Podcasts about rns

GDP Script/ Top Stories for June 17th Publish Date: June 17th From The BG AD Group Studio, Welcome to the Gwinnett Daily Post Podcast. Today is Tuesday, June 17th and Happy Birthday to Roberto Duran. I’m Keith Ippolito and here are your top stories presented by KIA Mall of Georgia Man who started fire in Norcross to evade ICE agents headed to prison Gwinnettians denounce Trump policies during 'No Kings' protest Snellville Police Say 2 Arrested In Connection To Shooting At Briscoe Park All of this and more is coming up on the Gwinnett Daily Post podcast, and if you are looking for community news, we encourage you to listen and subscribe! Break 1: Kia MOG (07.14.22 KIA MOG) STORY 1: Man who started fire in Norcross to evade ICE agents headed to prison Armando Carrillo-Diaz, a 45-year-old undocumented immigrant from Mexico, was sentenced to five years in federal prison for arson, assaulting a federal officer, and illegal reentry into the U.S. In December 2022, he attacked a Gwinnett police officer with a machete. In April 2023, he fled from ICE agents in his truck. In July 2023, he set fire to his Norcross apartment to evade arrest, displacing 20-30 residents and injuring himself. Federal prosecutors highlighted his dangerous actions, which endangered law enforcement and the public. The case involved multiple agencies, emphasizing the commitment to holding individuals accountable for reckless and violent behavior. STORY 2: Gwinnettians denounce Trump policies during 'No Kings' protest This weekend, over 1,500 people gathered in Suwanee for a 'No Kings' protest against President Trump's policies. Organized by local volunteer Kevin Vazquez, the event aimed to highlight concerns over women's rights, immigration, and the administration's direction. Suwanee resident Maria King-Smart joined to advocate for democracy, declaring, 'History repeats itself, and I don’t want it to.' Protestors held signs like 'Defend Democracy' and 'No Kings Since 1776.' The peaceful demonstration contrasted with clashes at protests elsewhere. The event emphasized community unity, with Gwinnett County’s diverse voices calling for change. State Rep. Jasmine Clark labeled Trump a 'parasite' needing history lessons. STORY 3: Snellville Police Say 2 Arrested In Connection To Shooting At Briscoe Park In Snellville authorities have arrested two teenagers in connection to the May 31 shooting at Briscoe Park, which left six people injured. Police say 17-year-old Joshua Senai Zere of Stone Mountain was taken into custody on June 11 and faces five counts of party to a crime of aggravated assault. The next day, 17-year-old Eric Meier Harris of Dacula was arrested, charged with four counts of aggravated assault. Thankfully, all victims are expected to recover. For more details or to assist with the investigation, contact Lt. Trey Downs at tdowns@snellville.org. We have opportunities for sponsors to get great engagement on these shows. Call 770.874.3200 for more info. We’ll be right back Break 2: Ingles Markets 1 STORY 4: ‘A real mess’ — Homeless camp frustrates property owners while its cleanup leaves residents scrambling Robby Workman and Faith Zilka, a homeless couple in Norcross, have faced repeated displacement after makeshift shelters they built near I-85 were bulldozed. Struggling to stay dry amidst constant rain, they now wander the streets, battling trench foot and exhaustion. Denied stable shelter, the pair survives by collecting scrap metal, yet earn only enough for basics like food. Workman dreams of buying a vehicle to improve their situation, but obstacles remain. Local businesses, citing cleanliness and safety concerns, have pressured authorities to clear camps. Despite hardships, Workman warns, 'Anyone is one paycheck away from being here.' Their resilience remains unwavering. STORY 5: Piedmont Eastside Medical Center Opens Neurology Practice Piedmont Eastside Medical Center welcomed neurologists Dr. Ogonna Iwuora [Oh-GOH-nah Ee-WOR-ah] and Dr. Paula Lee to Piedmont Neurology at Eastside. Located on Tree Lane, the practice now offers advanced treatments for conditions like epilepsy, dementia, and headaches. Dr. Iwuora, board-certified in neurology and neurophysiology, completed her fellowship at Emory University and specializes in dementia and epilepsy care. Dr. Lee brought over a decade of expertise, focusing on refractory epilepsy and therapies like RNS and VNS. She trained at Tufts Medical Center and Northwestern Memorial Hospital. Accepting new patients, the team provides personalized care options with modern, non-invasive techniques. Break: STORY 6: Summer school is a time to get ahead at Georgia Gwinnett College This summer, a record 5,300 students enrolled at Georgia Gwinnett College, proving summer isn’t just for vacations. Many are earning credits to graduate early, boosting GPAs, or exploring new subjects. Nursing student Phoenix Winbush says summer classes help her stay focused, earning top grades. IT major Isaiah Jones uses the term to explore history and psychology. With compressed five-week courses, students like Winbush emphasize the need for discipline. Financial aid is available for eligible students, but Assistant Director Jacqueline Garcia Mendez advises balancing workloads to stay on track. For some, like visiting student Sara Swope, GGC’s atmosphere and professors are a major draw. STORY 7: NCG Cinemas opening new Snellville theater this weekend NCG Cinemas celebrated the grand opening of its new location in Snellville’s Presidential Markets shopping center last Friday. The event kicked off with a ribbon cutting and a VIP night featuring free screenings of movies like 'How To Train Your Dragon' and 'Karate Kid Legends.' The theater, located at 1905 Scenic Highway North, boasts luxury reclining seats and the world’s first Klipsch Studio Experience sound system, offering top-notch audio. Formerly an AMC theater, NCG aims to revamp the moviegoing experience. Tickets are now available online, welcoming movie lovers to enjoy the pinnacle of cinematic entertainment in Snellville. Break 4: Signoff – Thanks again for hanging out with us on today’s Gwinnett Daily Post Podcast. If you enjoy these shows, we encourage you to check out our other offerings, like the Cherokee Tribune Ledger Podcast, the Marietta Daily Journal, or the Community Podcast for Rockdale Newton and Morgan Counties. Read more about all our stories and get other great content at www.gwinnettdailypost.com Did you know over 50% of Americans listen to podcasts weekly? Giving you important news about our community and telling great stories are what we do. Make sure you join us for our next episode and be sure to share this podcast on social media with your friends and family. Add us to your Alexa Flash Briefing or your Google Home Briefing and be sure to like, follow, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Produced by the BG Podcast Network Show Sponsors: www.ingles-markets.com  www.kiamallofga.com #NewsPodcast #CurrentEvents #TopHeadlines #BreakingNews #PodcastDiscussion #PodcastNews #InDepthAnalysis #NewsAnalysis #PodcastTrending #WorldNews #LocalNews #GlobalNews #PodcastInsights #NewsBrief #PodcastUpdate #NewsRoundup #WeeklyNews #DailyNews #PodcastInterviews #HotTopics #PodcastOpinions #InvestigativeJournalism #BehindTheHeadlines #PodcastMedia #NewsStories #PodcastReports #JournalismMatters #PodcastPerspectives #NewsCommentary #PodcastListeners #NewsPodcastCommunity #NewsSource #PodcastCuration #WorldAffairs #PodcastUpdates #AudioNews #PodcastJournalism #EmergingStories #NewsFlash #PodcastConversations See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Did you know improper patient nutrition can severely impact your patient's outcomes? Join the co-hosts as they welcome patient nutrition expert Beth Quatrara for an eye-opening and insightful conversation about patient nutrition. Also, Beth shares some powerful ideas regarding how med-surg nurses can optimize their own nutrition during long shifts and once they get home. (AMSN Members Earn 0.5 CE Hours*) * This episode is eligible for 0.5 contact hours for AMSN members who listen to the episode and submit a completed evaluation through the online library. None of the individuals with the ability to control the content of this episode have any relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies to disclose. The Academy of Medical Surgical Nurses is an accredited provider of nursing continuing professional development by the American Nurses Credentialing Center's Commission on Accreditation.   SPECIAL GUEST Beth Quatrara, DNP, RN, CMSRN, ACNS-BC is a doctorally-prepared Clinical Nurse Specialist with over 25 years of nursing experience. The majority of her clinical career has been focused on caring for patients with digestive health concerns and associated nutritional complexities. She serves as the AMSN Nutrition liaison; working with AMSN members to amplify the nutritional care of their patients. She presents nationally and publishes on nutrition-related topics, as well as a host of clinically related issues. Dr Quatrara is an Associate Professor, and currently serves as the Program Lead for the MSN and DNP Graduate Programs at the University of Virginia School of Nursing.   MEET OUR CO-HOSTS Samantha Bayne, MSN, RN, CMSRN, NPD-BC is a nursing professional development practitioner in the inland northwest specializing in medical-surgical nursing. The first four years of her practice were spent bedside on a busy ortho/neuro unit where she found her passion for newly graduated RNs, interdisciplinary collaboration, and professional governance. Sam is an unwavering advocate for medical-surgical nursing as a specialty and enjoys helping nurses prepare for specialty certification.    Kellye' McRae, MSN-Ed, RN is a dedicated Med-Surg Staff Nurse and Unit Based Educator based in South Georgia, with 12 years of invaluable nursing experience. She is passionate about mentoring new nurses, sharing her clinical wisdom to empower the next generation of nurses. Kellye' excels in bedside teaching, blending hands-on training with compassionate patient care to ensure both nurses and patients thrive. Her commitment to education and excellence makes her a cornerstone of her healthcare team.   Marcela Salcedo, RN, BSN is a Floatpool nightshift nurse in the Chicagoland area, specializing in step-down and medical-surgical care. A member of AMSN and the Hektoen Nurses, she combines her passion for nursing with the healing power of the arts and humanities. As a mother of four, Marcela is reigniting her passion for nursing by embracing the chaos of caregiving, fostering personal growth, and building meaningful connections that inspire her work.   Eric Torres, ADN, RN, CMSRN is a California native that has always dreamed of seeing the World, and when that didn't work out, he set his sights on nursing.  Eric is beyond excited to be joining the AMSN podcast and having a chance to share his stories and experiences of being a bedside medical-surgical nurse.   Maritess M. Quinto, DNP, RN, NPD-BC, CMSRN is a clinical educator currently leading a team of educators who is passionately helping healthcare colleagues, especially newly graduate nurses. She was born and raised in the Philippines and immigrated to the United States with her family in Florida. Her family of seven (three girls and two boys with her husband who is also a Registered Nurse) loves to travel, especially to Disney World. She loves to share her experiences about parenting, travelling, and, of course, nursing!   Sydney Wall, RN, BSN, CMSRN has been a med surg nurse for 5 years. After graduating from the University of Rhode Island in 2019, Sydney commissioned into the Navy and began her nursing career working on a cardiac/telemetry unit in Bethesda, Maryland.  Currently she is stationed overseas, providing care for service members and their families.  During her free time, she enjoys martial arts and traveling.   

Looking for new approaches to caring for LGBTQIA+ patients, especially gender diverse patients? This episode begins a periodic conversation series about AMSN's Core Curriculum. In this episode, a conversation about the LGBTQIA+ chapter. Join the co-hosts as they discuss the chapter and share their thoughts, insights, and personal stories regarding this unique patient population. PLUS, find out which co-host just got engaged! (AMSN Members Earn 0.5 CE Hours*)   The AMSN Core Curriculum can be found at: https://amsn.org/Practice-Resources/Core-Curriculum-for-Medical-Surgical-Nursing   * This episode is eligible for 0.5 contact hours for AMSN members who listen to the episode and submit a completed evaluation through the online library. None of the individuals with the ability to control the content of this episode have any relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies to disclose. The Academy of Medical Surgical Nurses is an accredited provider of nursing continuing professional development by the American Nurses Credentialing Center's Commission on Accreditation.   MEET OUR CO-HOSTS Samantha Bayne, MSN, RN, CMSRN, NPD-BC is a nursing professional development practitioner in the inland northwest specializing in medical-surgical nursing. The first four years of her practice were spent bedside on a busy ortho/neuro unit where she found her passion for newly graduated RNs, interdisciplinary collaboration, and professional governance. Sam is an unwavering advocate for medical-surgical nursing as a specialty and enjoys helping nurses prepare for specialty certification.    Kellye' McRae, MSN-Ed, RN is a dedicated Med-Surg Staff Nurse and Unit Based Educator based in South Georgia, with 12 years of invaluable nursing experience. She is passionate about mentoring new nurses, sharing her clinical wisdom to empower the next generation of nurses. Kellye' excels in bedside teaching, blending hands-on training with compassionate patient care to ensure both nurses and patients thrive. Her commitment to education and excellence makes her a cornerstone of her healthcare team.   Marcela Salcedo, RN, BSN is a Floatpool nightshift nurse in the Chicagoland area, specializing in step-down and medical-surgical care. A member of AMSN and the Hektoen Nurses, she combines her passion for nursing with the healing power of the arts and humanities. As a mother of four, Marcela is reigniting her passion for nursing by embracing the chaos of caregiving, fostering personal growth, and building meaningful connections that inspire her work.   Eric Torres, ADN, RN, CMSRN is a California native that has always dreamed of seeing the World, and when that didn't work out, he set his sights on nursing.  Eric is beyond excited to be joining the AMSN podcast and having a chance to share his stories and experiences of being a bedside medical-surgical nurse.   Maritess M. Quinto, DNP, RN, NPD-BC, CMSRN is a clinical educator currently leading a team of educators who is passionately helping healthcare colleagues, especially newly graduate nurses. She was born and raised in the Philippines and immigrated to the United States with her family in Florida. Her family of seven (three girls and two boys with her husband who is also a Registered Nurse) loves to travel, especially to Disney World. She loves to share her experiences about parenting, travelling, and, of course, nursing!   Sydney Wall, RN, BSN, CMSRN has been a med surg nurse for 5 years. After graduating from the University of Rhode Island in 2019, Sydney commissioned into the Navy and began her nursing career working on a cardiac/telemetry unit in Bethesda, Maryland.  Currently she is stationed overseas, providing care for service members and their families.  During her free time, she enjoys martial arts and traveling.   

Welcome back to The Sunday Roast! After a much-needed break in the Welsh mountains, the lads return with your weekly dose of market insight, political drama, and a few laughs along the way. This week, we look at the UK's latest deal with the EU—designed to ease post-Brexit tensions by improving trade terms and defence ties—but is it a win, or has the UK given away more than it's gained? We're joined by Luke Sartain, CEO of Narwhal Media Group, who talks through the rise of AI-driven lead generation, the vision behind SpotDiff, and how agentic AI is reshaping digital marketing. Luke also shares the latest on their new funding and what's next for the business. In the Movers & Shakers: Defence Holdings (ALRT) soared 300% after major board appointments, Mila Resources (MILA) surged 80% following high-grade gold assay results, and MAST climbed 58%. On the downside, Totally plc dropped 77% amid restructuring concerns, while Pantheon Resources slid 40% after a disappointing update at Megrez-1. RNS headlines include Panthera Resources launching a $1.58bn arbitration claim against India over its Bhukia gold project and GEO Exploration announcing a 23% upgrade in prospective resources to 4.31 billion barrels offshore Namibia. Tune in for the latest from the markets, a cracking guest, and the usual Sunday Roast banter. 00:00 - 00:16:27 Weekly News Roundup  00:16:27 #NMG Interview 01:02:13 #ALRT  01:02:47 #MILA  01:04:42 #MAST  01:05:57 #TLY  01:06:35 #PANR 01:06:56 #GEO  01:08:18 #GGP  01:09:26 #CHLL  01:10:16 #GMET  01:15:28 TV  Recommendation  Disclaimer & Declaration of Interest This podcast may contain paid promotions, including but not limited to sponsorships, endorsements, or affiliate partnerships. The information, investment views, and recommendations provided are for general informational purposes only and should not be construed as a solicitation to buy or sell any financial products related to the companies discussed. Any opinions or comments are made to the best of the knowledge and belief of the commentators; however, no responsibility is accepted for actions based on such opinions or comments. The commentators may or may not hold investments in the companies under discussion. Listeners are encouraged to perform their own research and consult with a licensed professional before making any financial decisions based on the content of this podcast. 

Newman University nursing graduates are stepping up to address Kansas' severe nursing shortage, where 29% of RNs plan to retire within five years. With superior NCLEX pass rates and personalized mentorship, these graduates are making immediate impacts in healthcare facilities statewide. Newman University City: Wichita Address: 3100 McCormick Website: https://newmanu.edu/

In this episode of Nurse Converse, four accomplished Black nurses — ranging from bedside RNs and CRNAs to doctoral-prepared leaders and influencers — came together to share their personal and professional journeys. Their conversation shed light on the challenges they've faced navigating systemic bias and racial disparities within the nursing profession.Host Ama Mathewos is joined by guests Casey Green, Everett Moss II, and Travius Keandric as they discuss the realities of being Black in healthcare, including the pressures of being "twice as good," the complexities of code-switching, and the importance of mentorship and representation. They share powerful stories of resilience, moments that inspired them to pursue their careers, and the emotional impact of constantly proving their worth in environments where they are often the only Black voices in the room.>>‘The Only One'—But Not Alone: Black Nurses on Overcoming Bias, Finding Support & GrowthJoin them for an honest discussion about the importance of community support, the power of authentic self-expression, and the critical need for systemic change to create a more inclusive and supportive nursing profession.Jump Ahead to Listen: [01:18] Being Black in nursing.[06:17] Representation of Black nurses.[12:00] Importance of representation in healthcare.[12:38] Location-based experiences in nursing.[16:52] Racial disparities in healthcare careers.[20:50] Support organizations for nurses.[24:54] Code switching in professional settings.[31:14] Authenticity in professional environments.[35:16] Dreaming about others' wins.Connect with the hosts on social media:LinkedIn: Ama, Casey, Everett Instagram: @criticalcarecasey, @the_paramurse, @traviuskeandricTikTok: @criticalcarecasey, @the_paramurse, @traviuskeandricFor more information, full transcript and videos visit Nurse.org/podcastJoin our newsletter at nurse.org/joinInstagram: @nurse_orgTikTok: @nurse.orgFacebook: @nurse.orgYouTube: Nurse.org

Get ready to meet TikTok nursing sensation, Nurse Brenden. Join the co-hosts as they welcome special guest Brenden Hamilton (aka Nurse Brenden) to the show for a light-hearted and candid conversation about his journey as both a nurse and content creator.  You can find Nurse Brenden on TikTok at https://www.tiktok.com/@brenden_hamilton13 SPECIAL GUEST Brenden Hamilton, RN, is a real-life RN turned content creator who's built a viral following by showing the hilarious and unfiltered side of nursing. From hospital chaos to patient quirks, he tells it like it is — with humor, heart, and a little caffeine.   MEET OUR CO-HOSTS Samantha Bayne, MSN, RN, CMSRN, NPD-BC is a nursing professional development practitioner in the inland northwest specializing in medical-surgical nursing. The first four years of her practice were spent bedside on a busy ortho/neuro unit where she found her passion for newly graduated RNs, interdisciplinary collaboration, and professional governance. Sam is an unwavering advocate for medical-surgical nursing as a specialty and enjoys helping nurses prepare for specialty certification.    Kellye' McRae, MSN-Ed, RN is a dedicated Med-Surg Staff Nurse and Unit Based Educator based in South Georgia, with 12 years of invaluable nursing experience. She is passionate about mentoring new nurses, sharing her clinical wisdom to empower the next generation of nurses. Kellye' excels in bedside teaching, blending hands-on training with compassionate patient care to ensure both nurses and patients thrive. Her commitment to education and excellence makes her a cornerstone of her healthcare team.   Marcela Salcedo, RN, BSN is a Floatpool nightshift nurse in the Chicagoland area, specializing in step-down and medical-surgical care. A member of AMSN and the Hektoen Nurses, she combines her passion for nursing with the healing power of the arts and humanities. As a mother of four, Marcela is reigniting her passion for nursing by embracing the chaos of caregiving, fostering personal growth, and building meaningful connections that inspire her work.   Eric Torres, ADN, RN, CMSRN is a California native that has always dreamed of seeing the World, and when that didn't work out, he set his sights on nursing.  Eric is beyond excited to be joining the AMSN podcast and having a chance to share his stories and experiences of being a bedside medical-surgical nurse.   Maritess M. Quinto, DNP, RN, NPD-BC, CMSRN is a clinical educator currently leading a team of educators who is passionately helping healthcare colleagues, especially newly graduate nurses. She was born and raised in the Philippines and immigrated to the United States with her family in Florida. Her family of seven (three girls and two boys with her husband who is also a Registered Nurse) loves to travel, especially to Disney World. She loves to share her experiences about parenting, travelling, and, of course, nursing!   Sydney Wall, RN, BSN, CMSRN has been a med surg nurse for 5 years. After graduating from the University of Rhode Island in 2019, Sydney commissioned into the Navy and began her nursing career working on a cardiac/telemetry unit in Bethesda, Maryland.  Currently she is stationed overseas, providing care for service members and their families.  During her free time, she enjoys martial arts and traveling.   

