concrete and bear hugged the nurse who had literally breathed life back into him. Chris told reporters, time is tissue. Ten more seconds. Seconds, guys. Seconds.
And we'd been having a different conversation and he is so right about that. Here's the real takeaway. Children can drown quickly and silently. There's no splashing, no dramatic yelling, just a quiet slide under the water. Whenever kids are near a pool, lake, pond, or even a backyard hot tub, pick one grownup to be the water watcher. That person's only job is eyes on the water, no phones, no side chats,
Face up, eyes on the children. Too many tragedies happen because each adult assumes someone else is paying attention. Rotate the roll every 15 minutes if you need to. And we totally get it. It's exhausting. It's exhausting taking care of children, but you have to be diligent about this.
Rotate that rollout every 30 minutes, every 15 minutes, every 30 minutes, whatever it takes, but make it official. And if you don't know basic CPR, sign up for a class now. Chris Wright happened to be a nurse, but you don't have to have medical credentials to save a life. You just need to be ready and watching.
There's so many times where we hear these stories that unfortunately have a bad outcome and parents say, I just looked away for two seconds and that's really all it takes. Another thing about kids swimming to be aware of, if a kid does go up under the water and you reach down and grab a hold of them and pull them out and they're kind of coughing and
you know, coughing up a little water in their throat or whatever, but then they are immediately ready to go back swimming and all. You need to watch them. They could have a situation develop hours later where they can develop some pulmonary edema or whatever and they really need to go to the ER. So,
If kids are saying they're sleepy and tired, they're going to be sleepy and tired after swimming in the pool. But if that situation happens and they are seeming not like themselves, they may be a little lethargic, you need to take them to the emergency room. Yes, absolutely. There's something else going on. So it can be scary because kids can have problems with breathing after a near-drowning episode like that. Yeah.
Just take care of your kids. Yeah, be diligent. I personally have had experience with friends that this happened with, and I just know that the absolute very best scenario that parents that are just on top of everything, just the most diligent, the most attentive, the very set of parents that you would just never think something like this would happen to,
It can happen. Very easy to happen. One thinks the other is paying attention. And the next thing you know, they've slipped away and, you know, gone through a gate, gone, you know, and it's over. It's very, like I said earlier, happens very quickly.
It's very silent. You just don't you don't hear them. You do not hear them go into the water. They slide right on in there. They go on. Once they go under, they probably aren't going to come back up and you're just never going to hear anything. And if I remember correctly, the mother was actually there and she said that she had just looked away for just, you know, a couple of seconds and didn't realize that. And that's the way it happens in the water.
Mm hmm.
Something like this can happen. That's why it's so important to designate if you are going to be around a body of what anybody of water, like I said, hot tub pool, any pond lake, wherever you are, you've got to have somebody designated like you are the person that.
And then that person, like, you can't have that phone. You cannot have your phone out. You can't be looking down. You've got to be constantly watching those kids. And just like you said, it's a quiet situation. It's not somebody, you know, splashing water and screaming for help and going under, coming back. You know, these kids literally slip right up under the water and that's it.
You're not going to hear thrashing around, asking for help, none of that. No, that is not what happens. This isn't TV, TV drownings. Yeah. And I always like to use any opportunity that I can to share a story like this and just remind people of how important it is to stay diligent around bodies of water at all times when it comes to children.
Well, Roger, thank you so much for coming back on this show and helping me record another episode. It's always a pleasure. It's always so much fun. You know, I love talking with you. If we ever worked as nurses together on a unit, it would be crazy because, you know, one, people would get good care, but I'm not sure anybody else could stand us. Right.
And now we would be so obnoxious. We'd be very obnoxious. Our patients would would be so well cared for. But yeah, our patients and families would absolutely love us. But our coworkers would probably be hating us. Yeah, they'd be hating on us. Yeah, they'd be reporting us to to the the assistant nurse manager or the directors and everything.
These two are shenanigans. They wouldn't let us work together. Yep. They're up to no good. But that's a great way to be, though. I'm okay with it. Report me. Same. Well, you guys, thanks for listening to another episode. You know you can find me at Tina at GoodNurseBadners.com. If you want to send me an email, I'm on GoodNurseBadners.com. Or you can find me on social media. And...
And of course, I always have to remind you before we leave, even if you're a bad girl or a bad boy, be a good nurse. And a good human. Yeah, just be a good human being in general.