The Lamp Podcast

Every story, every journey in caregiving is different. The same goes for how someone finds themself becoming a caregiver. Heather shares her long journey in finding herself and her path in caregiving. Heather Hope Thorne, RN, BSN, NC-BC I love being outdoors, cooking, and spending time with my man and our boys and dog. I am passionate about health and wellness and offer 1:1 and group coaching for any area of health that is important to you. I'm pursuing additional certification in energy healing, kundalini yoga, and functional nutrition in the next year or so. Aquarius sun, Pisces moon, and Leo rising. You can find her on IG at https://instagram.com/Hopeandhealing20 Email: Bellahope1976@gmail.com

What do you do when you start your new Nurse Practitioner career and in the first year and a half, there is a worldwide pandemic, an active shooter at work, and you're in a major car accident? Bianca shares her story of finding herself through all of the change and chaos. Bianca Pierre-Louis is a Board Certified Family Nurse Practitioner, Entrepreneur, International Travel Retreat Host, Founder & Creator of Spooky Melanin Magic a year round Spooky Blog, and in the process of building her own empowerment brand, Elevate Your Essence. Bianca is also a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Incorporated, and a member of Luminous Energy Collective, a group of healers for caregivers, and enjoys world traveling the world, creating new experiences and memories. You can find Bianca on Instagram at https://instagram.com/Hey_Nursebee https://instagram.com/spookymelaninmagic www.spookymelaninmagic.com

In this episode, we hear an excerpt from David Metzger's book, Nurse Papa, and talk about being a parent and being a pediatric hematology oncology nurse. David is a nurse, a podcaster, and an author. The Nurse Papa podcast can be found on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere else you go to seek an illuminating and immersive audio experience. You can find more about the book at www.nursepapathebook.com Nurse Papa Amazon Purchase Link Nurse Papa: 16 Meditations On Parenthood From A Pediatric Oncology Nurse In 16 thoughtful meditations, David Metzger, a father, and a pediatric oncology nurse, describes the difficult, beautiful, and profound experience of caring for both his patients and his own young children. Metzger brings in the voices of seasoned nurses, young patients, and his patients' parents, each adding a perspective that helps guide him throughout his career. Equally powerful, he invites readers deep into his days, both the joyful and the painful. These experiences plus the familiar struggles and comic blunders of early parenthood result in a moving, sometimes hysterical, often sad, but always honest look at what it truly means to be a caregiver. A unique perspective on the ins-and-outs of working in the medical field, Nurse Papa is not just a book for parents but for anyone who ponders life's big questions.

Sometimes you need to make big changes externally in order to make big changes internally. In this episode, we hear from Logan who struggled with burnout and eczema and made a big change in order to heal. Logan was a Trauma ICU RN turned burnout reduction specialist and entrepreneur after experiencing burnout himself and hearing about the suicide of his coworker Brian. He is the founder of Healthcare Stress Relief, a company built on the premise of providing support and resources to healthcare professionals currently experiencing compassion fatigue and burnout with the aim of preventing and healing from it. You can learn more about burnout prevention by following him on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/healthcarestressrelief/ youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCti05BMZBjSAhhX0Oy3n1SQ  and you can view his site here: https://mailchi.mp/7c679e7f06d8/bye-bye-burnout-program

Today's story comes from a nurse friend of mine who wished to remain anonymous. She wanted to share her experience of dealing with PTSD after military deployment as a nurse. In this episode, we learn how healing from trauma is a long process.

Have you ever experienced a turning point? A no going back, gonna make a big change moment? Most of us have at some point in our lives, and with a whole pandemic, many of us are experiencing it right now. In this episode, Sarah Gaines shares a turning point in her life. A moment where she was done with her current situation and made a big change. Sarah Gaines, MSN, RNC-OB (also known as the Six Figure Travel Nurse®) is a labor and delivery nurse, mentor, educator, and entrepreneur. Passionate about travel nursing (20 contracts and counting!), she created the Six Figure Travel Nurse Course® to educate and empower nurses ready to take control of their career so that they can gain the freedom and pay they deserve. Follow Sarah on Instagram @sarah_gaines for daily travel nurse tips and visit www.sarahgaines.com for more information about the Six Figure Travel Nurse Course®