On today's episode, Finch joins Josiah to talk about the 2025 conclave, the Conclave (2024) fandom, and the last few weeks of Vatican news online.Check out Finch's Substack here: https://jmkazmierczak.substack.com/Read Finch's piece "Death and the Archivist" here: https://jmkazmierczak.substack.com/p/death-and-the-archivistFollow Finch on Twitter @santo_pinzon or Bluesky @finchowar.bsky.socialBecome a Fruitless Patron here: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=11922141Check out Fruitless on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIZWDsDrQ0XvDQFWzE6s2ggFind more of Josiah's work: https://linktr.ee/josiahwsuttonFollow Josiah on Twitter @josiahwsuttonReferences"Society of the Snow (feat. Finch)," Fruitless, https://share.transistor.fm/s/69ca1424"The pope called them every night until his final hours. Now, Gaza's Christians cling to the hope he left behind," Abeer Salman and Oren Liebermann for CNN, https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/23/middleeast/pope-gaza-christians-mourning-intl/index.htmlConclave (2024, dir. Edward Berger)Conclave by Robert HarrisConclavoscope, https://conclavoscope.com/en"How Pope Crave Went From Conclave to the Conclave," Meg Zukin in Time, https://time.com/7283807/pope-crave-conclave-rome/"Cardinals are watching ‘Conclave' the movie for guidance on the actual conclave," Ben Munster for Politico, https://www.politico.eu/article/cardinals-watch-conclave-movie-for-real-life-guidance/"Pope Leo XIV Watched Conclave Before Being Elected the New Pope (Yes, Really!)," John Weiss for NBC, https://www.nbc.com/nbc-insider/pope-leo-watched-conclave-movie-before-being-elected-new-pope-at-actual-conclavePapability Index, https://x.com/pope_predictor"Meet ‘Luce': The Vatican's cartoon mascot for Jubilee 2025," Courtney Mares for Catholic News Agency, https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/260129/meet-luce-the-vatican-s-cartoon-mascot-for-jubilee-2025Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation by Kristin Kobes Du Mez "Cubs, White Sox celebrate election of Chicago native Pope Leo XIV," ESPN, https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/45058434/chicago-cubs-white-sox-celebrate-pope-leo-xiv-sports-fandom"Chase Meidroth gets hit in the head with a pop up," https://www.mlb.com/whitesox/video/cam-booser-in-play-no-out-to-drew-waters"Church officials OK'd moving another priest accused of abuse to Hyde Park friary, records show," Robert Herguth in Chicago Sun Times, https://chicago.suntimes.com/2021/2/26/22302129/catholics-priest-child-sex-abuse-st-john-friary-james-ray-richard-mcgrath-hyde-park-augustinians"Conservatives accused Prevost of covering up abuse in Peru and the United States before conclave," Pablo Ordaz in El Pais, https://english.elpais.com/international/2025-05-09/conservatives-accused-prevost-of-covering-up-abuse-in-peru-and-the-united-states-before-conclave.html"Pope dissolves Peru-based Catholic movement after ‘sadistic abuses'," The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/20/pope-dissolves-sodalitium-of-christian-life-peru-catholic-movement-vatican-investigation"Will Pope Leo XIV be the one who makes the call on women deacons?," Phyllis Zagano in RNS, https://religionnews.com/2025/05/09/will-pope-leo-xiv-be-the-one-who-makes-the-call-on-women-deacons/"Pope Leo signals he will closely follow Francis and says AI represents challenge for humanity," Lauren Kent for CNN, https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/10/europe/pope-leo-prevost-cardinals-artificial-intelligence-intl"New Pope Leo XIV's brother shared gross post calling Nancy Pelosi a ‘drunk c—t'," David Propper in New York Post, https://nypost.com/2025/05/11/us-news/new-pope-leo-xivs-brother-shared-gross-post-calling-nancy-pelosi-a-drunk-c/Music & audio creditsGregorian Chant Rap Beat - sero.kYesterday – bloom."Chase Meidroth gets hit in the head with a pop up," https://www.mlb.com/whitesox/video/cam-booser-in-play-no-out-to-drew-watersA royalty free hip-hop remix of Ave Maria I downloaded back when I did Mammonburg but have lost the artist name since. If the person who did this somehow stumbles across this, let me know so I can credit you. ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Reporting on Religion: How I find quirky, surprising and hope-filled religion stories while also tackling investigations … GUEST Kathryn Post … Pittsburgh-based reporter for RNS covering topics such as Gen Z spirituality, pop culture and abuse in religious contexts. Developing a reading habit: there’s some interesting research about how who‘s reading and not … GUEST Joel Miller … Chief Product Officer for FullFocus and host of the substack Miller’s Book Reviews.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Reporting on Religion: How I find quirky, surprising and hope-filled religion stories while also tackling investigations … GUEST Kathryn Post … Pittsburgh-based reporter for RNS covering topics such as Gen Z spirituality, pop culture and abuse in religious contexts. Developing a reading habit: there’s some interesting research about how who‘s reading and not … GUEST Joel Miller … Chief Product Officer for FullFocus and host of the substack Miller’s Book Reviews.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ep. 151 - The AMSN Story With Co-Founder Alice Poyss A cinematic journey into the story of AMSN's humble beginnings with AMSN Co-Founder Alice Poyss. Join Alice along with special guest co-host AMSN President Kristi Reguin-Hartman and the co-hosts as they journey back in time to Philadelphia in 1990. PLUS a very important opening message every med-surg nurse must hear.    SPECIAL GUEST Alicemarie S. Poyss, RN, Ph.D., CNL, APRN-BC, FAMSN works at Drexel University, College of Nursing & Health Professions since1992. She was the Track Director for the MSN Clinical Nurse Leader Track. Particular clinical expertise is gastrointestinal surgery, nutrition support and nutrition screening of adults and elderly. She received her postmaster`s certificate as an Acute Care Nurse Practitioner, and certification as an Acute Care Nurse Practitioner and Clinical Nurse Leader. She holds certification from ANA as a medical-Surgical nurse Specialist. She is co-founder of the Academy of Medical-Surgical Nurses, a specialty nursing organization created for medical-surgical nurses. In 2024, Dr. Poyss was inducted into the inaugural group of Fellows, of the Academy of Medical-Surgical Nurses (FAMSN). Dr. Poyss is currently practicing in a primary medical group managing palliative care for Elderly homebound patients. She has taught in both undergraduate and graduate Nursing programs in three Universities. Dr. Poyss's research interests in the clinical areas include nursing intervention/outcome studies, and nursing treatment/outcome studies. She has participated with the Iowa Nursing Intervention Classification project and authored two nursing interventional labels for the project. Other research interests include program evaluation, and effects of alternate teaching styles with student learning. Funded research includes Evaluation of an Alternative Care Delivery System in Critical Care Nursing and preventing readmission for CHF patients to Acute Care.   MEET OUR CO-HOSTS Samantha Bayne, MSN, RN, CMSRN, NPD-BC is a nursing professional development practitioner in the inland northwest specializing in medical-surgical nursing. The first four years of her practice were spent bedside on a busy ortho/neuro unit where she found her passion for newly graduated RNs, interdisciplinary collaboration, and professional governance. Sam is an unwavering advocate for medical-surgical nursing as a specialty and enjoys helping nurses prepare for specialty certification.    Kellye' McRae, MSN-Ed, RN is a dedicated Med-Surg Staff Nurse and Unit Based Educator based in South Georgia, with 12 years of invaluable nursing experience. She is passionate about mentoring new nurses, sharing her clinical wisdom to empower the next generation of nurses. Kellye' excels in bedside teaching, blending hands-on training with compassionate patient care to ensure both nurses and patients thrive. Her commitment to education and excellence makes her a cornerstone of her healthcare team.   Marcela Salcedo, RN, BSN is a Floatpool nightshift nurse in the Chicagoland area, specializing in step-down and medical-surgical care. A member of AMSN and the Hektoen Nurses, she combines her passion for nursing with the healing power of the arts and humanities. As a mother of four, Marcela is reigniting her passion for nursing by embracing the chaos of caregiving, fostering personal growth, and building meaningful connections that inspire her work.   Eric Torres, ADN, RN, CMSRN is a California native that has always dreamed of seeing the World, and when that didn't work out, he set his sights on nursing.  Eric is beyond excited to be joining the AMSN podcast and having a chance to share his stories and experiences of being a bedside medical-surgical nurse.   Maritess M. Quinto, DNP, RN, NPD-BC, CMSRN is a clinical educator currently leading a team of educators who is passionately helping healthcare colleagues, especially newly graduate nurses. She was born and raised in the Philippines and immigrated to the United States with her family in Florida. Her family of seven (three girls and two boys with her husband who is also a Registered Nurse) loves to travel, especially to Disney World. She loves to share her experiences about parenting, travelling, and, of course, nursing!   Sydney Wall, RN, BSN, CMSRN has been a med surg nurse for 5 years. After graduating from the University of Rhode Island in 2019, Sydney commissioned into the Navy and began her nursing career working on a cardiac/telemetry unit in Bethesda, Maryland.  Currently she is stationed overseas, providing care for service members and their families.  During her free time, she enjoys martial arts and traveling.   

Welcome to the Sustainable Clinical Medicine Podcast! In this episode, Dr. Sarah Smith is joined by Sue Peters—a healthcare improvement leader with a background in audiology and extensive experience in quality improvement for clinical teams. Sue and Sarah dive into the day-to-day challenges clinicians face, from the dreaded in-basket workload to the complexities of team communication and patient care coordination. Together, they explore practical strategies to streamline processes, clarify roles within clinical teams, and leverage everyone's unique skills to create more efficient and sustainable practice environments. Sue shares actionable tips on offloading non-physician work, optimizing EMRs, and effectively onboarding patients—all while ensuring that both providers and patients benefit from these improvements. Plus, they chat about breaking old habits, embracing true teamwork, and even finding ways to take things out of everyone's overloaded "backpack." Here are 3 key takeaways from this episode: Embrace Team-Based Care: Don't try to shoulder all the work alone. By clearly defining roles and empowering every member of the care team—from RNs and LPNs to MOAs—practices can improve patient access, reduce wait times, and allow clinicians to focus on what matters most. Optimize Your EMR Processes: Standardizing how we populate and use EMR data not only improves patient care, but also makes it much easier to delegate and manage population health. Consistency in documentation enables actionable reporting—and lets the right team member handle the right task. Involve Everyone in Change: Successful quality improvement requires all voices at the table, not just physicians. When team members participate in designing solutions, they're more engaged, invested, and open to new ways of working. Sue Peters Bio: Sue Peters is a Healthcare Improvement Leader working with Primary Care and Specialty Teams to achieve true team-based care through Quality Improvement. Imagine a team where every member has a critical role in patient care and is working to top of scope, allowing you to focus on the work for which you are highly trained - It is possible. -------------- Would you like to view a transcript of this episode? Click here Learn more about our guest: https://petersconsulting.ca/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/sue-peters-b8661774/ **** Charting Champions is a premiere, lifetime access Physician only program that is helping Physicians get home with today's work done. All the proven tools, support and community you need to create time for your life outside of medicine. Learn more at https://www.chartingcoach.ca **** Enjoying this podcast? Please share it with someone who would benefit. Also, don't forget to hit “follow” so you get all the new episodes as soon as they are released. **** Come hang out with me on Facebook or Instagram. Follow me @chartingcoach to get more practical tools to help you create sustainable clinical medicine in your life. **** Questions? Comments? Want to share how this podcast has helped you? Shoot me an email at admin@reachcareercoaching.ca. I would love to hear from you.

Send us a textJoin us as we chat with Veronica, Chief Operating Officer of Herewith Inc, as she shares how their innovative health tech platform connects patients with caregivers through a user-friendly app that resembles Uber and Bumble for caregiving that helps people come home - even for dialysis!• San Francisco-based company using technology to help seniors and others stay in their homes• App connects patients with fully vetted "helpers" who provide non-medical care, including dialysis support• Helpers include retired RNs, seniors capable of providing companionship, and trained dialysis care partners• All helpers undergo national, state, and county background checks• Company holds workers comp and liability insurance for both families and caregivers• Families set their budget and Here With only takes 20% of whatever price is agreed upon• No contracts required, allowing flexibility in choosing caregivers and scheduling• Caregivers come from the same communities as patients, making connections more meaningful• Services extend beyond dialysis to include companionship, errands, meal preparation, and household tasks• Platform available nationwide, with ability to quickly build caregiver networks in any zip code• Engineering team can customize solutions based on specific needsVisit herewith.com to learn more about connecting with caregivers who can help with dialysis and other care needs.

On this episode of Senior Matters, host Mark E. Wight speaks with Robert Vande Merwe, Executive Director of the Idaho Healthcare Association continue their conversation about major changes impacting senior care and healthcare providers in Idaho.  Their conversation is based on the 2025 Idaho Legislative Session. Starting July 1, state regulations for nursing homes, hospitals, and home health agencies will be eliminated, shifting more responsibility to federal oversight. We discuss how these changes affect care quality, patient admissions, and facility inspections. Robert also addresses Idaho's nursing shortage and new delegation rules allowing LPNs to conduct focused assessments—offering temporary relief for overwhelmed RNs. The conversation rounds out with bold education initiatives including high school LPN programs and stackable credentials aimed at growing the healthcare workforce. Finally, Robert shares advocacy efforts around potential federal Medicaid cuts and their devastating implications for Idahoans. Whether you're a caregiver, senior, or healthcare worker, this is essential listening to stay informed on what's changing in Idaho's healthcare landscape. Listen to Part 1 of the podcast at  

Listen to a lively conversation about the recent Virtual Nursing 101 AMSN Webinar. Join Kellye', Marcella, Sam, and Sydney as they share their takeaways, perspectives, and own experiences regarding the webinar and virtual nursing.  REFERENCED DURING THE EPISODE: To watch the AMSN Virtual Nursing 101 Webinar for yourself CLICK HERE .   To learn More About the Certified Acute-Care Virtual Registered Nurse (CAVRN) Certification CLICK HERE.    MEET OUR CO-HOSTS Samantha Bayne, MSN, RN, CMSRN, NPD-BC is a nursing professional development practitioner in the inland northwest specializing in medical-surgical nursing. The first four years of her practice were spent bedside on a busy ortho/neuro unit where she found her passion for newly graduated RNs, interdisciplinary collaboration, and professional governance. Sam is an unwavering advocate for medical-surgical nursing as a specialty and enjoys helping nurses prepare for specialty certification.    Kellye' McRae, MSN-Ed, RN is a dedicated Med-Surg Staff Nurse and Unit Based Educator based in South Georgia, with 12 years of invaluable nursing experience. She is passionate about mentoring new nurses, sharing her clinical wisdom to empower the next generation of nurses. Kellye' excels in bedside teaching, blending hands-on training with compassionate patient care to ensure both nurses and patients thrive. Her commitment to education and excellence makes her a cornerstone of her healthcare team.   Marcela Salcedo, RN, BSN is a Floatpool nightshift nurse in the Chicagoland area, specializing in step-down and medical-surgical care. A member of AMSN and the Hektoen Nurses, she combines her passion for nursing with the healing power of the arts and humanities. As a mother of four, Marcela is reigniting her passion for nursing by embracing the chaos of caregiving, fostering personal growth, and building meaningful connections that inspire her work.   Eric Torres, ADN, RN, CMSRN is a California native that has always dreamed of seeing the World, and when that didn't work out, he set his sights on nursing.  Eric is beyond excited to be joining the AMSN podcast and having a chance to share his stories and experiences of being a bedside medical-surgical nurse.   Maritess M. Quinto, DNP, RN, NPD-BC, CMSRN is a clinical educator currently leading a team of educators who is passionately helping healthcare colleagues, especially newly graduate nurses. She was born and raised in the Philippines and immigrated to the United States with her family in Florida. Her family of seven (three girls and two boys with her husband who is also a Registered Nurse) loves to travel, especially to Disney World. She loves to share her experiences about parenting, travelling, and, of course, nursing!   Sydney Wall, RN, BSN, CMSRN has been a med surg nurse for 5 years. After graduating from the University of Rhode Island in 2019, Sydney commissioned into the Navy and began her nursing career working on a cardiac/telemetry unit in Bethesda, Maryland.  Currently she is stationed overseas, providing care for service members and their families.  During her free time, she enjoys martial arts and traveling.   

Nurse educators are critical to clinical excellence, staff confidence, and patient safety. But are they being leveraged effectively? Join the co-hosts for a candid conversation about their personal experiences, perspectives, ideas, and tips for optimizing your collaboration with nurse educators.    We'd love to hear from you!  Send your thoughts, reactions, and ideas to amsnpod@amsn.org    Also, be sure to SUBSCRIBE/FOLLOW, RATE, & REVIEW Med-Surg Moments wherever you listen to podcasts.    MEET OUR CO-HOSTS Samantha Bayne, MSN, RN, CMSRN, NPD-BC is a nursing professional development practitioner in the inland northwest specializing in medical-surgical nursing. The first four years of her practice were spent bedside on a busy ortho/neuro unit where she found her passion for newly graduated RNs, interdisciplinary collaboration, and professional governance. Sam is an unwavering advocate for medical-surgical nursing as a specialty and enjoys helping nurses prepare for specialty certification.    Kellye' McRae, MSN-Ed, RN is a dedicated Med-Surg Staff Nurse and Unit Based Educator based in South Georgia, with 12 years of invaluable nursing experience. She is passionate about mentoring new nurses, sharing her clinical wisdom to empower the next generation of nurses. Kellye' excels in bedside teaching, blending hands-on training with compassionate patient care to ensure both nurses and patients thrive. Her commitment to education and excellence makes her a cornerstone of her healthcare team.   Marcela Salcedo, RN, BSN is a Floatpool nightshift nurse in the Chicagoland area, specializing in step-down and medical-surgical care. A member of AMSN and the Hektoen Nurses, she combines her passion for nursing with the healing power of the arts and humanities. As a mother of four, Marcela is reigniting her passion for nursing by embracing the chaos of caregiving, fostering personal growth, and building meaningful connections that inspire her work.   Eric Torres, ADN, RN, CMSRN is a California native that has always dreamed of seeing the World, and when that didn't work out, he set his sights on nursing.  Eric is beyond excited to be joining the AMSN podcast and having a chance to share his stories and experiences of being a bedside medical-surgical nurse.   Maritess M. Quinto, DNP, RN, NPD-BC, CMSRN is a clinical educator currently leading a team of educators who is passionately helping healthcare colleagues, especially newly graduate nurses. She was born and raised in the Philippines and immigrated to the United States with her family in Florida. Her family of seven (three girls and two boys with her husband who is also a Registered Nurse) loves to travel, especially to Disney World. She loves to share her experiences about parenting, travelling, and, of course, nursing!   Sydney Wall, RN, BSN, CMSRN has been a med surg nurse for 5 years. After graduating from the University of Rhode Island in 2019, Sydney commissioned into the Navy and began her nursing career working on a cardiac/telemetry unit in Bethesda, Maryland.  Currently she is stationed overseas, providing care for service members and their families.  During her free time, she enjoys martial arts and traveling. 

I hate to break it to you, but we all are getting older. And many of us have older parents and loved ones as well. When it comes time to care for an aging parent or loved one, one of the best choices may be to age-in-place in a familiar home--their own. Enter Interim Healthcare - Annapolis. Today, we speak with Art Dandridge who is the owner of Interim Healthcare - Annapolis headquartered right on Bay Ridge Avenue. We cover a lot of ground about aging in place-from the obvious benefits to the level of care they can provide. We learned that Interim Healthcare can handle a rehab assignment just as easily as they can a 24-7 situation. Maybe you just need a periodic well-check and organizational visit for mom or dad--Interim Healthcare can handle that as well. It is a real peace of mind for a child that may not be local. All of this is handled by a small army of CNAs and GNAs (employees, not contractors) who are overseen by a team of four RNs. And while honest, respectful, and competent care are the hallmarks of Interim Healthcare, they are quickly followed by effective communications. But enough of this... Have a listen! LINKS: Interim Healthcare - Annapolis (Website) Interim Healthcare - Annapolis (Facebook)

Feeling left behind or lack the motivation to get started on that advanced nursing degree?  Join Eric, Kellye', Marcela, Maritess, Sydney and special guest co-host AMSN President Kristi Reguin-Hartman as they share their personal journeys, reluctance, struggles, and strategies for approaching advanced nursing degrees. Also, get the inside scoop on the latest AMSN updates.    We'd love to hear from you!  Send your thoughts, reactions, and ideas to amsnpod@amsn.org    Also, be sure to SUBSCRIBE/FOLLOW, RATE, & REVIEW Med-Surg Moments wherever you listen to podcasts.      SPECIAL GUEST CO-HOST   AMSN President Kristi Reguin-Hartman, DNP, APRN, ACNS-BC has more than 20 years of experience in acute care nursing, professional development, and advanced practice as a Clinical Nurse Specialist. Her expertise in technology implementation, product management and clinical education drives her focus on streamlining workflows through data-driven approaches. She started her nursing journey with an ADN from Nassau Community College in Long Island, New York and has completed her Doctor of Nursing Practice at the University of North Carolina – Wilmington where she authored the 2022 CTHAT Nursing Workload Tool for Medical-Surgical Nurses. Kristi currently works as a Clinical Transformation Manager for Philips Healthcare in the Hospital Patient Monitoring division and as Clinical Instructor with East Carolina University. She volunteers for the North Carolina Nurses Association and has served as Director for the Academy of Medical-Surgical Nurses since 2018.   MEET OUR CO-HOSTS Samantha Bayne, MSN, RN, CMSRN, NPD-BC is a nursing professional development practitioner in the inland northwest specializing in medical-surgical nursing. The first four years of her practice were spent bedside on a busy ortho/neuro unit where she found her passion for newly graduated RNs, interdisciplinary collaboration, and professional governance. Sam is an unwavering advocate for medical-surgical nursing as a specialty and enjoys helping nurses prepare for specialty certification.    Kellye' McRae, MSN-Ed, RN is a dedicated Med-Surg Staff Nurse and Unit Based Educator based in South Georgia, with 12 years of invaluable nursing experience. She is passionate about mentoring new nurses, sharing her clinical wisdom to empower the next generation of nurses. Kellye' excels in bedside teaching, blending hands-on training with compassionate patient care to ensure both nurses and patients thrive. Her commitment to education and excellence makes her a cornerstone of her healthcare team.   Marcela Salcedo, RN, BSN is a Floatpool nightshift nurse in the Chicagoland area, specializing in step-down and medical-surgical care. A member of AMSN and the Hektoen Nurses, she combines her passion for nursing with the healing power of the arts and humanities. As a mother of four, Marcela is reigniting her passion for nursing by embracing the chaos of caregiving, fostering personal growth, and building meaningful connections that inspire her work.   Eric Torres, ADN, RN, CMSRN is a California native that has always dreamed of seeing the World, and when that didn't work out, he set his sights on nursing.  Eric is beyond excited to be joining the AMSN podcast and having a chance to share his stories and experiences of being a bedside medical-surgical nurse.   Maritess M. Quinto, DNP, RN, NPD-BC, CMSRN is a clinical educator currently leading a team of educators who is passionately helping healthcare colleagues, especially newly graduate nurses. She was born and raised in the Philippines and immigrated to the United States with her family in Florida. Her family of seven (three girls and two boys with her husband who is also a Registered Nurse) loves to travel, especially to Disney World. She loves to share her experiences about parenting, travelling, and, of course, nursing!   Sydney Wall, RN, BSN, CMSRN has been a med surg nurse for 5 years. After graduating from the University of Rhode Island in 2019, Sydney commissioned into the Navy and began her nursing career working on a cardiac/telemetry unit in Bethesda, Maryland.  Currently she is stationed overseas, providing care for service members and their families.  During her free time, she enjoys martial arts and traveling. 

GDP Script/ Top Stories for March 18th Publish Date: March 18th From The BG AD Group Studio, Welcome to the Gwinnett Daily Post Podcast. Today is Tuesday, March 18th and Happy Birthday to Gary Sinise ***03.18.25. BIRTHDAY. GARY SINISE*** I’m Peyton Spurlock and here are your top stories presented by KIA Mall of Georgia Annandale Village hosting career fair March 26 Travis Tritt To Headline Buford Fall Concert Georgia Department of Public Safety partnering with ICE All of this and more is coming up on the Gwinnett Daily Post podcast, and if you are looking for community news, we encourage you to listen daily and subscribe! Break 1: Kia MOG (07.14.22 KIA MOG) STORY 1: Annandale Village hosting career fair March 26 Annandale Village is hosting an on-campus career fair on March 26 at 3500 Annandale Lane, Suwanee, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 3 to 6 p.m. The nonprofit, which supports adults with developmental disabilities and brain injuries, offers positions like RNs, CNAs, LPNs, and direct support professionals. Job offers may be made on the spot, and candidates can apply online beforehand. Annandale provides benefits like signing bonuses, flexible schedules, and extensive PTO, fostering a positive work environment. For details, visit annandale.org. STORY 2: Travis Tritt To Headline Buford Fall Concert Country music star Travis Tritt will headline the Buford Community Center's fall concert on Sept. 13, joined by Drake White and his daughter, Tyler Reese Tritt. The event, held on the concert lawn, starts at 6 p.m., with gates opening at 4:30 p.m. A Marietta native, Tritt is known for hits like “It’s a Great Day to Be Alive” and “Here’s a Quarter.” This annual concert follows last year’s headliner, Tyler Hubbard of Florida Georgia Line. STORY 3: Georgia Department of Public Safety partnering with ICE Georgia's Department of Public Safety (DPS) will train all 1,100 sworn officers under ICE's 287(g) program to identify and apprehend illegal immigrants deemed public safety risks, Gov. Brian Kemp announced. DPS Commissioner Billy Hitchens emphasized the collaboration's role in enhancing community safety. The 287(g) program, authorized in 1996, allows ICE to delegate federal immigration enforcement authority to state and local officers. Georgia's Department of Corrections already participates in the program, assisting with deportations. Critics argue some deportations target individuals whose only offense is being in the U.S. illegally, a civil violation. We have opportunities for sponsors to get great engagement on these shows. Call 770.874.3200 for more info. We’ll be right back Break 2: STORY 4: Buford Teen — Missing For Over A Year — Found Safe In Tennessee Over a year after disappearing from her Buford home, 17-year-old Asata Amun has been found safe in Tennessee. Authorities discovered she had been in the custody of Tennessee’s Department of Children’s Services under an alias since February 2024. A case manager identified inconsistencies in her statements, leading to her identification as a missing Georgia teen. Arrangements are underway to transfer her to Georgia’s Department of Family & Children Services, while the investigation into her disappearance remains active. Amun had been missing since February 1, 2024, after being seen running from her home on doorbell video. STORY 5: Gwinnett Solicitor General Lisamarie Bristol will seek re-election in 2026 Gwinnett Solicitor General Lisamarie Bristol has announced her bid for re-election in 2026. A Democrat first elected in 2022, Bristol highlighted her office's achievements, including creating a Special Victims Unit, expanding diversion programs, and reducing crime across all categories in Gwinnett. She emphasized her commitment to fighting recidivism, addressing case backlogs, and focusing on serious crimes. Bristol will officially launch her campaign on March 25. The 2026 election will also feature races for Gwinnett County commission, court, and school board seats, alongside statewide and congressional contests. Break: Ingles Markets 2 ***Guide Weekly Health Minute*** 10.15.24 GUIDE HEALTH MINUTE_FINAL*** Break 4: Signoff – Thanks again for hanging out with us on today’s Gwinnett Daily Post Podcast. If you enjoy these shows, we encourage you to check out our other offerings, like the Cherokee Tribune Ledger Podcast, the Marietta Daily Journal, or the Community Podcast for Rockdale Newton and Morgan Counties. Read more about all our stories and get other great content at www.gwinnettdailypost.com Did you know over 50% of Americans listen to podcasts weekly? Giving you important news about our community and telling great stories are what we do. Make sure you join us for our next episode and be sure to share this podcast on social media with your friends and family. Add us to your Alexa Flash Briefing or your Google Home Briefing and be sure to like, follow, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Produced by the BG Podcast Network Show Sponsors: www.ingles-markets.com  www.kiamallofga.com #NewsPodcast #CurrentEvents #TopHeadlines #BreakingNews #PodcastDiscussion #PodcastNews #InDepthAnalysis #NewsAnalysis #PodcastTrending #WorldNews #LocalNews #GlobalNews #PodcastInsights #NewsBrief #PodcastUpdate #NewsRoundup #WeeklyNews #DailyNews #PodcastInterviews #HotTopics #PodcastOpinions #InvestigativeJournalism #BehindTheHeadlines #PodcastMedia #NewsStories #PodcastReports #JournalismMatters #PodcastPerspectives #NewsCommentary #PodcastListeners #NewsPodcastCommunity #NewsSource #PodcastCuration #WorldAffairs #PodcastUpdates #AudioNews #PodcastJournalism #EmergingStories #NewsFlash #PodcastConversations See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Many patients with epilepsy are unable to acheive optimal seizure control with medical therapy. Palliative surgical procedures, neurostimulation devices, and other nonpharmalogical treatments can lead to a meaningful reduction in seizures and improved outcomes. In this episode, Teshamae Monteith, MD FAAN, speaks with Daniel Friedman, MD, MSc, author of the article “Surgical Treatments, Devices, and Nonmedical Management of Epilepsy,” in the Continuum® February 2025 Epilepsy issue. Dr. Montieth is a Continuum® Audio interviewer and an associate editor of Continuum® Audio and an associate professor of clinical neurology at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine in Miami, Florida. Dr. Friedman is a professor (clinical) of neurology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine and Director of NYU Langone Comprehensive Epilepsy Center at NYU Langone Health in New York, New York. Additional Resources Read the article: Surgical Treatments, Devices, and Nonmedical Management of Epilepsy Subscribe to Continuum: shop.lww.com/Continuum Earn CME (available only to AAN members): continpub.com/AudioCME Continuum® Aloud (verbatim audio-book style recordings of articles available only to Continuum® subscribers): continpub.com/Aloud More about the American Academy of Neurology: aan.com Social Media facebook.com/continuumcme @ContinuumAAN Host: @headacheMD Guest: @dfriedman36  Full episode transcript available here Dr Jones: This is Dr Lyell Jones, Editor-in-Chief of Continuum, the premier topic-based neurology clinical review and CME journal from the American Academy of Neurology. Thank you for joining us on Continuum Audio, which features conversations with Continuum's guest editors and authors who are the leading experts in their fields. Subscribers to the Continuum Journal can read the full article or listen to verbatim recordings of the article and have access to exclusive interviews not featured on the podcast. Please visit the link in the episode notes for more information on the article, subscribing to the journal, and how to get CME. Dr Monteith: This is Dr Teshamae Monteith. Today, I'm interviewing Dr Daniel Friedman about his article on surgical treatments, devices, tools, and non-medication management of epilepsy, which appears in the February 2025 Continuum issue on epilepsy. Welcome to the podcast. How are you? Dr Friedman: I'm well, how are you? Dr Monteith: Thank you for your article. Dr Friedman: Thank you for the opportunity to talk today. Dr Monteith: Why don't you introduce yourself? Dr Friedman: So yeah, so I'm Dan Friedman. I am a professor of neurology here at NYU Grossman School of Medicine and I am the director of the NYU Comprehensive Epilepsy Center. I'm primarily an adult neurologist and I treat teens and adults with hard- difficult-to-treat epilepsy, including surgical treatments for epilepsy. Dr Monteith: And I know you see a lot of patients because I did my residency there. And so, when you graduate, you get a lot of it, like I think many, many residents. What inspired you to choose epilepsy as a profession? Dr Friedman: I came to neurology through my interest in neuroscience. I was a neuroscience undergraduate. I was very interested in the brain and brain function. Particularly, I was interested in how neurons communicate and organize to entrain and rhythms and that encode information. And through that interest and through my experiences in the laboratory, I actually became interested in how they do that in pathological circumstances like seizures. And so, I started reading about epilepsy, and then when I started seeing patients with epilepsy, you know, I decided this is the specialty for me for a lot of reasons. One is it combines inpatient and outpatient care. You get to establish long-term relationships with patients. For many of my patients, I'm probably the doctor that they see most often. You see people across the lifespan. And what I'm going to talk about today is for some people, you actually get to cure their disease, which at the time I was coming into neurology was something pretty rare. Dr Monteith: Yeah, that's great. Why don't you tell us, what were you thinking when you started writing the article? What did you set out to do? Dr Friedman: What I really wanted to do is to educate neurologists out there about the options that they have for their patients with epilepsy, especially those with difficult-to-treat or drug-resistant epilepsy, and give them the tools to communicate those options. Especially for them to understand the rationale, why we choose the interventions that we do as epileptologists, how to appropriately refer patients and have them be partners in that discussion with patients and families. One of the things that we have known for a long time is that the time to referral for things like epilepsy surgery is too long. You know, the average patient with drug resistant epilepsy who undergoes epilepsy surgery waits about twenty years. And for patients who could have curative therapy, you know, become seizure free, that's a lot of life years lost. If we can get patients to that potentially life-altering therapy earlier, that'd be great. Dr Monteith: Yeah, that is really impactful as you think about it. So why don't you tell us what the essential points of your article? Dr Friedman: The central point of my article is really that when patients have drug-resistant epilepsy, which means that our available anti-seizure medicines are not controlling their seizures to the degree that they need, there are other treatment options. Some of those are what we call curative, which means that they could stop their seizures entirely; and some of them are palliative, they could reduce the frequency or severity of seizures and improve quality of life and other outcomes. The other thing that I wanted to highlight was, in addition to these types of therapies, there are other tools we have at our disposal that can improve the quality of life and safety of our patients with epilepsy, including devices for seizure monitoring. Dr Monteith: And how do you define drug-resistant epilepsy? I feel like that could be a moving target. Dr Friedman: The International League Against Epilepsy actually set out to define it about a decade ago, and they defined it as patients who fail at least two appropriately selected anti-seizure medicines due to lack of efficacy. Then they're still having ongoing seizures. What does that mean? So, that means that the medicine that was chosen was appropriate for the type of seizures that they have, whether it's focal or generalized, and that it didn't work because of a lack of efficacy and not because of side effects. And we know from multiple studies that once patients fail two medications, the likelihood that the third, fourth, fifth, etcetera, medicine will control their seizures becomes smaller and smaller. It's not impossible, but the rates fall below five percent. And so we call those patients drug-resistant. Dr Monteith: So, it sounds like despite newer therapies, really things haven't changed in ten years. Dr Friedman: Yeah, unfortunately, at least when the concept was first investigated back in 2000 by Quan and Brody, they found that a third of patients were drug-resistant. When they went back in the mid-2010s to relook at these patients, despite the introduction of many new medications, the rate of patients who were drug-resistant was essentially unchanged. There may be therapies that are emerging or in development that may have better odds, but right now we don't really understand what makes people drug resistant and how we can target that. Dr Monteith: But you do raise a good point that this is about efficacy and not tolerability. And at least for some of the newer medications, they're better tolerated. If you stop the medicine because you had some side effect, that might change how that person has classified better-tolerated treatments. Dr Friedman: It's true. And better-tolerated treatments, you can potentially use higher doses. One of the things that is not in the definition of drug-resistant epilepsy, but as a practicing neurologist, we all know, is that the patients have to take the medicine for it to be effective. And unfortunately, they have to take it every day. And if the medicine makes them feel bad, they may choose not to take it, present to you as drug-resistant, when in reality they may be drug-sensitive if you got them on medicine that doesn't make them feel bad. Dr Monteith: So why don't we talk about patients that are ideal candidates for epilepsy surgery? Dr Friedman: The ideal candidates for epilepsy surgery… and I'll start by talking about curative epilepsy surgery, where the goal of the surgery is to make patients seizure-free. The best candidates are patients who have lesional epilepsy, meaning that there is a visible MRI abnormality like a focal cortical dysplasia, hippocampus sclerosis, cavernoma in a part of the brain that is safe to resect, non-eloquent, and where you can safely perform a wide margin of resection around that lesion. It helps if they have few or no generalized tonic-clonic seizures and a shorter duration of epilepsy. So the ideal patient, the patient that if they came to my office, I would say you should get surgery right now, are patients with non-dominant temporal lobe epilepsy of a few years' duration. So as soon as they've shown that they're not responding to two medicines, those are the ideal patients to say, you would have the most benefit and the least risk from epilepsy surgery. We know from studies that patients with temporal lobe epilepsy do a little better with surgery. We know patients who have a visible lesion on MRI do better with epilepsy surgery. We know that patients who have infrequent secondarily generalized seizures do better. But all patients with drug-resistant epilepsy should be considered for some form of surgery because even if they're not candidates for a curative surgery, there may be some palliative options, whether it's surgical resections that lessen the severity of their seizures or neurostimulation devices that reduce the frequency and severity of seizures. Ideal candidates, the ones that you would push through sooner rather than later, are those who have the likelihood of the best outcomes and the least risk of neurocognitive decline. Dr Monteith: So, you mentioned that there may be other candidates that still benefit, although maybe not ideal. You mentioned neuromodulation. What other interventions are available? Dr Friedman: For patients who are not candidates for resective surgery, there are several neurostimulation options. There's vagus nerve stimulation, which has been around the longest. It is a device that is implanted in- under the skin near the clavicle and has a lead that goes to the left vagus nerve and delivers stimulation, electrical stimulation to the nerve. For reasons we don't fully understand, it can reduce the both the frequency and severity of seizures. Seldom does it make people seizure free, but the reduction in seizure frequency for many patients is associated with improved quality of life, reduced risk of injury, and even reduced rates of SUDEP. We also have two intracranial neurostimulation devices we use for epilepsy. One is the responsive neurostimulator. So, this is a device that- it has leads that are implanted directly into the seizure focus and sense electrocortical brain activity and deliver electrical stimulation to attempt to abort abnormal brain activity. So functioning kind of like a cardiac defibrillator for the heart, but for seizures in the brain. And because these devices have two leads, they can be used to treat people with more than one seizure focus---so up to two---or be used in patients who are not candidates for resection because their seizure focus is in language cortex, motor cortex, things that would be unable to resect. And the RNS has somewhat better efficacy in terms of percent reduction in seizures compared to the VNS, but obviously because it's an intracranial device, it's also a little riskier. It has more potential for neurosurgical adverse effects. There's also a deep brain stimulator for epilepsies, the same exact device that we use to treat movement disorders. We can implant in the thalamus, in either the anterior nucleus of the thalamus or now, for some patients, into the central median nucleus of the thalamus, and deliver open loop stimulation to treat epilepsy and reduce the frequency and severity of seizures as well. Unlike the RNS, you don't have to localize the seizure focus, so you don't need to know exactly where the seizures are coming from. And you could treat patients with multifocal epilepsy with seizures coming from more than two locations or even generalized seizures. Dr Monteith: So, it sounds like there are a lot of options available to patients. I think one of the things I find challenging is when we have patients that may have some cognitive dysfunction, especially in the hospital, and they've had some seizures that are very obvious, but then there are these, maybe, events that you wonder are seizures. So, what is the utility of some of these seizure detection devices? Dr Friedman: The development of seizure detection devices started out primarily with the observation that a majority of cases of sudden unexpected death and epilepsy, or SUDEP, occurred following tonic-clonic seizures. And there was a need to be able to monitor for convulsive seizures, especially that occur at night when people were otherwise unattended. And so, the first generation of devices that were developed came on the market, essentially detected convulsive seizures, and they alerted caregivers nearby who are able to come to the bedside, provide basic seizure first aid, turn people on the side. And theoretically all this---this hasn't been shown in studies---prevents SUDEP. And so, the ones that are currently available on the market are focused on the detection of convulsive seizures, mostly generalized tonic-clonic seizures, but some devices can also detect other seizures with very prominent motor components. What we don't have yet available to us, and what people are working on, are devices that detect nonconvulsive seizures. We know that patients who have focal impaired aware seizures are often amnestic for their seizures. They don't know they had a seizure if family members aren't there to observe them. They may never report them, which makes treating these patients very difficult. How do you quantify disease burden in your headache patients, for instance? You say, how many headache days did you have since we last met in the clinic? Your patients will be able to report on their calendar, this many days. Well, imagine if the patients had no awareness of whether or not they had a headache day. You wouldn't know if your therapy is working or not. In epilepsy, we need those types of devices which can tell us whether patients are having seizures they're unaware of, and that may be more subtle than convulsions. Dr Monteith: Oh, that'd be great for headache, too. You just gave me an idea, but that's the next podcast. So, you mentioned SUDEP, really important. How good are surgical interventions at reducing what we would think the prevalence of SUDEP? Dr Friedman: For me that is one of the primary motivations for epilepsy surgery in patients who are drug-resistant, because we know that if patients who are candidates for epilepsy surgery have high SUDEP rates. Estimates range from six to nine per thousand patients per year. If surgery is successful, their mortality rates go down to the general population level. It literally can be lifesaving for some patients, especially when you're talking about curative epilepsy surgery. But we also know that the biggest driver for SUDEP risk is tonic-clonic seizures and the frequency of those tonic-clonic seizures. So even our palliative interventions, which can reduce the frequency and severity of seizures, may also reduce the risk of SUDEP. So, we know in study- observational studies of patients with VNS and with RNS, for instance, the rates of SUDEP in patients treated with those devices are lower than expected for the drug-resistant epilepsy population. Dr Monteith: Let's talk a little bit about some of these prediction models. And you have a lot of great work in your article, so I don't want to get into all the details, but how do you use that in the real world? Do you communicate that with patients? How do you approach these prediction factors? Dr Friedman: There are two places where, I think, clinical prediction tools for epilepsy surgery have a role. One is, for me, in my clinic where I'm talking to patients about the risks and benefits for surgery, right? You want to be able to accurately communicate the likelihood that the surgery is going to give you the desired outcome. So patients and their families can make educated decisions, be weighing the risks and benefits. I think it's important to be realistic with patients because surgery, like- you know, any surgery is not without risk, both acute risks and long-term risks. You're removing part of the brain, and, you know, every part of the brain is important. That's where I use prediction tools. But I think it's also important for the general neurologist, especially trying to triage which patients you are going to be aggressive with referring to a comprehensive epilepsy center for evaluation. Where you may use your limited time and capital with patients to counsel them on surgical treatments. Where a healthcare system with limited resources prioritizes patients. So, there's a significant need for having prediction tools that only take the input that a general neurologist seeing a patient in the clinic would have at hand. You know, the history, an MRI, an interictal EEG. Dr Monteith: I guess part of that prediction model includes adverse outcomes that you're communicating as well. Dr Friedman: Certainly, for me, when I'm discussing surgery for the patient in front of me, I will use prediction models for adverse outcomes as well that are informed by the kind of surgery we're proposing to do, especially when talking about things like language dysfunction and memory dysfunction after surgery. Dr Monteith: So, you mentioned a lot of great advances, and certainly since I was a resident, which wasn't that long ago. Why don't you tell me how some of these interventions have changed your clinical practice? Dr Friedman: Thinking about epilepsy surgery, like other surgical specialties, there's been a move to more minimally invasive approaches. For instance, when I started as an epilepsy fellow fifteen years ago, sixteen years ago, most of our surgeries involve removing a large portion of the skull, putting electrodes on the brain, doing resections through big craniotomies which were uncomfortable and risky, things like that. We now do our phase two or intracranial EEG monitoring through small burr holes in the brain using robotically placed electrodes. For many of our patients, we can actually treat their epileptic focus with a laser that is targeted through a small catheter and MRI guidance. And patients are usually home in two days with, you know, a lot less discomfort. Dr Monteith: Well, that's great. I didn't expect that one, but I do think that translates to many areas of neurology. Really just this idea of meeting their goals and personalizing their care. My last question is, what out of these advances and what you know about the future of epilepsy, what makes you the most excited and what gives you the most hope? Dr Friedman: I think there are a lot of exciting things in epilepsy. Last count I heard, there's something like over a hundred biotech companies developing epilepsy therapies. So that gives me hope that people are still interested in meeting the unmet needs of patients with epilepsy. And some of these therapies are really novel. For instance, there's a trial of stem cell treatments for drug-resistant temporal lobe epilepsy that's ongoing now, where inhibitory interneuron progenitor cells are implanted in the brain and kind of restore the brain circuit disruptions that we see in some of these epilepsies. There are combinations of drug and device therapies or gene therapy and device therapies that are in development, which have a lot of promise, and I think we'll have much more precise and targeted therapies within the next decade. Dr Monteith: Awesome. I really appreciate our conversation, and thank you so much for your wonderful article. I learned a lot reading it. Dr Friedman: Thank you. Dr Monteith: Today I've been interviewing Dr Daniel Friedman, whose article on surgical treatments, devices, tools, and non-medication management of epilepsy appears in the most recent issue of Continuum on epilepsy. Be sure to check out Continuum audio episodes from this and other issues. And thank you to our listeners for joining today. Dr Monteith: This is Dr Teshmae Monteith, Associate Editor of Continuum Audio. If you've enjoyed this episode, you'll love the journal, which is full of in-depth and clinically relevant information important for neurology practitioners. Use this link in the episode notes to learn more and subscribe. AAN members, you can get CME for listening to this interview by completing the evaluation at continpub.com/audioCME. Thank you for listening to Continuum Audio.