Everyone loves an origin story. How did your favorite superhero become who they are today? How did Oprah become Oprah? This episode and a few of the episodes this season look at the road to where we are now. In this episode, Tara shares how her life experiences brought her to where she is now, running a nonprofit to help caregivers debrief. Tara Ryan Kosmas, MSN, RN, CHSE, SOAR  is a burn survivor, registered nurse, educator, and founder of 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, Debriefing the Front Lines, Inc. The organizational mission is to deliver psychological first aid and sustained emotional wellness through commUNITY investment, shared values, and collective action as we continue to define what it means to be a modern nurse working in a global pandemic and humanitarian crisis. Tara is certified in the art of debriefing and has devoted her life to creating a psychologically safe space for nurses to discuss and debrief traumatic events, end of life, and difficult conversations in a psychologically safe space. Tara's teachings are rooted in the theoretical frameworks of Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), Debriefing for Good Judgement, and Self Exploration. Throughout her own healing journey, Tara has looked to flowers for comfort. She understands the healing power they possess and has combined this passion with her non-profit work. Also, a floral designer, Tara is the owner of Kosmic Garden, a Baltimore-based pop-up floral shop spreading abundance through nature's own medium and sharing light with the world as she works to Heal the Healers. Website: https://www.kosmicgarden.com/heal-the-healers-project http://www.instagram.com/kosmicgarden Facebook: Debriefing the Front Lines, Inc. Linkedin: Tara Ryan Kosmas Email: tara@kosmicgarden.com

Which came first? The Caregiver or the caregiver? So many professional caregivers are and have been caregivers in multiple places in their lives. What does it mean when your job and your familial role are both that of a caregiver? What does it mean to be a first-generation child caring for your immigrant parents? In this episode, we hear from Ketevan as she talks about moving to a new country and becoming a caregiver at a young age. Ketevan is a Registered Nurse and a Family Nurse Practitioner and a first-generation millennial.  She specializes in coaching millennials on how to understand their unique upbringing and support their experience as first-generation immigrants.  She teaches both men and women how to recognize familial and cultural traumas and behaviors that may be blocking you from living your most peaceful and abundant life.    Social Media: https://www.instagram.com/1stgenmillenial https://www.instagram.com/luminousenergycollective

What is the cost of caring through Covid? We recently hit 500,000 lives lost to Covid, a number that is staggering. What does that mean for caregivers?  In this episode, we hear from Laura Wright as she talks about her experiences as a charge nurse in a Covid ICU. Laura is a Trauma ICU nurse at her roots. She's been in the field since 2004 and currently works as a charge nurse in a Med / Surg / Trauma ICU in a large teaching hospital in downtown Phoenix, Arizona. She is also a 200hr trained yoga teacher who is passionate about bringing a yoga lifestyle into the healthcare world to combat burnout and promote resilience. You can find her on http://zenrnyoga.com and on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/zenrnyoga/

For Valentine's day, let's talk about love and healthcare. Are they a good mix? This episode includes stories of professional caregivers who are married to other caregivers. We hear from the host, Lisa, and her husband WIll LaBrie talking about being nurses and raising a family. We also hear from pandemic newlyweds, Steven and Jayhee Kim, who started dating while working in the same department. We will also hear from Erika del Pozo, who talks about being an Occupational therapist married to a Physical therapist in a pandemic. Steven and Jayhee Kim are both Radiation Technologists who work in the cardiac cath lab in Southern California. Erika del Pozo MOT, OTR/L is an Occupational therapist, the founder of Joy Energy Time, a community dedicated to brightening healthcare with strategies and resources to navigate burnout. She is also the creator and co-host of the Burnt Out to Lit Up Podcast, holistic wellness, and lifestyle show https://www.joyenergytime.com/

Welcome back to Season 2 of the Lamp Podcast. We are still in this pandemic, somehow it didn't end during my hiatus. But stories of caregivers are still, and possibly even more, important right now. This first episode of season 2 is actually by me, the host of the Lamp. In this episode, I share a story about not pulling myself by my bootstraps and a very hard year of my life. Sometimes we need a little help from our friends.

Grief has a way of tying us to objects and those objects sometimes remind us of who we are and who loved us. In this episode, we hear from Oriana, as she shares how a personal keepsake gave her strength through grief in nursing. Oriana is a mom, nurse and founder of Medicine Mountain Scrub Company LLC. Together with her Co-Founder, and sister, Golden she is creating a sustainably sourced, ethically manufactured and mountain inspired line of medical workwear launching Fall 2020. She is on a mission to help women in medicine feel confident and comfortable at work, so they can do the dirty work with grit and grace. She is an advocate for self-compassion, nurturing a supportive work culture and sustainability in healthcare. You can find out more about her business at www.medicinemountainscrubs.com or on social media @medicinemtnscrubs.