On episode 509 of The Nurse Keith Show nursing and healthcare career podcast, Keith interviews Dr. Jessica Chung, the founder of the International Business Association for Nurses (IBAN). In the course of their conversation, Keith and Dr. Chung discuss the multitude of independent business opportunities available to nurse practitioners, nurses, and even physician assistants. According to Dr. Chung, the sky's the limit for what nurses and APRNs can accomplish in the entrepreneurial space as long as they have the education and awareness to tackle each step thoughtfully, and adhere to the legal and regulatory frameworks of their scope of practice and the state and municipality where they live and work. Dr. Jessica Chung, DNP, FNP-BC, is the founder of J.C. Healthcare & Associates and the International Business Association for Nurses. Dr. Chung is a Doctor of Nursing Practice with expertise in healthcare business start-ups and private practice management.  After receiving her Associate's Degree in Nursing from NYC College of Technology in 2009, Dr. Chung worked as a charge nurse and nurse case manager before moving to Florida. She obtained her Bachelor's in Nursing from Utica College and gained clinical experience in various specialties. In 2018, she was inducted into Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society. She earned her Master's Degree in Nursing with a Family Nurse Practitioner concentration from South University and her Doctoral degree in Nursing Practice from Samford University. Her research focused on patient education and medication adherence. Dr. Chung opened her private practice in 2019 and has been an advocate for mentoring healthcare professionals to become entrepreneurs. She is a dedicated educator, speaker, researcher, and provider with a passion for influencing others to pursue higher education and professional success. Additionally, she is actively involved in her church and considers healthcare a God-given gift and calling. Connect with Dr. Jessica Chung and IBAN: International Business Association for Nurses Facebook IBAN open Facebook group for APRNs and RNs in Private Practice Business Instagram LinkedIn Contact Nurse Keith about holistic career coaching to elevate your nursing and healthcare career at NurseKeith.com. Keith also offers services as a motivational and keynote speaker and freelance nurse writer. You can always find Keith on LinkedIn. Are you looking for a novel way to empower your career and move forward in life? Keith's wife, Shada McKenzie, is a gifted astrologer and reader of the tarot who combines ancient and modern techniques to provide valuable insights into your motivations, aspirations, and life trajectory, and she offers listeners of The Nurse Keith Show a 10% discount on their first consultation. Contact Shada at TheCircelandtheDot.com or shada@thecircleandthedot.com.

Ever struggled with how to approach a mistake or non-compliance with your peers? You're not alone. Join Maritess, Marcela, Kellye', and Eric as they open up for an insightful conversation about how to put professional accountability into action. Also, Eric is finally back to work but it's not exactly as planned.     We'd love to hear from you!  Send your thoughts, reactions, and ideas to amsnpod@amsn.org    Also, be sure to SUBSCRIBE/FOLLOW, RATE, & REVIEW Med-Surg Moments wherever you listen to podcasts.  MEET OUR CO-HOSTS Samantha Bayne, MSN, RN, CMSRN, NPD-BC is a nursing professional development practitioner in the inland northwest specializing in medical-surgical nursing. The first four years of her practice were spent bedside on a busy ortho/neuro unit where she found her passion for newly graduated RNs, interdisciplinary collaboration, and professional governance. Sam is an unwavering advocate for medical-surgical nursing as a specialty and enjoys helping nurses prepare for specialty certification.    Kellye' McRae, MSN-Ed, RN is a dedicated Med-Surg Staff Nurse and Unit Based Educator based in South Georgia, with 12 years of invaluable nursing experience. She is passionate about mentoring new nurses, sharing her clinical wisdom to empower the next generation of nurses. Kellye' excels in bedside teaching, blending hands-on training with compassionate patient care to ensure both nurses and patients thrive. Her commitment to education and excellence makes her a cornerstone of her healthcare team.   Marcela Salcedo, RN, BSN is a Floatpool nightshift nurse in the Chicagoland area, specializing in step-down and medical-surgical care. A member of AMSN and the Hektoen Nurses, she combines her passion for nursing with the healing power of the arts and humanities. As a mother of four, Marcela is reigniting her passion for nursing by embracing the chaos of caregiving, fostering personal growth, and building meaningful connections that inspire her work.   Eric Torres, ADN, RN, CMSRN is a California native that has always dreamed of seeing the World, and when that didn't work out, he set his sights on nursing.  Eric is beyond excited to be joining the AMSN podcast and having a chance to share his stories and experiences of being a bedside medical-surgical nurse.   Maritess M. Quinto, DNP, RN, NPD-BC, CMSRN is a clinical educator currently leading a team of educators who is passionately helping healthcare colleagues, especially newly graduate nurses. She was born and raised in the Philippines and immigrated to the United States with her family in Florida. Her family of seven (three girls and two boys with her husband who is also a Registered Nurse) loves to travel, especially to Disney World. She loves to share her experiences about parenting, travelling, and, of course, nursing!   Sydney Wall, RN, BSN, CMSRN has been a med surg nurse for 5 years. After graduating from the University of Rhode Island in 2019, Sydney commissioned into the Navy and began her nursing career working on a cardiac/telemetry unit in Bethesda, Maryland.  Currently she is stationed overseas, providing care for service members and their families.  During her free time, she enjoys martial arts and traveling. 

Curious about the new generation of nursing students?  Join Kellye', Marcela, Sam, and Maritess as they welcome National Student Nurses Association President Ethan Slocum to the show to share his thoughts, insights, and perspectives about the next generation of student nurses you won't want to miss!    Learn more about the National Student Nurses Association at www.nsna.org    SPECIAL GUEST Ethan Slocum serves as the 73rd president of the National Student Nurses' Association (NSNA), representing over 50,000 pre-licensure nursing students nationwide. A fourth-year nursing student at the Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, Ethan is on track to graduate with his Bachelor of Science in Nursing in May 2025. Following graduation, he plans to specialize as a pediatric critical care nurse in Cleveland. Since his election as president in April 2024, Ethan has had the privilege of addressing influential bodies such as the American Nurses' Association General Membership Assembly, the White House Council on Environmental Quality, and the Environmental Protection Agency. In these forums, he advocates for transformative changes to improve the future of nursing and patient care. He represents nearly 72 years of NSNA student policy resolutions, which collectively call for reform across numerous areas of the healthcare system. Through his leadership and advocacy, Ethan aims to elevate the state of nursing and nursing education, working toward a more equitable and progressive future for all pre-licensure nursing students across the United States.   MEET OUR CO-HOSTS Samantha Bayne, MSN, RN, CMSRN, NPD-BC is a nursing professional development practitioner in the inland northwest specializing in medical-surgical nursing. The first four years of her practice were spent bedside on a busy ortho/neuro unit where she found her passion for newly graduated RNs, interdisciplinary collaboration, and professional governance. Sam is an unwavering advocate for medical-surgical nursing as a specialty and enjoys helping nurses prepare for specialty certification.    Kellye' McRae, MSN-Ed, RN is a dedicated Med-Surg Staff Nurse and Unit Based Educator based in South Georgia, with 12 years of invaluable nursing experience. She is passionate about mentoring new nurses, sharing her clinical wisdom to empower the next generation of nurses. Kellye' excels in bedside teaching, blending hands-on training with compassionate patient care to ensure both nurses and patients thrive. Her commitment to education and excellence makes her a cornerstone of her healthcare team.   Marcela Salcedo, RN, BSN is a Floatpool nightshift nurse in the Chicagoland area, specializing in step-down and medical-surgical care. A member of AMSN and the Hektoen Nurses, she combines her passion for nursing with the healing power of the arts and humanities. As a mother of four, Marcela is reigniting her passion for nursing by embracing the chaos of caregiving, fostering personal growth, and building meaningful connections that inspire her work.   Eric Torres, ADN, RN, CMSRN is a California native that has always dreamed of seeing the World, and when that didn't work out, he set his sights on nursing.  Eric is beyond excited to be joining the AMSN podcast and having a chance to share his stories and experiences of being a bedside medical-surgical nurse.   Maritess M. Quinto, DNP, RN, NPD-BC, CMSRN is a clinical educator currently leading a team of educators who is passionately helping healthcare colleagues, especially newly graduate nurses. She was born and raised in the Philippines and immigrated to the United States with her family in Florida. Her family of seven (three girls and two boys with her husband who is also a Registered Nurse) loves to travel, especially to Disney World. She loves to share her experiences about parenting, travelling, and, of course, nursing!   Sydney Wall, RN, BSN, CMSRN has been a med surg nurse for 5 years. After graduating from the University of Rhode Island in 2019, Sydney commissioned into the Navy and began her nursing career working on a cardiac/telemetry unit in Bethesda, Maryland.  Currently she is stationed overseas, providing care for service members and their families.  During her free time, she enjoys martial arts and traveling. 

When it comes to stroke patients, it's truly a race against the clock. Are you ready? Also, get ready to meet our two new co-hosts!  Join Eric, Sam, and Sydney as well as our two new co-hosts, Kellye' and Marcela, as they share their stories, experiences, and approaches for recognizing the symptoms and caring for stroke patients in a comprehensive and timely manner.    MEET OUR CO-HOSTS   Samantha Bayne, MSN, RN, CMSRN, NPD-BC is a nursing professional development practitioner in the inland northwest specializing in medical-surgical nursing. The first four years of her practice were spent bedside on a busy ortho/neuro unit where she found her passion for newly graduated RNs, interdisciplinary collaboration, and professional governance. Sam is an unwavering advocate for medical-surgical nursing as a specialty and enjoys helping nurses prepare for specialty certification.  Kellye' McRae, MSN-Ed, RN is a dedicated Med-Surg Staff Nurse and Unit Based Educator based in South Georgia, with 12 years of invaluable nursing experience. She is passionate about mentoring new nurses, sharing her clinical wisdom to empower the next generation of nurses. Kellye' excels in bedside teaching, blending hands-on training with compassionate patient care to ensure both nurses and patients thrive. Her commitment to education and excellence makes her a cornerstone of her healthcare team.   Marcela Salcedo, RN, BSN is a Floatpool nightshift nurse in the Chicagoland area, specializing in step-down and medical-surgical care. A member of AMSN and the Hektoen Nurses, she combines her passion for nursing with the healing power of the arts and humanities. As a mother of four, Marcela is reigniting her passion for nursing by embracing the chaos of caregiving, fostering personal growth, and building meaningful connections that inspire her work.   Eric Torres, ADN, RN, CMSRN is a California native that has always dreamed of seeing the World, and when that didn't work out, he set his sights on nursing.  Eric is beyond excited to be joining the AMSN podcast and having a chance to share his stories and experiences of being a bedside medical-surgical nurse.   Maritess M. Quinto, DNP, RN, NPD-BC, CMSRN is a clinical educator currently leading a team of educators who is passionately helping healthcare colleagues, especially newly graduate nurses. She was born and raised in the Philippines and immigrated to the United States with her family in Florida. Her family of seven (three girls and two boys with her husband who is also a Registered Nurse) loves to travel, especially to Disney World. She loves to share her experiences about parenting, travelling, and, of course, nursing!   Sydney Wall, RN, BSN, CMSRN has been a med surg nurse for 5 years. After graduating from the University of Rhode Island in 2019, Sydney commissioned into the Navy and began her nursing career working on a cardiac/telemetry unit in Bethesda, Maryland.  Currently she is stationed overseas, providing care for service members and their families.  During her free time, she enjoys martial arts and traveling. 

Join us as we welcome back former Med-Surg Moments Co-Hosts for our 6th anniversary episode! Also, we say farewell to two of our current co-hosts.  Join the co-hosts, past and present, for an exciting and insightful "behind-the-scenes" conversation about Med-Surg Moments as we celebrate six years.    SPECIAL GUESTS Alissa Brown, MSN, RN, CMSRN, NPD-BC and former Med-Surg Moments Co-Host Caroline Ashman, MSN, RN, CMSRN and former Med-Surg Moments Co-Host   MEET OUR CO-HOSTS Samantha Bayne, MSN, RN, CMSRN, NPD-BC is a nursing professional development practitioner in the inland northwest specializing in medical-surgical nursing. The first four years of her practice were spent bedside on a busy ortho/neuro unit where she found her passion for newly graduated RNs, interdisciplinary collaboration, and professional governance. Sam is an unwavering advocate for medical-surgical nursing as a specialty and enjoys helping nurses prepare for specialty certification.    Laura Johnson, MSN, RN, NPD-BC, CMSRN has been a nurse since 2008 with a background in Med/Surg and Oncology.  She is a native Texan currently working in the Dallas area.  She has held many positions throughout her career from bedside nurse to management/leadership to education.  Laura obtained her MSN in nursing education in 2018 and is currently pursuing her DNP.  She has worked both as a bedside educator and a nursing professional development practitioner for both new and experienced staff.  She enjoys working with the nurse residency program as a specialist in palliative care/end of life nursing and mentorship.  She is currently an NPD practitioner for oncology and bone marrow transplant units.     Neil H. Johnson, RN, BSN, CMSRN, epitomizes a profound familial commitment to the nursing profession, marking the third generation in his family to tread this esteemed path. Following the footsteps of his father, grandfather, grandmother, aunt, and cousin, all distinguished nurses, Neil transitioned to nursing as a second career after a brief tenure as an elementary school teacher. Currently on the verge of completing his MSN in nurse education, he aspires to seamlessly integrate his dual passions. Apart from his unwavering dedication to nursing, Neil actively seeks serenity in nature alongside his canine companions. In his professional capacity, he fulfills the role of a med-surg nurse at the Moses Cone Health System in North Carolina.   Eric Torres, ADN, RN, CMSRN is a California native that has always dreamed of seeing the World, and when that didn't work out, he set his sights on nursing.  Eric is beyond excited to be joining the AMSN podcast and having a chance to share his stories and experiences of being a bedside medical-surgical nurse.   Maritess M. Quinto, DNP, RN, NPD-BC, CMSRN is a clinical educator currently leading a team of educators who is passionately helping healthcare colleagues, especially newly graduate nurses. She was born and raised in the Philippines and immigrated to the United States with her family in Florida. Her family of seven (three girls and two boys with her husband who is also a Registered Nurse) loves to travel, especially to Disney World. She loves to share her experiences about parenting, travelling, and, of course, nursing!   Sydney Wall, RN, BSN, CMSRN has been a med surg nurse for 5 years. After graduating from the University of Rhode Island in 2019, Sydney commissioned into the Navy and began her nursing career working on a cardiac/telemetry unit in Bethesda, Maryland.  Currently she is stationed overseas, providing care for service members and their families.  During her free time, she enjoys martial arts and traveling. 

Amy Fritz reflects on the 4 year anniversary of the Religion News Service article Is Dave Ramsey's Company the Best Place to Work? Say No and You're Out. Heather Fulk joins Amy to talk about going on the record for that article.   Subscribe to my newsletter: https://untangledfaith.substack.com   In this episode you'll find Origin of the RNS article Heather Fulk shares what it's like to go decide to go on the record. Amy reflects on the Ramsey response and the main RNS article   Featured Guest Heather Fulk   Resources mentioned Ramsey Solutions, Dave Ramsey Episodes | Untangled Faith Dave Ramsey, Christian person finance guru, defies COVID-19 to keep staff at desks. Is Dave Ramsey's empire the ‘best place to work in America'? Say no and you're out. Full Ramsey Solutions Response. Exclusive: Audio Shows Dave Ramsey's Board Knowingly Kept Adulterous Personality on Staff.  At Dave Ramsey's company, some sex outside marriage was OK, court documents show Dave Ramsey Sued for $150 Million By Former Fans Who Followed His Time Share Exit Advice   Tell Your Friends! If you loved this episode, leave us a review on your favorite podcast app and share it with a friend. Tag us if you share it on social media.   Follow Untangled Faith wherever you listen to podcasts Follow on Apple podcasts Subscribe on YouTube Follow on Spotify Follow on Podcast Addict   Want to share your thoughts with us or talk about partnering with the show? Email: amy@untangledfaithpodcast.com Follow me on Instagram Follow me on Threads Follow me on BlueSky

Whether you love or hate New Year's resolutions, this episode is a must listen!  Join Eric, Laura, Maritess, and Sydney for a lively, insightful, and humorous conversation about their med-surg nursing resolutions for 2025. Who knows, it just might spark some ideas of your own.     MEET OUR CO-HOSTS Samantha Bayne, MSN, RN, CMSRN, NPD-BC is a nursing professional development practitioner in the inland northwest specializing in medical-surgical nursing. The first four years of her practice were spent bedside on a busy ortho/neuro unit where she found her passion for newly graduated RNs, interdisciplinary collaboration, and professional governance. Sam is an unwavering advocate for medical-surgical nursing as a specialty and enjoys helping nurses prepare for specialty certification.    Laura Johnson, MSN, RN, NPD-BC, CMSRN has been a nurse since 2008 with a background in Med/Surg and Oncology.  She is a native Texan currently working in the Dallas area.  She has held many positions throughout her career from bedside nurse to management/leadership to education.  Laura obtained her MSN in nursing education in 2018 and is currently pursuing her DNP.  She has worked both as a bedside educator and a nursing professional development practitioner for both new and experienced staff.  She enjoys working with the nurse residency program as a specialist in palliative care/end of life nursing and mentorship.  She is currently an NPD practitioner for oncology and bone marrow transplant units.     Neil H. Johnson, RN, BSN, CMSRN, epitomizes a profound familial commitment to the nursing profession, marking the third generation in his family to tread this esteemed path. Following the footsteps of his father, grandfather, grandmother, aunt, and cousin, all distinguished nurses, Neil transitioned to nursing as a second career after a brief tenure as an elementary school teacher. Currently on the verge of completing his MSN in nurse education, he aspires to seamlessly integrate his dual passions. Apart from his unwavering dedication to nursing, Neil actively seeks serenity in nature alongside his canine companions. In his professional capacity, he fulfills the role of a med-surg nurse at the Moses Cone Health System in North Carolina.   Eric Torres, ADN, RN, CMSRN is a California native that has always dreamed of seeing the World, and when that didn't work out, he set his sights on nursing.  Eric is beyond excited to be joining the AMSN podcast and having a chance to share his stories and experiences of being a bedside medical-surgical nurse.   Maritess M. Quinto, DNP, RN, NPD-BC, CMSRN is a clinical educator currently leading a team of educators who is passionately helping healthcare colleagues, especially newly graduate nurses. She was born and raised in the Philippines and immigrated to the United States with her family in Florida. Her family of seven (three girls and two boys with her husband who is also a Registered Nurse) loves to travel, especially to Disney World. She loves to share her experiences about parenting, travelling, and, of course, nursing!   Sydney Wall, RN, BSN, CMSRN has been a med surg nurse for 5 years. After graduating from the University of Rhode Island in 2019, Sydney commissioned into the Navy and began her nursing career working on a cardiac/telemetry unit in Bethesda, Maryland.  Currently she is stationed overseas, providing care for service members and their families.  During her free time, she enjoys martial arts and traveling. 

In this episode, Professor Temmermand discusses the importance of effective communication and how it can make our break people's perception of you in the clinical setting. She also discusses characteristics to foster, how to develop a growth mindset, and tips on accepting feedback in a positive way. She also give some examples of questions to ask your preceptors that every student can be asking. This episode is an excellent listen not only for current anesthesia students but also for RNs getting ready to shadow in the OR, or who are getting ready to start CRNA school. Tune in! [NEW] We're getting ready to launch our YouTube channel - Subscribe here! Related Episodes: Resident's Corner "Overcoming the Pressure of Performance" CHECK OUT OUR PHARM COURSE HERE[FREE DOWNLOAD] FOR THE SRNA: GRAB YOUR FREE SEE/NCE STUDY PLAN HERE [FREE DOWNLOAD] FOR THE RN: GRAB YOUR FREE ICU DRUG CHART HEREFollow us on Instagram at: @Atomic_AnesthesiaCheck out our other free resources at AtomicAnesthesia.com

In this episode, we have a chat with our friends Andy and Briana about what happened this year in the worlds of religion, faith, and politics . In the midst of the daunting rise of christofascism and other forms of oppression, we find strength in how our communities are stepping up to care for one another. We also share personal important moments that happened in each of our lives this year.  Want to join us at QCF Conf from Jan. 23-26th? Use the code BIBLE DYKES to receive 10% off in-person registration: https://www.qcfconf.org/  RNS article: https://religionnews.com/2024/12/27/the-top-10-religion-stories-of-2024-whats-old-is-news-again/  Briana's published short story: https://www.hauntedwordspress.com/issues  We have merch! Get your Bible Dyke Energy Tee and more here: https://www.redbubble.com/people/rtgardenpodcast/shop  Our social media: @reclaimingthegarden on Insta, and Reclaiming the Garden on Facebook. Our personal accounts: @thatpunchabletheaternerd and @April_TheWriter. Also, our podcast account follows a bunch of awesome folks + podcasts in the exvangelical/deconstruction world and progressive Christian world, so if you're looking for more resources, that's a great place to start!

Ready to discover the often-overlooked secret tool that could transform how you manage patient pain as a med-surg nurse? Join the co-hosts as they welcome special guest Dr. Mike Urton to explore the present state of patient pain management, what's missing and how you can unlock this secret tool in your nursing practice.    SPECIAL GUEST Mike Urton, DNP, APRN, AGCNS is a Adult-Gerontology Clinical Nurse Specialist in North Carolina and is currently the Dirctor for Advanced Practice Nursing at Duke University Health System. He also maintains a faculyt appointment as a Clinical Assistant Professor with the East Carolina University College of Nursing. Dr. Urton served in the US Navy as a Nurse Corps Officer, retiring with 22 years of service at the rank of Lieutenant Commander. He received his BSN from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his MSN and DNP from East Carolina University. Mike has been a medical-surgical nurse for nearly 25 years, working in a variety of inpatient, procedural and ambulatory clinical settings and holding various clinical and leadership roles in hospitals across the United States. Over his career, he has developed a a passion for patient safety (especially falls prevention) and for acute & chronic pain management. Mike has been a been a member of AMSN for the last 10 years, serving previously as a Member of the Scholarship & Awards Committtee and currently serving as a Co-Chair for the Legislative Committee.   MEET OUR CO-HOSTS Samantha Bayne, MSN, RN, CMSRN, NPD-BC is a nursing professional development practitioner in the inland northwest specializing in medical-surgical nursing. The first four years of her practice were spent bedside on a busy ortho/neuro unit where she found her passion for newly graduated RNs, interdisciplinary collaboration, and professional governance. Sam is an unwavering advocate for medical-surgical nursing as a specialty and enjoys helping nurses prepare for specialty certification.    Laura Johnson, MSN, RN, NPD-BC, CMSRN has been a nurse since 2008 with a background in Med/Surg and Oncology.  She is a native Texan currently working in the Dallas area.  She has held many positions throughout her career from bedside nurse to management/leadership to education.  Laura obtained her MSN in nursing education in 2018 and is currently pursuing her DNP.  She has worked both as a bedside educator and a nursing professional development practitioner for both new and experienced staff.  She enjoys working with the nurse residency program as a specialist in palliative care/end of life nursing and mentorship.  She is currently an NPD practitioner for oncology and bone marrow transplant units.     Neil H. Johnson, RN, BSN, CMSRN, epitomizes a profound familial commitment to the nursing profession, marking the third generation in his family to tread this esteemed path. Following the footsteps of his father, grandfather, grandmother, aunt, and cousin, all distinguished nurses, Neil transitioned to nursing as a second career after a brief tenure as an elementary school teacher. Currently on the verge of completing his MSN in nurse education, he aspires to seamlessly integrate his dual passions. Apart from his unwavering dedication to nursing, Neil actively seeks serenity in nature alongside his canine companions. In his professional capacity, he fulfills the role of a med-surg nurse at the Moses Cone Health System in North Carolina.   Eric Torres, ADN, RN, CMSRN is a California native that has always dreamed of seeing the World, and when that didn't work out, he set his sights on nursing.  Eric is beyond excited to be joining the AMSN podcast and having a chance to share his stories and experiences of being a bedside medical-surgical nurse.   Maritess M. Quinto, DNP, RN, NPD-BC, CMSRN is a clinical educator currently leading a team of educators who is passionately helping healthcare colleagues, especially newly graduate nurses. She was born and raised in the Philippines and immigrated to the United States with her family in Florida. Her family of seven (three girls and two boys with her husband who is also a Registered Nurse) loves to travel, especially to Disney World. She loves to share her experiences about parenting, travelling, and, of course, nursing!   Sydney Wall, RN, BSN, CMSRN has been a med surg nurse for 5 years. After graduating from the University of Rhode Island in 2019, Sydney commissioned into the Navy and began her nursing career working on a cardiac/telemetry unit in Bethesda, Maryland.  Currently she is stationed overseas, providing care for service members and their families.  During her free time, she enjoys martial arts and traveling. 

Are you ready to respond when an unexpected patient emergency arises? Whether you're feeling unprepared or just a little "rusty", you're not alone. Join Laura, Maritess, Neil, Sam, and Sydney as they share real-life stories from their toughest codes and offer valuable tips and insights to help you face the unexpected with confidence.   MEET OUR CO-HOSTS Samantha Bayne, MSN, RN, CMSRN, NPD-BC is a nursing professional development practitioner in the inland northwest specializing in medical-surgical nursing. The first four years of her practice were spent bedside on a busy ortho/neuro unit where she found her passion for newly graduated RNs, interdisciplinary collaboration, and professional governance. Sam is an unwavering advocate for medical-surgical nursing as a specialty and enjoys helping nurses prepare for specialty certification.    Laura Johnson, MSN, RN, NPD-BC, CMSRN has been a nurse since 2008 with a background in Med/Surg and Oncology.  She is a native Texan currently working in the Dallas area.  She has held many positions throughout her career from bedside nurse to management/leadership to education.  Laura obtained her MSN in nursing education in 2018 and is currently pursuing her DNP.  She has worked both as a bedside educator and a nursing professional development practitioner for both new and experienced staff.  She enjoys working with the nurse residency program as a specialist in palliative care/end of life nursing and mentorship.  She is currently an NPD practitioner for oncology and bone marrow transplant units.     Neil H. Johnson, RN, BSN, CMSRN, epitomizes a profound familial commitment to the nursing profession, marking the third generation in his family to tread this esteemed path. Following the footsteps of his father, grandfather, grandmother, aunt, and cousin, all distinguished nurses, Neil transitioned to nursing as a second career after a brief tenure as an elementary school teacher. Currently on the verge of completing his MSN in nurse education, he aspires to seamlessly integrate his dual passions. Apart from his unwavering dedication to nursing, Neil actively seeks serenity in nature alongside his canine companions. In his professional capacity, he fulfills the role of a med-surg nurse at the Moses Cone Health System in North Carolina.   Eric Torres, ADN, RN, CMSRN is a California native that has always dreamed of seeing the World, and when that didn't work out, he set his sights on nursing.  Eric is beyond excited to be joining the AMSN podcast and having a chance to share his stories and experiences of being a bedside medical-surgical nurse.   Maritess M. Quinto, DNP, RN, NPD-BC, CMSRN is a clinical educator currently leading a team of educators who is passionately helping healthcare colleagues, especially newly graduate nurses. She was born and raised in the Philippines and immigrated to the United States with her family in Florida. Her family of seven (three girls and two boys with her husband who is also a Registered Nurse) loves to travel, especially to Disney World. She loves to share her experiences about parenting, travelling, and, of course, nursing!   Sydney Wall, RN, BSN, CMSRN has been a med surg nurse for 5 years. After graduating from the University of Rhode Island in 2019, Sydney commissioned into the Navy and began her nursing career working on a cardiac/telemetry unit in Bethesda, Maryland.  Currently she is stationed overseas, providing care for service members and their families.  During her free time, she enjoys martial arts and traveling. 

Trenton honors Nicko McBrain's retirement on RNS.

Beyond the perceptions, are you ready to discover what the specialty of what med-surg nursing is really like? Join Laura, Maritess, Neil, Sam, Sydney, and special guest co-host AMSN President Marisa Streelman as they share their true stories, tips, and honest perspectives about med-surg nursing.  Also, get the inside scoop on the latest AMSN updates.    SPECIAL GUESTS AMSN President Dr. Marisa Streelman, DNP, RN, CMSRN, NE-BC began her career in Chicago as a staff nurse in oncology at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. She progressed into leadership positions, such as charge RN, and clinical coordinator, and then changed specialties as the unit manager of a medicine unit. Her life moved out West to Denver, where she managed a cardiology and progressive care unit at University of Colorado Hospital before returning back to Chicago where she served as medical center unit director at Rush University Medical Center. She currently is a staff specialist with the nursing leadership team at Michigan Medicine in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Dr. Streelman was a founding member for the Academy of Medical Surgical Nurses - Chicago Chapter, and she has been involved with the AMSN Volunteer Committees. She was elected to treasurer for the Board of Directors for AMSN in 2015 and continues to serve on the board. She recently earned her doctorate in nursing practice in transformational leadership systems from Rush University.    Alissa Brown, MSN, RN, CMSRN, NPD-BC is a clinical nurse educator from the University of Utah Health. She has been working in the health care industry for almost 12 years, and started her nursing career as a med-surg bedside nurse on an Ortho, Trauma, and Surgical Specialty Unit. It was through that experience in the med-surg unit where she discovered a passion for education, and pursued a master's degree. She is a lifelong learner, and loves to teach.  Born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah, she's not all work, and definitely enjoys play! She loves to travel, and tries to plan as many vacations each year as she can with family and friends. Alissa loves to read, listen to podcasts, and geek out to documentaries and crime shows on the weekends. She's a total fair weather fan when it comes to Utes Football, but will cheer in all the right places, or get mad when her husband tells her to during a game.    MEET OUR CO-HOSTS Samantha Bayne, MSN, RN, CMSRN, NPD-BC is a nursing professional development practitioner in the inland northwest specializing in medical-surgical nursing. The first four years of her practice were spent bedside on a busy ortho/neuro unit where she found her passion for newly graduated RNs, interdisciplinary collaboration, and professional governance. Sam is an unwavering advocate for medical-surgical nursing as a specialty and enjoys helping nurses prepare for specialty certification.    Laura Johnson, MSN, RN, NPD-BC, CMSRN has been a nurse since 2008 with a background in Med/Surg and Oncology.  She is a native Texan currently working in the Dallas area.  She has held many positions throughout her career from bedside nurse to management/leadership to education.  Laura obtained her MSN in nursing education in 2018 and is currently pursuing her DNP.  She has worked both as a bedside educator and a nursing professional development practitioner for both new and experienced staff.  She enjoys working with the nurse residency program as a specialist in palliative care/end of life nursing and mentorship.  She is currently an NPD practitioner for oncology and bone marrow transplant units.     Neil H. Johnson, RN, BSN, CMSRN, epitomizes a profound familial commitment to the nursing profession, marking the third generation in his family to tread this esteemed path. Following the footsteps of his father, grandfather, grandmother, aunt, and cousin, all distinguished nurses, Neil transitioned to nursing as a second career after a brief tenure as an elementary school teacher. Currently on the verge of completing his MSN in nurse education, he aspires to seamlessly integrate his dual passions. Apart from his unwavering dedication to nursing, Neil actively seeks serenity in nature alongside his canine companions. In his professional capacity, he fulfills the role of a med-surg nurse at the Moses Cone Health System in North Carolina.   Eric Torres, ADN, RN, CMSRN is a California native that has always dreamed of seeing the World, and when that didn't work out, he set his sights on nursing.  Eric is beyond excited to be joining the AMSN podcast and having a chance to share his stories and experiences of being a bedside medical-surgical nurse.   Maritess M. Quinto, DNP, RN, NPD-BC, CMSRN is a clinical educator currently leading a team of educators who is passionately helping healthcare colleagues, especially newly graduate nurses. She was born and raised in the Philippines and immigrated to the United States with her family in Florida. Her family of seven (three girls and two boys with her husband who is also a Registered Nurse) loves to travel, especially to Disney World. She loves to share her experiences about parenting, travelling, and, of course, nursing!   Sydney Wall, RN, BSN, CMSRN has been a med surg nurse for 5 years. After graduating from the University of Rhode Island in 2019, Sydney commissioned into the Navy and began her nursing career working on a cardiac/telemetry unit in Bethesda, Maryland.  Currently she is stationed overseas, providing care for service members and their families.  During her free time, she enjoys martial arts and traveling.   