For this episode, I called my longest friend of almost 30 years, Kristin. In the middle of a Pandemic, Kristin is loving her work as an educator and reflects on being burned out as a manager. Kristin has been a Medical assistant, an EHR educator, and a rural health clinic manager. She teaches Medical Assistants in her local school district, which currently means sitting in front of her computer most of the day surrounded by vineyards.

The American Nurses Association put out a statement in 2015 that "nurses will no longer tolerate violence of any kind from any source." This includes nursing. But bullying and lateral violence is still a problem for nurses. Many people who work in the caregiving profession can recall a time where they were harassed, demeaned, or treated poorly by colleagues, within their own profession or across professions. In this episode, Blaise shares her story of how she struggled with bullying from other nurses as a new grad. Blaise Agcopra is an ambulatory oncology nurse and a financial leadership entrepreneur focusing on people in healthcare fully understanding finance and leadership. You can find her on Instagram @juzzblaise or at https://www.linkedin.com/in/blaiseagcopra/

Disenfranchised grief is grief not acknowledged by society. There is missing collective mourning right now for so many people who are dying during this pandemic. In the world of caregiving, there is also often a lack of acknowledgment for the grief professional caregivers experience. This episode features Jennie Hoek, a NICU nurse, sharing her story of walking with grief. Jennie Hoek RN, BSN, RYT 200 is the Nurse behind Nurturing Warrior, a safe place for Nurses to find Healing & reconnect to the Love within. Over the last 5 years, Jennie has worked throughout the critical care line from Adult ICU to Peds ED to NICU. She noticed very quickly as a brand new Nurse that nobody was providing healing for the Nurses, who were exposed to high levels of emotional trauma bearing witness to the darkest moments of their patients' lives daily. IG @NurturingWarrior Facebook  Nurturing Warrior: High Vibe Healing for Nurses https://www.facebook.com/groups/nurturingwarrior/

Inferno is the most well-known volume of Dante's Divine Comedy. But the second volume, Purgatorio, is about a long-suffering climb up the mountain of Purgatory. Purgatory is often marked in people's minds by its in-between status, waiting to advance to paradise. Are we in the Inferno or Purgatorio right now? I know I am trying to take breaks from this Pandemic by watch #vanlife on YouTube. I mention Luca and Sara in Italy in this episode. A long-suffering wait on earth can also be found in the court system. Despite the way that hour-long television dramas and feature-length films may feel, courts move slowly. And sometimes it is caregivers who are in a kind of Purgatorio in the court system. This episode looks at the feelings of a nurse as she experiences being named in a lawsuit. In this episode, I quote an Italian proverb: "A lawsuit is a fruit-tree planted in a lawyer's garden." Tiyana Calderon has been a Medical Assistant and is now a Licensed Vocational Nurse working towards her RN degree. She has worked in numerous settings and loves what she does. She is grateful for her family, friends, and support along the way.

After our break, we have returned with a new episode. In this episode, I shared a podcast that is good to listen to if you want to learn about the history of whiteness in this country. The podcast is called Scene on Radio featuring the season called Seeing White.  Episode 8 features Arlene Taylor, Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner talking about her experience with depression after multiple traumatic events. Arlene takes us back to her hospitalization and content warning, this episode does feature a suicide attempt and adult language. Arlene is a psych N.P., now a Doctoral student, and a fierce advocate for the mental health of nurses. You can find her at https://www.theroseyarde.com/

On one cold November night, Tony, a flight nurse, finds himself in a life-changing and dramatic personal health crisis. In the midst of providing emergency care, he becomes the emergency. His story of survival is a powerful reminder of the value of the everyday work healthcare providers do. Tony Bernstone was born in Napier, New Zealand, and graduated from Hawkes Bay Community Polytechnic in 1990 with a Diploma of Nursing and an Associate Degree from New York University in Feb of 1991. He worked in various ICU settings around the U.S. and New Zealand, eventually becoming a flight nurse. He and his family settled in Utah and he worked with AirMed at the University of Utah until 2018. He is now a procedural Nurse with the Department of Endoscopy at the University of Utah. He currently calls Salt Lake City home with his wife Stacy and 2 sons (ages 15 and 13), 2 spoiled dogs, and they love to spend as much time outside enjoying this great state as possible.