CLICK HERE! Transcription: It's time to escape the health monopoly and end the government's stranglehold on wellness. I'm your host, Jamie Belz - - - and THIS is the Nutritional Therapy and Wellness Podcast. Today's episode is a rallying cry—a call to action to break the chains holding back holistic wellness practitioners and, most importantly, to give YOU the freedom to choose your bio-individual path to optimal wellness.  The Nutritional Therapy Association is on a mission to reverse the trend of preventable poor health. Right now, we're living in a nation plagued by chronic illness, obesity, and skyrocketing healthcare costs. Meanwhile, millions of people are searching for solutions—but instead of finding freedom, they're stuck navigating a failing system that prioritizes government-controlled insurance dollars, surgeries, and pharmaceuticals over personalized care pathways that promote sustainable change and truly transformative healthful outcomes. It's an absurd contradiction we face. We're mandated to pay sky-high insurance premiums and hefty deductibles to maintain a safety net for catastrophic health issues—which most of us - THANKFULLY - never need. - - - That money - ((thousands and thousands of dollars for my family each year)) - is just gone. It's a carnival game we're forced to play, and the insurance companies win every year. Yet, at the same time, we're paying out of pocket for the wellness modalities and practitioners we truly value. These professionals offer personalized, preventive care that keeps us healthy and helps us avoid those catastrophic situations altogether. It's a frustrating system that forces us to invest in reactive care while actively limiting our ability to choose proactive, holistic approaches that align with our values and promote lasting wellness. Here's the kicker: the very professionals who can help—highly trained, deeply passionate practitioners—have been targeted, silenced, and even prosecuted in some states simply for doing what they do best: helping people live healthier lives.  Today, we're breaking this down - - - We desperately need an overhaul of how we do things. What we've been doing - our current "health care" system - IS NOT WORKING. The health of our nation is absolutely unacceptable. - **42% of U.S. adults are obese.**  - **6 in 10 adults** have at least one chronic illness, and **4 in 10 have two or more.**  In the U.S. alone - $400 BILLION dollars are spent on prescriptions each year - - - and we're getting sicker and sicker. We spend $4.1 trillion on healthcare in the U.S. each year - if that $4.1 was making us the healthiest humans have ever been - I'd be all for it!! - - - but 90% of that 4.1 trillion dollars is going toward managing chronic diseases. Here's the hard truth: most of these conditions are preventable. They don't need another prescription—they need a personalized, holistic approach that addresses the root causes of dysfunction. People are desperate for solutions tailored to their unique needs—their bio-individual path to wellness—but they're stuck in a system that's failing them. And that's where Nutritional Therapy Practitioners and holistic practitioners step in to fill the gap.  As Nutritional Therapy Practitioners (NTPs), we undergo rigorous, science-based training to support individuals on their wellness journey. We specialize in:  Anatomy, physiology, and the body's interconnected systems. Root cause analysis—not just managing symptoms but understanding and addressing the foundational imbalances that cause dysfunction. Empowering people with bio-individual strategies, recognizing that no two bodies are the same. Providing education in nutrition truth. We're not owned by big food or big pharma - we'll tell you the truth about that ingredients lists and help enlighten you about why certain foods - like most of the 10,000 industrially produced chemicals the FDA has approved for human consumption in the United States - should be avoided. We're a threat. What we teach is real, and it can't be patented for profit. We discovered this on our own after being exhausted - or sometimes even injured by - the BIGs - big food, big ag, big pharma - the BIG Money Machine. Most of us found this path because of our own life-changing experiences. Most holistic wellness providers - many NTPs - discovered this work after a personal health breakthrough or helping their child recover from a debilitating condition. We've lived it. We've felt the frustration of a system that didn't have answers - we were told, "you can't, you won't, you'll never," - "when in doubt, cut it out" - "where do you want me to send this prescription?" - - - but we pushed back on the prognosis - and we realized that there is another way! You have to be willing to take off the blinders and look. There are incredible licensed medical professionals who have done exactly that - - - they've come over to this side and have seen, felt, and heard what cannot be unseen, unfelt, or unheard - and we're all passionate about sharing what we've learned. Let's be clear: this isn't about demonizing any one group - and it's not about competition. This is about collaboration and abundance.  The health crisis is far too big for any one group of professionals to handle alone. We need registered dietitians, doctors, NTPs, health coaches, and more—all working together to create a system where everyone has access to the care they need.  When there are no more sick people left to help, THEN we can talk about competition. Until that day comes, we need boots on the ground. We need practitioners working in communities, meeting people where they are, and providing diverse options for care.  We're all allies in this fight. And the more offerings we have, the more likely each person will find their bio-individual path to wellness.  Here's the reality - the big problem - and why I need YOUR help. In some states, Nutritional Therapy Practitioners (NTPs) and other holistic practitioners - including RNs, functional medicine doctors, Chiros, NPs, MDs, DOs, and other licensed professionals, as well as alternative practice practitioners - are facing absurd restrictions and fear-driven enforcement. These are highly trained professionals offering alternative and innovative approaches to health, yet anyone challenging the status quo or “the machine” is met with unnecessary roadblocks, intimidation, and legal threats - fear of financial repercussions - the swipe of a pen can pull someone's license - their entire career gone if they don't get in line and play the conformity game. It's a system that stifles solutions and prevents people from accessing the personalized care they need and deserve. We have an NTP in Minnesota who was working alongside a naturopathic doctor, providing nutrition education to a mere five or six clients. She was given a cease and desist from the Minnesota Board of Dietetics because someone called in an anonymous phone call complaint, which was apparently enough to launch a taxpayer-funded investigation - - - and I am telling you - they had nothing - she did NOTHING wrong. Nothing even close to wrong - - - but because of an anonymous phone call and the current laws - she was immediately shut down and forced to spend her precious time and her family's money to fight back - - - ultimately conceding. Think about how absurd that is. We're trained, we're educated, and we're passionate—but the law ties our hands while the public suffers.  This isn't just frustrating—it's wrong. It limits your choices, perpetuates the health crisis, and prevents qualified practitioners from helping people who desperately need it.      The MAHA movement has ruffled some feathers - but I don't understand that - because EVERY. SINGLE. PERSON. should want to see Americans - all people - everywhere - get healthy again.  This is a Non-Partisan Issue. This fight for health freedom isn't about a specific politician —it's about people, plain and simple. And let's be clear: this isn't about saying that licensed professionals or hospitals are bad. Dietitians, doctors, and hospitals are absolutely essential, and many people rely on them for life-saving care. But this is about freedom—the freedom for every individual to choose the approach and the professional that resonates with their values, aligns with their goals, and helps them meet them. Whether you prioritize personal liberty, innovative healthcare solutions, or reducing the overwhelming strain on our medical system, this issue affects us all. Chronic illness doesn't discriminate by political affiliation, and neither should the solutions. This is bigger than party lines; it's about breaking down barriers and creating a system where everyone can access the tools, resources, and guidance they need to achieve optimal wellness. By lifting these restrictions, we're not undermining traditional healthcare - we're expanding the choices available to empower people to take control of their own health. Every ethical provider should be able to get behind that. This is about escaping the health monopoly that drove us to the health crisis we're in. This is about ending the government's stranglehold and unlocking bio-individual pathways to wellness. Here's where YOU come in. This isn't just about practitioners - it's about YOU and your right to access care that works for your bio-individual needs.  I'm asking you to take action. Click THIS LINK and sign the petition to lift the legal restraints on holistic and functional health practitioners. By signing this petition - you're supporting empowered health - a system that champions true preventative care, like nourishing the body with nutrient-dense, whole foods! - and focuses on addressing root causes rather than masking symptoms with bandaid solutions that trap patients in a cycle of lifelong dependency and side-effect management - - - another pill - another surgery - - - - spoiler alert - that vicious cycle never stops. No one on a list of prescriptions is ever as happy as those in the pharmaceutical commercials portray. By signing this petition - you're supporting a more healthful future for generations to come - one where practitioners can work without fear, everyone has access to the kind of health care they desire and deserve, and they're aware of their options so they can actually find what works for them! Signing this petition means you support a future of true autonomy - where our hard-earned money isn't being held in the purse of the insurance companies, and like children, we have to beg them for our fractional allowances, which the government ultimately dictates. You're signing to support the freedom of choice - the right to seek care that aligns with your unique, bio-individual needs and preferences - to spend your wellness money where you want to spend it. With all the training I've received in anatomy, physiology, and the science of how the foods we eat literally are the building blocks of our bodies—the intricate interplay of nutrients to fuel every function- and the miraculous healing capabilities of a nutrient-sufficient body—I've dedicated over a decade to mastering this knowledge. And yet, despite all of that, I'm not legally allowed in some states to create a simple meal plan for your family for next week. Let that sink in.     Then sign that petition, yeah? After you sign, don't stop there. Share the petition with your family, friends, and community. Send this podcast to everyone you know. Post it on social media. Talk about it. We need you to help build momentum. Momentum is the silent force of greatness - - - every signature is a step closer to creating extraordinary outcomes.  Click Here or copy/paste the link below to sign the petition - right now - it takes a few seconds. Don't say you'll do it later - let's go!! Thank you for gifting your precious time to hear what I had to say and for being part of this movement. The time for change is now. Together, we can push back against conformity - change the way we think - and, in doing so - change the world. Together, we are reversing the trend of preventable poor health. ___ https://www.change.org/p/freedom-to-practice-supporting-the-right-to-holistic-care?recruiter=1358342049&recruited_by_id=e22b9240-a849-11ef-b3a9-450f8dfb38a4&utm_source=share_petition&utm_campaign=petition_dashboard&utm_medium=copylink ___   www.nutritionaltherapy.com

Make the Most of Sunday Mornings: Two Simple Changes What is Salvation? RNS on X: "As organized religion declines, some churches have turned their empty lawns into dog parks — transforming underused space into community assets. https://t.co/4QqDEvTA4A" / X I am total flop and failure | The most powerful 2 minutes that can change your life #BillyGrahamSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

RNS updates, docuseries reveal, metal drummers.

AMSN Members earn 0.5 CE Hours. The co-hosts welcome special guest Sandy Page to help us navigate the care of oncology patients when they transition between ambulatory and inpatient care.  AMSN Members can claim 0.5 CE hours by following these easy steps: Log into the AMSN Online Library at https://library.amsn.org/  Complete the evaluation for the podcast episode and submit to earn your certificate.   SPECIAL GUEST     Sandy Page MSN, RN, OCN is an experienced and compassionate registered nurse with over 12 years of experience in patient care and nursing leadership. She is skilled in leading and motivating healthcare teams to practice at the top of their license and ensure safe, quality, patient care with active involvement in committees focused on improving customer service, patient care quality, and operational processes. Sandy is dedicated to serving oncology patients and participating in national organizations that support the health, legal, and family support of cancer patients. Currently, she is working on an organizational research project using AI in symptom management of oncology patients. Sandy has three wonderful children and a magnificent grandson who reminds her how important the little things in life are. She finds joy in being a servant, giving back to my community, and educating.   MEET OUR CO-HOSTS Samantha Bayne, MSN, RN, CMSRN, NPD-BC is a nursing professional development practitioner in the inland northwest specializing in medical-surgical nursing. The first four years of her practice were spent bedside on a busy ortho/neuro unit where she found her passion for newly graduated RNs, interdisciplinary collaboration, and professional governance. Sam is an unwavering advocate for medical-surgical nursing as a specialty and enjoys helping nurses prepare for specialty certification.    Laura Johnson, MSN, RN, NPD-BC, CMSRN has been a nurse since 2008 with a background in Med/Surg and Oncology.  She is a native Texan currently working in the Dallas area.  She has held many positions throughout her career from bedside nurse to management/leadership to education.  Laura obtained her MSN in nursing education in 2018 and is currently pursuing her DNP.  She has worked both as a bedside educator and a nursing professional development practitioner for both new and experienced staff.  She enjoys working with the nurse residency program as a specialist in palliative care/end of life nursing and mentorship.  She is currently an NPD practitioner for oncology and bone marrow transplant units.     Neil H. Johnson, RN, BSN, CMSRN, epitomizes a profound familial commitment to the nursing profession, marking the third generation in his family to tread this esteemed path. Following the footsteps of his father, grandfather, grandmother, aunt, and cousin, all distinguished nurses, Neil transitioned to nursing as a second career after a brief tenure as an elementary school teacher. Currently on the verge of completing his MSN in nurse education, he aspires to seamlessly integrate his dual passions. Apart from his unwavering dedication to nursing, Neil actively seeks serenity in nature alongside his canine companions. In his professional capacity, he fulfills the role of a med-surg nurse at the Moses Cone Health System in North Carolina.   Eric Torres, ADN, RN, CMSRN is a California native that has always dreamed of seeing the World, and when that didn't work out, he set his sights on nursing.  Eric is beyond excited to be joining the AMSN podcast and having a chance to share his stories and experiences of being a bedside medical-surgical nurse.   Maritess M. Quinto, DNP, RN, NPD-BC, CMSRN is a clinical educator currently leading a team of educators who is passionately helping healthcare colleagues, especially newly graduate nurses. She was born and raised in the Philippines and immigrated to the United States with her family in Florida. Her family of seven (three girls and two boys with her husband who is also a Registered Nurse) loves to travel, especially to Disney World. She loves to share her experiences about parenting, travelling, and, of course, nursing!   Sydney Wall, RN, BSN, CMSRN has been a med surg nurse for 5 years. After graduating from the University of Rhode Island in 2019, Sydney commissioned into the Navy and began her nursing career working on a cardiac/telemetry unit in Bethesda, Maryland.  Currently she is stationed overseas, providing care for service members and their families.  During her free time, she enjoys martial arts and traveling. 

Linda Brown has been a med-surg nurse for 43 years and counting. If you're looking for a little med-surg nursing inspiration we encourage you to listen, bookmark and share this episode with your unit.  Join Laura, Maritess, Sam, and Sydney for a conversation with Linda as she shares her stories, wisdom, and secrets to how she has found joy and fulfillment, even on the tough days, in med-surg nursing for over four decades.      SPECIAL GUEST   Linda S. Brown BSN, RN-BC Linda S. Brown is a Medical-Surgical Board Certified registered nurse with over four decades of nurse experience in the hospital setting. She received four Daisy Awards for extraordinary nursing and patient-centered care and the March of Dimes Medical-Surgical Nurse of the Year. She was recently recognized as one of the AJC Celebrating Nurses Honorees. Her passion for caring and making a difference has always been her hallmark in providing an exceptional nursing care experience. Over the years, Linda has recognized that balancing her nursing career with self-care is essential for her longevity in nursing.  CLICK HERE to watch a special video about Linda.   MEET OUR CO-HOSTS   Samantha Bayne, MSN, RN, CMSRN, NPD-BC is a nursing professional development practitioner in the inland northwest specializing in medical-surgical nursing. The first four years of her practice were spent bedside on a busy ortho/neuro unit where she found her passion for newly graduated RNs, interdisciplinary collaboration, and professional governance. Sam is an unwavering advocate for medical-surgical nursing as a specialty and enjoys helping nurses prepare for specialty certification.    Laura Johnson, MSN, RN, NPD-BC, CMSRN has been a nurse since 2008 with a background in Med/Surg and Oncology.  She is a native Texan currently working in the Dallas area.  She has held many positions throughout her career from bedside nurse to management/leadership to education.  Laura obtained her MSN in nursing education in 2018 and is currently pursuing her DNP.  She has worked both as a bedside educator and a nursing professional development practitioner for both new and experienced staff.  She enjoys working with the nurse residency program as a specialist in palliative care/end of life nursing and mentorship.  She is currently an NPD practitioner for oncology and bone marrow transplant units.     Neil H. Johnson, RN, BSN, CMSRN, epitomizes a profound familial commitment to the nursing profession, marking the third generation in his family to tread this esteemed path. Following the footsteps of his father, grandfather, grandmother, aunt, and cousin, all distinguished nurses, Neil transitioned to nursing as a second career after a brief tenure as an elementary school teacher. Currently on the verge of completing his MSN in nurse education, he aspires to seamlessly integrate his dual passions. Apart from his unwavering dedication to nursing, Neil actively seeks serenity in nature alongside his canine companions. In his professional capacity, he fulfills the role of a med-surg nurse at the Moses Cone Health System in North Carolina.   Eric Torres, ADN, RN, CMSRN is a California native that has always dreamed of seeing the World, and when that didn't work out, he set his sights on nursing.  Eric is beyond excited to be joining the AMSN podcast and having a chance to share his stories and experiences of being a bedside medical-surgical nurse.   Maritess M. Quinto, DNP, RN, NPD-BC, CMSRN is a clinical educator currently leading a team of educators who is passionately helping healthcare colleagues, especially newly graduate nurses. She was born and raised in the Philippines and immigrated to the United States with her family in Florida. Her family of seven (three girls and two boys with her husband who is also a Registered Nurse) loves to travel, especially to Disney World. She loves to share her experiences about parenting, travelling, and, of course, nursing!   Sydney Wall, RN, BSN, CMSRN has been a med surg nurse for 5 years. After graduating from the University of Rhode Island in 2019, Sydney commissioned into the Navy and began her nursing career working on a cardiac/telemetry unit in Bethesda, Maryland.  Currently she is stationed overseas, providing care for service members and their families.  During her free time, she enjoys martial arts and traveling.   

121  Understanding Hospice & Palliative Care: An Insightful Discussion with Peter Abraham BSN, RN   In this episode of Hospice Explained, host Marie Betcher BSN, RN welcomes back Nurse Peter Abraham, who has transitioned from a career in technology to nursing and is now a prolific author with 32 books available on Amazon. Peter and Marie discuss the differences between hospice and palliative care, including when each is appropriate and the rights of patients and families in hospice care. Peter shares insights from his books, including guidance on end-of-life nutrition and techniques for connecting with terminally ill loved ones. The discussion also highlights common challenges families face and practical advice on navigating these situations to ensure compassionate and informed care. 00:00 Introduction to Hospice Explained 00:37 Meet Nurse Peter Abraham 02:03 Understanding Palliative vs. Hospice Care 07:45 Patient Rights in Hospice Care 15:24 End-of-Life Nutrition and Caregiving 20:45 Validation Therapy and Connecting with Loved Ones 23:22 Peter Abraham's Writing Journey 30:31 Conclusion and Final Thoughts   https://amzn.to/3YFBYQ0 -- All books     Series: Empowering Excellence in Hospice: A Nurse's Toolkit for Best Practices at https://amzn.to/3WtSRKD (10 books) Compliance-based, Eligibility Driven Hospice Documentation: Tips for Hospice Nurses at https://amzn.to/4fb9L9k Whispers of Time: Understanding the End-of-Life Timeline at https://amzn.to/3SnfeA4 Mastering Hospice Eligibility: An Essential Guide for RNs and Clinical Managers at https://amzn.to/47tA8UE Mastering Hospice Recertifications: A Comprehensive Guide for Nurses at https://amzn.to/3z1ls2i Conversations at the End: Guiding Families Through Final Days at https://amzn.to/3ziXUpy Mastering the Hospice Item Set: A Comprehensive Guide for Nurses and Managers at https://amzn.to/3XloiHs Care Plans for Hospice Patients: A Comprehensive Guide at https://amzn.to/3XxLJNW Mindful Minutes: Time Management Secrets for Hospice Nursing Excellence at https://amzn.to/4eGfLFY Medication Reconciliation in Hospice Care: Maximizing Quality of Life at https://amzn.to/3Y6MyyF HOPE in Practice: Implementing Patient-Centered Outcomes in Hospice Care at https://amzn.to/3YfhGMB Series: Compassionate Caregiving at https://amzn.to/3yuQgIm (10 books) Daily Hospice Care Planner: Organize, Communicate, and Provide Consistent Care at https://amzn.to/4dzDMy8 Dignity in Dying: A Thoughtful Approach to Voluntary Stopping Eating and Drinking at https://amzn.to/3AA5E6P Hospice Medication Handbook: A Caregiver's Guide to Comfort Medications at https://amzn.to/3Aq5Bus Palliative Sedation: A Compassionate Approach at https://amzn.to/4dBJm3a Nourishing Hope: A Caregiver's Guide to End-of-Life Nutrition at https://amzn.to/3TbqUGE Validation and Compassion: A Guide to Connecting with Terminally Ill Loved Ones at https://amzn.to/4dT0QIz Palliative Care vs Hospice Care: Making Informed Decisions at https://amzn.to/3Ba4srg Understanding Your Rights in Hospice Care: A Guide for Patients and Families at https://amzn.to/4eIZ4K4 When It's Time for Hospice: A Compassionate Guide for Families and Caregivers at https://amzn.to/4dHdV6O The Caregiver's Lifeline: Self-Care in End-of-Life Care at https://amzn.to/3Nsl54m Series: Holistic Nurse: Skills for Excellence at https://amzn.to/3ZkFuiK (1 book published; 1 in progress) Compassionate Care in Conflict: A Nurse's Guide to Managing Combative Patients (currently in progress) Dementia Staging Mastery: A Nurse's Guide to Dementia Assessment at https://amzn.to/4dSiUCz Series: Dementia Care Essentials at https://amzn.to/4g3ofbY (11 books) Dementia Caregiver Essentials: Comprehensive Guide for Dementia Care at https://amzn.to/4dQBDi2 (this is a combination of the ten books below) Anger Management in Dementia: A Dementia Care Essentials Guide at https://amzn.to/3MpBBl6 CPAP and Oxygen for Dementia: A Dementia Care Essentials Guide at https://amzn.to/4dN3xer Diabetes Care for Dementia: A Dementia Care Essentials Guide at https://amzn.to/3Me0CQk Hallucination Management for Dementia: A Dementia Care Essentials Guide at https://amzn.to/3AoxS4r Infection Awareness in Dementia Care: A Dementia Care Essentials Guide at https://amzn.to/4dA7raW Medication Compliance for Dementia: A Dementia Care Essentials Guide at https://amzn.to/3YOost9 Music Therapy for Dementia: A Dementia Care Essentials Guide at https://amzn.to/3TmkNzx Nutrition for Dementia: A Dementia Care Essentials Guide at https://amzn.to/3yYmCeJ Placement for Dementia: A Dementia Care Essentials Guide at https://amzn.to/3MdWxvl Sundowning Management for Dementia: A Dementia Care Essentials Guide at https://amzn.to/3WQ17ot   Finding a Hospice Agency 1. You can use Medicare.gov to help find a hospice agency, 2. choose Find provider 3. Choose Hospice 4. then add your zip code This should be a list of Hospice Agencies local to you or your loved one.  Hospice Explained Affiliates & Contact Information Buying from these Affilite links will help support this Podcast.   In addition you can donate to help support Hospice Explained at the Buy me a Coffee link  https://www.buymeacoffee.com/Hospice Kacie Gikonyo's Death Doula School https://hospiceexplained--deathdoulaschool.thrivecart.com/death-doula-school/ Affilitate for the Caregiving Years Training Academy:  https://www.careyearsacademy.com/ref/1096/  Affiliate for DNA is Love listeners also get a 5% discount!! https://dnaislove.com/?coupon=hospiceexplained5  The Death Deck and the E*O*L deck:  https://thedeathdeck.goaffpro.com/  Marie's Contact Marie@HospiceExplained.com www.HospiceExplained.com  