Are we in the middle of collective grief right now? What does it mean to experience loss as a group? It feels like collective trauma and grief for us in this pandemic. Some aspects of health care feel like that as well. In this episode, Peggy discusses the difficulties of being a charge nurse in a small Emergency room while dealing with death. Peggy has been nursing for 29 years, most of those years have been in the ER but also includes time on obstetrics and rural nursing where you are the nurse of all trades. She also worked as a flight nurse for 7 years, transferring patients worldwide. Traveling everywhere from Canada, the USA, and globally. Peggy's passions include her family, including three grown children and also now includes a grandson and another grandbaby on the way. Peggy hit a wall 6 years ago in her nursing career, feeling disconnected, frustrated, bitter, angry, and unfulfilled. It was then that she realized she had been waiting on the wrong people for way too long, to change things. She had been waiting for so many others to change how she felt, only to learn SHE was actually the person to create the positive change she craved. You can find out more about Peggy at https://www.instagram.com/the_fulfilment_project/

The mix of personal loss and loss in the professional caregiver setting can be hard to navigate. Caregivers sometimes imagine they can compartmentalize the personal for the sake of the professional, but what happens when they intersect? Gerri shares a story of pregnancy loss while working on a labor and delivery unit. This episode features a poem by Walt Whitman entitled Whispers of Heavenly Death WHISPERS of heavenly death murmur'd I hear, Labial gossip of night, sibilant chorals, Footsteps gently ascending, mystical breezes wafted soft and low, Ripples of unseen rivers, tides of a current flowing, forever flowing, (Or is it the plashing of tears? the measureless waters of human tears?) I see, just see skyward, great cloud-masses, Mournfully slowly they roll, silently swelling and mixing, With at times a half-dimm'd sadden'd far-off star, Appearing and disappearing. (Some parturition rather, some solemn immortal birth; On the frontiers to eyes impenetrable, Some soul is passing over.) Gerri Sainte is a board-certified RN with over 20 years of nursing experience. A native New Yorker, she holds a Master's degree in Nursing Administration and is currently working in hospice care. Gerri has had the pleasure of experiencing nursing in California, Florida and New York and has worked bedside, administrative and in education. Patient advocacy and education of patients and staff are her passions, as well as mentoring nursing students and new grads.  Learn more about Gerri here: Instagram- @whoisnursingthenurses Facebook- RN Mentor  Or share your thoughts on her story via WhoIsNursingTheNurses@gmail.com

When you are first starting out in your career, how do you know you are on the right path? How do you know you are in the right job? Frances shares her story of ignoring the signs all around her that she was in the wrong job. Frances Wright has worked as an inpatient bedside nurse for over 8 years. She had served on a medical mission team in both 2019 and 2020. She graduated from an End-of-Life Doula Program in 2018 and completed the 8-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course in 2019. In February 2020, she quit her job at the hospital to pursue a dream of hers to become an entrepreneur and create a program to help unfulfilled women create a personalized roadmap to pursue a career and life that is fulfilling and meaningful to them. Frances is following her heart and going all-in on a dream, and she wants you to know that you can do it too, as scary and uncertain as it may be. Follow her journey and get resources and inspiration at:  Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/elevatemyjoy/ YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwI03LWGQtHEBMOmhbkEYlg?view_as=subscriber Elevate My Joy Facebook Community - https://www.facebook.com/groups/elevatemyjoycommunity/ Song Be as a Lamp by Tara Ellis

Dealing with Trauma is an experience many caregivers may face. Trauma isn't just about the type of injury a patient faces, but about how experiences overwhelm us. In this episode, Patrick shares a story of dealing with trauma as a nursing student. Patrick is an Adult Float Pool Nurse and an Adjunct Nurse Faculty member. He enjoys helping others get a clearer understanding about the nursing profession and helping nurses diversify their careers. Patrick is also a self-proclaimed bibliophile and is happiest when surrounded by books and the color green. You can learn more about Patrick on his blog at www.patmacrn.com or his social media accounts on Instagram: @PatMacRN and Twitter: @NursrPatMacRN

Death is not easy, especially for new nurses. And no two deaths are exactly the same. In this episode, Em shares her story of dealing with death as a new graduate nurse.   Em Cheng is a travel nurse from New York, currently traveling in Seattle, WA. Most of her nursing experience is in CVICU/critical care. After experiencing burnout, she transitioned into currently working in an ambulatory surgery procedural center as a traveler.  You can find Em and all her adventures, nursing and life outside nursing at @ExploRN_EmCheng on Instagram, Facebook and Youtube.

This inaugural episode features the host, Lisa LaBrie talking about what to expect from The Lamp and how the idea originated from a storytelling event with SheStories founder, Ehmandah Ramsey. Listen, as caregivers share real stories and real struggles from their everyday lives. Future episodes will be released biweekly starting March 20th.