Today, Jonathan and Sy speak with author and housing advocate Kevin Nye about the Church and homelessness. We get into:-        The ineffective housing policies Christians often promote-        The bad theology behind those policies-        A run-in Kevin had with institutional resistance to his view that governments shouldn't criminalize homelessness-        How churches can get things right in ministries to unhoused people-        Plus, hear our thoughts on the interview,-        A discussion of how we are resisting the negative ways the election is trying to shape us mentally and spiritually-        And our thoughts on all the discourse around Ta-Nehisi Coates' controversial new bookMentioned in the episode:-        Kevin's article on Christians mistakenly rejecting housing-first policies-        Josiah Haken's book, Neighbors with No Doors-        Kevin's article on Christianity Today's coverage of homelessness-        His article in RNS about a Supreme Court case on unhoused people's constitutional rights-        His book, Grace Can Lead Us Home: A Christian Call to End Homelessness-        His Substack, Who Is My Neighbor?-        Ta-Nehisi Coates' new book, The Message-        Our newsletter with links to a couple of Coates' interviewsCredits-            Follow KTF Press on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. Subscribe to get our bonus episodes and other benefits at KTFPress.com.-        Follow host Jonathan Walton on Facebook Instagram, and Threads.-        Follow host Sy Hoekstra on Mastodon.-        Our theme song is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra – listen to the whole song on Spotify.-        Our podcast art is by Robyn Burgess – follow her and see her other work on Instagram.-        Editing by Multitude Productions-        Transcripts by Joyce Ambale and Sy Hoekstra.-        Production by Sy Hoekstra and our incredible subscribersTranscript[An acoustic guitar softly plays six notes in a major scale, the first three ascending and the last three descending, with a keyboard pad playing the tonic in the background. Both fade out as Jonathan Walton says “This is a KTF Press podcast.”]Kevin Nye: If you're an average middle class American Christian and you want to become wealthy, have a private jet, a mansion, here's your spiritual steps. Get closer to Jesus, you'll be rewarded with physical wealth. Well, if that's true, the opposite of that would be true, which is that if you are in deep dire poverty, it must mean that you're that much farther from Jesus.[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “I need to know there is justice/ That it will roll in abundance/ And that you're building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.]Intro and HousekeepingJonathan Walton: Welcome to Shake the Dust, seeking Jesus, confronting injustice. I'm Jonathan Walton.Sy Hoekstra: And I am Sy Hoekstra, today is gonna be a great one for you. We have a conversation that we're gonna have before we get into our interview, kind of about the election. A little bit of a catch up, since this is actually going to be our last show before the presidential election, which now that I say it into a microphone, is a little bit scary [laughter]. We're gonna be having a conversation today with author, theologian and housing activist Kevin Nye. I've been looking forward to this one for a long time. Basically, the church is extremely involved in housing policy in America, and we are often going about it the wrong way, and that's often because of a lot of bad theology and some falsehoods that we believe about unhoused people, and so Kevin will help us get deep into that.He's a great resource and a great person to talk about it with, as well as some of the more systemic issues of why we have such an entrenched way of thinking about unhoused people. You'll be able to hear Jonathan and my thoughts about the interview afterwards, and we will get into our segment Which Tab Is Still Open, where we go a little bit deeper into one of the recommendations from our newsletter. This week we're talking all about Ta-Nehisi Coates and his new book, The Message and some of the discussions that have been happening around it. Also, one quick note. My voice might sound a little groggy, because about 12 hours ago, I was at game one of the American League Championship Series [laughter] and I screamed my face off.Is that a wise thing for a podcaster to do before recording? Maybe not, but I trust that you all will forgive me [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Yes, and for the uninitiated, we're talking about baseball [laughs].Sy Hoekstra: Yes, that's a good point. American League Championship Series, that's a baseball series [laughter].Jonathan Walton: But before we get into all that, please friends, remember to go to KTFPress.com and become a paid subscriber to support this show and everything we do here at KTF Press. We've been creating media that centers personal and informed discussions on faith, politics and culture, and that helps you seek Jesus and confront injustice. You've been listening for a while or the first time, you need to know we're resisting the idols of the American church by elevating marginalized voices and taking the entirety of Jesus' gospel more seriously than those who narrow it to sin and salvation. The two of us have [laughs] a lot of experience doing this, have been practicing this in community for a while, and as Maya Angelou would say, we're always practicing Christianity.So if you wanna do that, you could do that with us. We'd love for you to become a paid subscriber. You get all the bonus episodes of this show, access to our monthly subscriber Zoom chats, and you can comment on posts and more. So again, go to KTFPress.com to join us and become a paid subscriber.Sy Hoekstra: A couple of quick announcements before we get into everything. In two weeks there will not be an episode. That's just a couple days after the election. We're gonna let things settle a little bit.Jonathan Walton: Hopefully so.Sy Hoekstra: I mean, hopefully settle a little bit before [laughter] we have our sort of clean, edited podcast discussion about the election. However, we are going to do something a little bit different the day after the election. So that'll be Wednesday, November 6th at 1 pm. We are going to be having a Substack live conversation. So that means basically, if you have the Substack app, you will be able to watch us just have a live conversation about the election, what happened the night before, what we're thinking, how we can move forward faithfully now that the voting is done, and all of the potential chaos that comes after that. If you don't have the app, you can download it on the App Store or the Google Play Store. Anybody who's on our email list will get an email notification or a push notification from the app when we start.So if you're not on our email list, go to KTFPress.com and sign up. Even just the free email list, you'll get that notification. The email will have a link to download the app if you don't have it. So Substack live Wednesday, November 6th, at 1 pm to talk about the election. A little bit more raw, unfiltered, that sort of thing [laughter]. And then we'll have a finale episode, we'll announce the date later once we have that set. You'll be able to comment in the chat of the Substack live, so you can put your comments and your questions there. So come prepared to dialog a little bit. We're excited to try this new feature that Substack has rolled out. Also our next Zoom chat for subscribers will be this upcoming Tuesday, October 29th at 1 pm.So if you want to join in on that, please become a paid subscriber. If you already are a paid subscriber, then the link to register for that is in your email already. Go back to your emails from us and check for it, submit your questions. We have had some really great conversations at the four or five of these that we've done so far, and we look forward to another one this Tuesday.How Has the Election Been Shaping Us? And How Are We Resisting?Sy Hoekstra: Alright Jonathan, before the interview, we're gonna start off with an election question that will kind of let us give some of our final thoughts going into actual voting day. This is a question that you came up with, and I like it a lot, actually. Jonathan, how has this election been trying to shape you and how have you been resisting it?Jonathan Walton: Yeah. I think just hanging out in this space of formation, like we're impacted by things around us, and it's literally making us into new people or different kinds of people. I have an injury in my hip, and it's like, I ran marathons and did lots of sports and work, and so my hip is shaped differently because of the pressure that I put on it.Our Political Culture Tries to Instill Fear, but Jesus Doesn'tJonathan Walton: And so I think that culture is trying to shape me into an anxious, fearful person, because violent crime can be down in the United States, but my fears about my daughter getting older and going to the train, I'm terrified.Sy Hoekstra: Really?Jonathan Walton: Oh yeah. It's terrible. It's terrible.Sy Hoekstra: Interesting.Jonathan Walton: People are like, “Oh yeah, my kid walked to the train,” I'm like, clutch my pearls.Sy Hoekstra: [laughs] Oh, you're one of those New York City parents.Jonathan Walton: Yeah. And some of its familiarity, I never did that. That just wasn't my reality. I think it's more that than all of the fears that people have. It's just unfamiliar to me. And so I think that the Democrats would love for me to fear the apocalypse, and the Republicans would love for me to fear the apocalypse [laughter].Sy Hoekstra: Different apocalypses.Jonathan Walton: Yeah, different apocalyptic visions for the state of this country and the world. And that is a very effective fundraising tactic. It's a very effective way to get people out to vote, because having people be motivated by fear rather than love is better for the prince of the power of the air. It's better for the wills within us that are not submitted to God and trusting him for our well being and the well being of those around us, and leaning into that. And so I think that I want to reject the gospel of self reliance. I want to reject the gospel that I have to control everything and hold it all close and accumulate more and protect that which I accumulate, like all that I got. I just have to say no to that, because I don't wanna be afraid all the time and then make all the people around me more afraid. I don't think Jesus made people afraid.He made demons afraid, but off the top of my head, I cannot… like Judas wasn't even afraid of Jesus. The fear and reverence of the Lord and all of those kinds of things where the angels and the Father say, “Don't be afraid,” Jesus speaking to people did not instill fear in them. I don't think I need to be motivated or driven or attracted or tempted towards fear about anything.Sy Hoekstra: I mean, there are people who seemed kind of afraid of him, but they were all powerful and largely oppressive people.Jonathan Walton: [laughs] That's true.Sy Hoekstra: Herod seemed pretty afraid of Jesus [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Herod was terrified. Yeah, that's true. I don't think that Jesus' goal in conversation dialog was for someone to be afraid.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, that's correct.Jonathan Walton: And then for them to be compelled to follow him because they were scared. Like that… it is literally the opposite of a fire and brimstone call to faith. It's not congruent with the Christ of scripture.Resisting Cynicism by Choosing Where to Place Our HopeJonathan Walton: So what about you? How do you think our current political [laughs] realities, would love for you to be in the world?Sy Hoekstra: It feels like they would love for me to be a cynic. I don't know, someone who's just a real downer. Because I would say, if you'd asked this eight years ago, I would have said they would want me to be depressed. Because at that time, Trump just felt so dark and foreboding in a way that was deeply sad to me. Not exactly scary, but just really, really depressing. I think now I'm actually thinking more about the Democrats when I say that, because as we are recording, the Biden administration has said some very tentative things about a maybe possible weapons embargo if some undefined humanitarian crisis in Gaza is not vetted in the next month. So we'll see how that works out over the next week and a half until this publishes.But basically, up until now, it's kind of been you've got to toe the party line. You got to be effectively totally pro Israel to be in line with the Biden administration and also with the Harris campaign. That could lose them Michigan maybe or whatever, but ultimately coming out for a ceasefire or something else they must have done the calculus is gonna lose them more.Jonathan Walton: Right.Sy Hoekstra: The reason that that makes me cynical is just so much in politics, it's just about that. It's just about, are you gonna get elected or not? I think Jonathan, and I've been convinced for a long time, it is pretty impossible to be a politician and follow Jesus, because if you follow Jesus you're not gonna be a politician anymore [laughter]. Because the whole point is you got to get reelected, and you got to do whatever it takes to do that. You've got to change your mind on issues, you've got to spend money, you've got to be a hypocrite. Doesn't matter, you've just got to get reelected. There are probably certain scenarios, like certain places that you could be elected and have integrity for smaller offices than the President [laughs], that would lead me to some amount of cynicism about the whole system and despair if my faith was in the system. If I was looking to who the next president is to determine my hope for the world.And it's kind of a cheesy Christian thing maybe to say, but my hope is in Jesus. But I think it's actually, even honestly, if your hope was not in Jesus, if it was just in something other than what's happening in our current politics, that's a very powerful thing. You know what I mean? It is a very powerful thing to genuinely have your emotional steadiness in something other than whatever's happening in politics. And for me, that's Jesus. But you know, so that's where I'm trying to sit, and that's why I'm trying to resist the way that the election is trying to make me a cynic.Can Christians Be Politicians Faithfully?Sy Hoekstra: You keep taking breaths like you have something that you wanna say immediately [laughs] [unclear 00:11:14].Jonathan Walton: I'm thinking, if I heard you right you were like, you believe it may be impossible to follow Jesus and be a politician?Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: And I was thinking about that because I think it's like, we would have to define follower of Jesus and define politician.Sy Hoekstra: Sure.Jonathan Walton: But it's interesting to me that it is impossible to be a servant of empire and follow Jesus. Like it's possible, because Jesus calls them out to be a non-Christian religious person. It is possible for Cornelius to be in the military and be faithful to God.Sy Hoekstra: I see what you're saying.Jonathan Walton: Yeah, but what you're getting at is the incoherence of that reality that we try to assert. So for example, I think it's possible to be a Christian politician. It is impossible to make politics Christian.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. And if you want to be a Christian politician, you're gonna have to recognize that your job is going to be constantly, ceaselessly trying to pull you away from Jesus [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Yeah. It is impossible to follow Jesus and be a politician, if a politician is what you are trying to be.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. I got you.Jonathan Walton: It is possible to follow Jesus and hold elected office, you know what I mean? But there are some people whose complete identity, which is what you're talking about, “I'm only here to get reelected. I wanna accumulate power, I wanna do that,” like it is impossible to be a politician.Sy Hoekstra: I think it's a little bit harder than that though, because it's not just about your identity if you're a politician, your job is to get reelected. That's what everyone is looking for you to do. That's what your party's looking for you to do, all people who work for you, obviously, that's what they're looking for you to do [laughter].Jonathan Walton: Right.Sy Hoekstra: Literally, if you don't get reelected, you can't do the job anymore. So it's like it is an integral part of the job description itself. It's not even just an issue of where your identity lies. You know what I mean?Jonathan Walton: That's true. Listen, if you're listening to this, I would love to hear what you think.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: Love to hear what you think. Unfortunately, the philosophical argument, the dominoes could start to fall around lots of professions. It's interesting. We're probably gonna talk about this as a subscriber chat now. So there we go [laughter].Sy Hoekstra: There we go.Jonathan Walton: Cool.Sy Hoekstra: Cool. Thanks for that little brief discussion as we go into the voting booths, which is in like a week and a half from when you're listening to this, if it's the day it comes out. And as we continue to behave politically after the voting happens, which I hope everyone listening to this show is doing [laughs], let's try and be shrewd. Innocent and shrewd, right?Jonathan Walton: Yes.Sy Hoekstra: That's what Jesus wants us to be.Jonathan Walton: [laughs].Sy Hoekstra: And let's continue to think hard about that. I appreciate that discussion. Let's try to find a way to continue it. We are gonna get into our interview now before we come back and talk about our thoughts on the interview and some stuff about Ta-Nehisi Coates [laughter] in Which Tab Is Still Open.Interview with Kevin NyeOur guest today, as I said, is Kevin Nye. He is a writer and advocate working to end homelessness through engaging best practices. He has written on the intersections of homelessness and faith for Religion News Service, Sojourners, Red Letter Christians and more. He has presented at national conferences on the topic of homelessness. His first book released in August of 2022 and it was called Grace Can Lead Us Home: A Christian Call to End Homelessness. Kevin currently lives with his wife and son in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he works as the housing director for an organization addressing youth homelessness.Jonathan Walton: Let's get into our interview.[The intro piano music from “Citizens” by Jon Guerra plays briefly and then fades out.]Sy Hoekstra: Kevin Nye, thank you so much for joining us on Shake the Dust today.Kevin Nye: Absolutely. It's a pleasure to be here.The Effective ‘Housing-First' Policies Evangelicals Often RejectSy Hoekstra: You and I met about a year ago at the Evolving Faith conference, just after you had published what I thought was a really great article for Sojourners about kind of the difference between treatment-first housing policy and housing-first housing policy, which can, they can sound a bit wonky to people. But you talked about how it's a really important distinction, and how a lot of times Christians are making the wrong choice in choosing the treatment-first policy and favoring those types of policies. And so because I think this distinction will actually help us get at a lot of underlying kind of spiritual and theological issues when it comes to housing policy, can you tell us what these two different approaches are and why you think a lot of conservative Christians are picking the wrong one?Kevin Nye: Absolutely. So the treatment-first methodology, it's kind of the one that we've been using for almost 100 years in response to homelessness, but it also sort of infects a lot of our thinking about many different things. And it essentially says that if you are in poverty, if you are in homelessness, that you have to sort of prove your worthiness of getting out of that. So if you are experiencing homelessness, we know that ultimately the destination that you're hoping for is to be in housing of some kind, an apartment, a house, what have you. But that in order to get there under the treatment-first model, it suggests that you have to sort of check a bunch of boxes. And those boxes have looked different, according to the program, and according to the time that it's been implemented, but they usually include some level of sobriety.So if drugs or alcohol are part of your life, they have to stop. If you struggle with your mental health or even your physical health, that you have to ascribe to a particular treatment plan, and demonstrate your willingness to do that and to stay on it to then achieve whatever objective is set for you by some institution, which often is a shelter or a government program or a Christian institution, like a Rescue Mission. And then depending on which avenue you're going or which institution is involved, that can include a lot of other more arbitrary types of rules, like that if you demonstrate your worthiness or your dedication by applying for a certain number of jobs per week, or attaining employment first, or attending Bible study every day at the Rescue Mission. There's sort of all of these expectations to demonstrate that you are sort of good enough, worthy enough to invest in with this long-term opportunity.That is opposed to the housing-first idea, which we've known and understood for closer to like 30 years and have been studying and practicing ever since, which suggests that rather than do or accomplish all of these things to prove that you deserve housing, housing being sort of the end destination, we lead with the housing because we recognize that housing is the stabilizing force that makes so many of those other things possible. And then we don't just plop you in housing and say, “Good luck,” but we put you in housing and then ask you, “Okay, now, what do you wanna work on?” Now that you have this baseline of stability, of safety, a literal home base, what's next? Let's tackle it together. Now that you can get a good night's sleep. Now that you can charge your phone in an outlet overnight.Now that your documents and your medications are safe. Now that you can buy food to store it in a fridge, rather than go to whatever dinner is available for free for you across the community, or save up enough to get fast food just to fill your belly. All these things that we sort of take for granted that a home with four walls, a roof and a door provide for us are those things that we actually need to be successful. One's ability to stabilize a physical or mental health condition is really difficult if you don't have a safe place to go every night, like where you can store your medication safely, where you can eat a healthy diet, where you can have a normal routine. And even something like drug use and alcohol use, we understand are things that are responsive to a chaotic situation.That if you are living on the streets every day, you are more likely to seek out the soothing effects [laughs] of alcohol, the numbing effects of substances, or the energizing effects of other types of substances, in order to try to get things done that you need to get done. But that even folks who are deep in the throes of those kind of problematic relationships with drugs and alcohol do so much better with housing-first, rather than saying, “Hey, you need to fix all of these things before we even help you feel safe and stable.”Sy Hoekstra: It also strikes me all three of our mutual friend, Josiah Haken, wrote a book where he talked about kind of myths about homelessness. And one of them was the myth that, basically, homeless people are dangerous.Kevin Nye: Yeah.Sy Hoekstra: And he was like, the real reality of being homeless is that you're actually in more danger than everybody else constantly. You are the one who's the most likely to be the victim who's most likely gonna be robbed, have your stuff taken. And that stuff that's on you, like you said, is all your documents [laughs], it's all of your medicines that you need to remain in your sound mind or whatever. And just having a place to not be worried about that as much feels like an enormous burden lifted off people too, in addition to all the other enormous burdens lifted off people that you just mentioned.Kevin Nye: Absolutely. Yeah, Josiah is great, and his book is really good, too. Neighbors with No Doors, for your listeners to go check that one out.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, yeah for sure.Christianity Today, and Why the Church Doesn't Address Homelessness WellJonathan Walton: This is something that I'm very passionate about. Like Sy said, I've known Josiah for years. I spent a good part of my formative young adult years on the streets with friends. And so a few months ago, you wrote a post on your Substack about an article of yours that Christianity Today was like, “Yep,” and then said, “No.”Kevin Nye: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: [laughs] So can you tell us about that story, why you decided to go public, and the difference between knowledge and opposition. Because I think some people that are listening to this might think, “Oh, well, if we just know better, then we'll do better.” And I don't think that's true. So could you tell us about your journey writing, then having it get rejected, and then that difference between knowledge about something and opposition. Could you break that down?Kevin Nye: Sure. Yeah, the Christianity Today thing was interesting. When you're a writer on a particular topic and that topic sort of starts to get national attention, which is what was happening, at the time there was a Supreme Court case that was gonna be heard, since then has been heard, Johnson versus Grants Pass, Oregon.Sy Hoekstra: Right.Kevin Nye: We could talk forever about that, but essentially, whether or not municipalities have the right to criminalize homelessness was sort of being decided at the national level. And I wanted to write something about the faith perspective of that. And I have my own Substack and outlets where I can do that, but I thought that this being such a national issue, and my take on it wasn't particularly edgy or controversial. It was just, “Hey, maybe we shouldn't criminalize poor people for being poor.” [laughter]Jonathan Walton: Maybe. Let's try that.Kevin Nye: I thought that that was something… and actually part of what I was writing was not, “Hey, this is what I think.” It was, “Hey, this is what a bunch of churches and faith groups are thinking.” And part of my article was actually about how churches were rallying to support unhoused people in this case and writing into the Supreme Court. So it was almost like, it's kind of pro-church [laughs]. And so I thought given all of that, this would be a pretty good pitch for Christianity Today who is a more conservative publication who I hadn't published with before. I'm more likely to publish with Sojourners, which is less obviously conservative or Religious News Service, which is a little bit more like they're reporting news about religion, not religious news.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Kevin Nye: But I thought this was the right pitch for CT. They had expressed interest in me writing for them before, and it was just about finding the right thing, and I thought this one was it. So I sent it in, and I got a really good response. They agreed. They said, “Hey, this seems like the one. We definitely wanna work with you on it.” And I was pretty upfront from the beginning about what my stance on it was. And they seemed willing along the way, and even a couple times in the process, I just said, “Hey, I just wanna be super clear, this is where I'm going with it. It may be a little different than what you guys are used to publishing on homelessness,” and I just kept getting thumbs up along the way until it was time, essentially to publish it.I had sent it in, it had gotten the final edit, and they had said, “Hey, we're probably gonna publish this on Friday.” And then two hours later, I got an email that just said, “Hey, hold that thought. Just came from a meeting. We might be going in a different direction.” And then I didn't hear anything for 24 hours, and then it was, “Yeah, we are going in a different direction for our coverage.”Jonathan Walton: But did they pay you for it?Kevin Nye: They did. They paid me a kill fee, which…Sy Hoekstra: Which is not the whole thing.Kevin Nye: Yeah. And part of me was like, I wanna be like, “I don't want your money,” [laughter] but then I was like, “I'll take your money and I'll use it for something good.”Jonathan Walton: I can deposit this. Yeah. Right [laughs].Kevin Nye: Yeah. And so I ended up just then sending it to Religion News Service, and said, “Hey, sorry that this is coming late.” Because the deadline was that the Supreme Court was hearing it that week, and so it was sort of a timely piece. And I sent it over there, said, “Hey, I'm sorry this is such short notice, but do you guys want this because another publication didn't want it?” And they ran it. I sat on that for a while deciding whether or not I wanted to say anything about it, because I never want to, I don't wanna stir up trouble just for the sake of trouble. And I don't wanna trash this publication for no reason, even though they've given us some pretty good reasons over the years.Sy Hoekstra: [laughs].Kevin Nye: But I was like, I don't wanna pick a fight just to pick a fight. And part of that is a professional consideration. As a writer I have the potential to burn a bridge there. So I just sort of said, I'm gonna wait to see what they meant by our coverage is going in a different direction, because it does imply they're gonna publish something, right?Sy Hoekstra: Right.Kevin Nye: And for all I know it could have meant, “Hey, we actually got someone really, super, more qualified than you to write this.” Or, “One of the lawyers who's on the case wanted to write something for us.” And I'd be like, “Well, yeah, of course.” I suspected that wasn't what it meant, [laughs] but I'm gonna withhold judgment, at least publicly for a bit [laughter]. And so I sat on it, and then a couple months later, the Supreme Court ruling came out. So it was supposed to publish when they heard it, and then they had a couple months to deliver a ruling. They delivered a ruling, and Christianity Today had still not published anything, not even about homelessness, period. And so then I thought, “Okay, the ruling just happened.” It also came out the same day that they ruled on presidential immunity.Jonathan Walton: Yes.Kevin Nye: So it was like, okay, there's a lot of competing things to talk about right now so I'm gonna give them a week, two weeks, to see if they put out anything. And then when they didn't, that's when I sort of decided that I wanted to write about not being published, and again, not personal, but write about the fact that nothing was being published about this when it is such a significant ruling about what I would argue is one of the top five most significant issues on everybody's mind, which is housing and homelessness. And sort of how that feeds an ignorance and a lack of Christian conversation about this topic. And again, it wasn't, “How dare they not publish me.” It was sort of like, “How could they not publish anything, especially when they had something to publish, and they chose not to?”Jonathan Walton: Why do you think they killed it and didn't write about it?Kevin Nye: My guess is that ultimately, there is a pretty powerful voice that is Christian and institutionalized in the form of the Gospel Rescue Mission. And those who have supported it have worked in it, worked around it, worked adjacent to it, that does genuinely believe that we should make homelessness harder so that A, either people stop choosing it, which is ludicrous, but more so B, will drive people into institutional settings, like shelters, like Christian shelters, where evangelism can happen, sort of Christian teaching can happen. And the reason I believe that is because there was only one faith perspective that wrote into the Supreme Court in favor of criminalizing, and it was the Grants Pass Gospel Rescue Mission.Criminalizing Homelessness to Force People into Religious SheltersAnd they actually wrote in that publicly available letter that they felt that since it had been ruled at a lower court that they couldn't criminalize, the numbers at their shelter had been declining. Now they failed to mention that this happened at the same time as COVID, and might be another reason that people didn't wanna come into a public shared space type of shelter setting, but that because the city could not use criminalization to compel people into the Rescue Mission, that people were not getting services that they needed. But if you dig into the Gospel Rescue Mission over there, which I did extensively, you learn that they have some of the most egregious rules and expectations of people, and have a very poor reputation among the unhoused community there for how they treat people.And so what then truly is at stake here is in a town like Grants Pass where the only shelter is a Gospel Rescue Mission, can the government criminalize homelessness and force people into a religious setting where they are being taught against their will Christianity in the form of chapel and required Bible studies on a daily basis? And now I don't think Christianity Today thinks that we should institutionalize all unhoused people and scream the Bible at them, but I think that Christianity Today is reluctant to anger the voices who are pretty large and hold a lot of power that defend that institution.The theology behind Misguided Christian Housing ProgramsSy Hoekstra: Can we get a little bit at what some of the reasons are underneath all this stuff? I mean, aside from the [laughs] opportunity to evangelize, forcing people into your program to evangelize them, because that's just your whole end goal as a Christian or whatever, is to convert people, and so the means by which you convert them doesn't matter. Which is, I'm putting it that way because I'm just kind of processing that, because it's gross. It's in line with manipulating people into Christianity by scaring them about hell.Kevin Nye: Yeah.Sy Hoekstra: Like why not just scare them about prison or anything else?Jonathan Walton: Yeah, right. I'll put you outside.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, exactly [laughs]. But I wonder what other… you've dug into the theology of this, you've dug into people's reasoning for supporting this kind of programming and the powers that be supporting this kind of programming. What are the other motivations, theological reasons that you see behind treating vulnerable people this way?Kevin Nye: Yeah. Well, I mean, the way I framed it obviously, is sort of the most insidious version of it, but I think that most folks who… I mean, especially your frontline workers in a place that, genuinely believe that Jesus is the solution to homelessness. That people who are experiencing homelessness are doing so because of a personal failure, a moral failure, and that if they commit their lives to Jesus, that that will allow them to leave behind the life that led them into the situation that they're in and propel them towards a new life. That's the nice way of understanding what's happening, which I genuinely believe a lot of folks in these settings are operating it from that more positive version.Even what you described as scaring people with hell to get people to accept Jesus, I know people that are in my family who they genuinely believe that the people that they love and care about are gonna go to hell if they don't. And there is this motivation that, again, because they have this belief that is toxic, that the way… if you are committed to that belief, to then address this problem can be very problematic. My experience by and large, has not been that people who experience homelessness are not religious or are not even committed Christians.Sy Hoekstra: Seriously.Jonathan Walton: Exactly.Sy Hoekstra: Right.Kevin Nye: And on top of that, an informed understanding of what causes homelessness is not moral personal failure, but very measurable and understandable social issues like the cost of housing, like our mental health systems, like the stagnation of wages, so that housing is more expensive and people aren't making any more money. So one plus one equals two, fewer people can access housing.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, there's so much to say there, but things I wanna highlight, you're basically saying that Jesus is the answer to homelessness, allows you to avoid asking systemic questions, allows you to avoid talking about systems that need to change. It also kind of turns Jesus into something that he never said that he was. He never said he was the answer to homelessness. He also never even said, “If you state a belief in me and read the Bible and pray and x, y and z, then you will automatically start making significantly better moral decisions.”Kevin Nye: Yeah.Sy Hoekstra: That's not even true about Jesus. He also didn't say, “If you believe in me, all of a sudden you won't be addicted to meth,” or whatever. You know what I mean?Kevin Nye: Right.Sy Hoekstra: None of this is true. There's a real powerful underlying fundamentalist current in that perspective. In a just don't worry about the politics, don't worry about basically any real earthly concerns, just Jesus, everything else will fall in line after that.Kevin Nye: Yeah, and it's, I think a lot about how it's just an extension of prosperity gospel. That it's the same idea that says if you're an average middle-class American Christian, and you want to become wealthy, have a private jet, a mansion, here's your spiritual steps. Get closer to Jesus, you'll be rewarded with physical wealth. Well, if that's true, the opposite of that would be true, which is that if you are in deep, dire poverty, it must mean that you're that much farther from Jesus.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: Right.Kevin Nye: And I think even people who would reject the Joel Osteen prosperity rich end of that gospel, still believe a lot of that same stuff, but on the poverty end.Jonathan Walton: Yeah.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. That's so true.Jonathan Walton: The connection for me happens, is yes, the prosperity gospel, but then also the plantation spirituality.Kevin Nye: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: The people who are rich are obedient, the people who are poor are disobedient. And what disobedient people actually need is supervision and discipline.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Kevin Nye: Yes.Jonathan Walton: And so the housing-first, the entire mentality that you are flipping over is saying you don't actually have to be good or better or on the right side of things to receive, which is the opposite of the plantation, which is the opposite of Capitalism, which is the opposite…Sy Hoekstra: You might even call it grace, Jonathan [laughter].Jonathan Walton: I mean, I was gonna get to the title of the book at the end, but like…[laughs].Kevin Nye: And not even just to receive, but to receive in a way that allows freedom and choice. Because that is one of the biggest differences between these two models. And I think, a lot of why it's we need to hold housing back until we've programmed into a person what they should be acting like and being like then we give them housing, because once they have housing, they're free to make their own decisions, and we're afraid of what that looks like. Versus that housing-first model that, baked into housing-first is choice and options and autonomy. And even in the process of getting into housing, it's not just, “Hey, here's the apartment that you get,” although that is how a lot of systems end up working, just because of scarcity of housing.But in a good housing-first model it's, “Here's all the types of housing that are accessible to you. These ones are subsidized this way, these ones are this way. This is in this part of town, this one is connected to these types of services. What works for you?” And then after that choice comes more choices like, “Hey, what's the thing that you wanna work on first?” Which is the treatment-first model says, you got to get sober before you do anything else. And that is just not true. I think that's a big piece of it too, is how much the treatment-first system allows us, whether we're government or religious, to exert social control over people.Jonathan Walton: All that to say, there are people and systems and structures, institutions in place that keep this ideology enforced.Kevin Nye: Yes.Jonathan Walton: It is moving forward. Something, harking back, we had an interview with Lisa Sharon Harper, who I believe you know.Kevin Nye: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: And one of the things she said was, the hope is in the work. As we do the work, we will find hope, because we're close and we see progress, we build relationships, that's the fruit of being in the work. And so as people are, what we were just talking about, these institutions, these individuals are reluctant to this evidence-based policy actually being rolled out in the church, where do you see good work being done inside and outside of the church, where you can find that intersection of hope and work?Kevin Nye: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: As people do start to say yes to Matthew 25.Kevin Nye: I mean, I think that my… so my book came out two years ago now, and when I wrote it, I sort of hoped that it would be revelatory for people. That a lot of Christians would be like, “Oh, this is new information. This is a new way of looking at it.” And there was a good amount of that. But what really surprised me, and gave me a lot of hope, was how much response I got that said, “Yes, this is what we over here already believe, and we've been doing.”Sy Hoekstra: Oh.Kevin Nye: Sometimes like, “We didn't know it had a name. We didn't know there were other people thinking and talking about this.” And so in those two years, as I've gotten to travel around and do some speaking and stuff like that, I've gotten to see and hear about a bunch of programs, churches that are merging this sort of faith-based and evidence-based. And, yeah, it's just been, it's filled me with a ton of hope. And where they're, I think the next growth is for them to get organized together, because right now the Rescue Missions are organized. They have a centralized network, and so they can speak together with one voice in opposition to these best practices.But there's not sort of a focal point or a voice box for all these other ones that are doing, like you said, the hope is in the work, they're doing it in their small, local ways, but don't have a collective together to speak to each other and on behalf of one another and on behalf of the things that they believe in. And so that's part of the project I'm working on right now. My next book project is to sort of give voice and awareness to a lot of these ideas that are being implemented in different places that people don't really know about outside of those local communities, and sort of name what is working and why, and hopefully inspire responses from faith communities and individuals that align with best practices and align with their faith.Jonathan Walton: One, I wanna dive into your book, because I actually haven't read it yet, so I'm looking forward to grabbing it. And I'm glad to hear that you have another one. What would you say is the bridge from the one you wrote to this one?Kevin Nye: A lot of different things, but to make it very black and white, it's the first book is about how to think differently about homelessness, and this book is about how you actually go and do that, and how those change beliefs get worked out in things as nitty gritty as program design.Jonathan Walton: Yes.Sy Hoekstra: Totally.Kevin Nye: Without being boring, hopefully.Sy Hoekstra: [laughs] That's great. Where can people find you or your work?Kevin Nye: So I'm on most social media. I'm not too hard to find there, but my handle is a little different everywhere you go. The best sort of landing spot is my Substack. So that's Kevinmnye.substack.com. And so any new thing that I'm writing, whether it's there or I publish with Sojourners, or I'm speaking somewhere, I always put that out in my newsletter there. And hopefully as some more news comes out about this new book project, I'll be able to make announcements about that there.Sy Hoekstra: That's awesome. We will definitely link to that. Kevin Nye, we so much appreciate having you on the show today. Thank you so much for being here.Kevin Nye: Yeah, absolutely. It was a blast.[The intro piano music from “Citizens” by Jon Guerra plays briefly and then fades out.]Our Thoughts after the InterviewSy Hoekstra: Jonathan, I loved that conversation. Tell me what you are thinking about coming out of it.The Church Is Actively Contributing to the Problem of HomelessnessJonathan Walton: There's a lot. I think that the thing that frustrates me the most, and I think this is true about a lot of just injustices that I'm thinking about right now, is that the church is actively contributing to the continuing…Sy Hoekstra: To the problem.Jonathan Walton: Yeah. When we're literally supposed to not do that. Like, the whole Grants Pass amicus brief, I'm just like, “Really guys?” That takes energy. That takes effort, that takes meetings, that takes emails, takes drafts. It takes time to do that. You can't just like, “Hey, I'm gonna write an amicus brief,” and just submit it. There's an effort that goes into sustaining injustice, and that to me I think is concerning and exhausting.Societies with Colonial Roots Won't Provide “Unearned” BenefitsJonathan Walton: The other thing I think about is, I mean, I would say White American folk religion, talk about a plantation mentality, but it even stretches into addressing injustice. I was having a conversation with Maya yesterday.Sy Hoekstra: Your seven-year-old.Jonathan Walton: Yes. No, she's eight. She's eight.Sy Hoekstra: Oh. I forgot.Jonathan Walton: Yeah. But we were talking about the difference between fairness and justice. And she said, “Baba, is it better to give someone what they need or give someone what they ask for?”Sy Hoekstra: You have the deepest child [laughter].Jonathan Walton: She literally asked me that. And I was like, “Ooh.”Sy Hoekstra: Does Maya wanna be on this podcast [laughter]?Jonathan Walton: No, but she was reading a book. I have a discussion or something at school, and this is what she asked me. So I started talking about the vineyard. I said, “Maya, who gets to decide what is needed? Who are the different people?” And she goes, “Well, someone outside is deciding.” And I was like, “Oh, okay, well, then let's go read the story about Jesus in the vineyard.” Like the kingdom of God is like a vineyard.Sy Hoekstra: You're talking about the parable where he pays all the workers the same, no matter how long they worked, and the ones who worked the longest get angry [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Exactly. And then we went and read… she had only read the first half of the parable about the two sons. She hadn't read the second half. So then we talked about the similarities between the father who runs out to meet the prodigal son, and then how the person in charge gets to decide how grace or resources or whatever are distributed. And I was like, it would seem to me that that person gets to define what is just and what is fair, and what is equitable. And we didn't get to talk about power, but that was ultimately what I was thinking about.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: And I don't know how to explain it to an eight year old. But she said everybody should get what they need. But she's like, “How can we do that?” And I said, “Maya, that right there is the fundamental question that we try to put together.” There are people who think and believe and will work tooth and nail for people not to get what they don't think they deserve. “I don't think that person deserves a home. I don't think that person deserves to live where I live. I think they should, quote- unquote, wait in line,” if we're talking about immigration. “I played by the rules. Don't pay off that debt. I worked at a job…” We're constantly doing that. There's a Hawaiian activist, her name escapes me right now, but she said, “You got to remember you live in a colony.”Like the United States is a colony. That's what it is. Another Peruvian scholar is like, coloniality is a real thing. And so in a colony, you cannot have people get things that they quote- unquote, didn't work for. The kingdom of God should literally break the brains of imperialists, which it does [laughs], because it just, it blows up everything. So all that to say, I hope, and we'll pray and will work in the influence that I have to say, “Hey, can we do what Kevin was talking about, like housing-first, resources first, hugs first, communication first?” All that.For Evangelicals, Grace Is Not TangibleSy Hoekstra: Yeah, totally. I had kind of similar thoughts. I was gonna talk about how the moralism underlying all of the policy, like the treatment-first policy like, “You have to earn this, and we are suspicious of you, and we have all these stereotypes going in that we're just not going to question and we're gonna follow. And until you prove yourself worthy of our generosity, we're not gonna give it to you.” And so it's sort of like, we can talk about grace and generosity and all of that all day long, but we're not gonna put our money where our mouth is, especially not government money [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Yeah. Right, exactly.Sy Hoekstra: That's kind of the other side of the coin of the coin of what you were talking about, which is so there's this lack of grace generosity, but I think yours is actually a step further, which is if you're denying grace and generosity, you're going to have to take active steps to reinforce the frankly, evil way of doing things [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Yeah.Sy Hoekstra: And that's the amicus briefs and everything else. What I was just saying, that kind of moralism, it really is connected to the more fundamentalist side of evangelicalism about how, basically, grace is a spiritual thing. It's not a tangible thing. It's not a material thing. It's not something you practice outside of forgiving someone for wronging you. It's not something you do with your money and your resources. It just doesn't really have any business in the public square, or in public policy, which is not a distinction the Bible draws.Jonathan Walton: Right.Sy Hoekstra: The best you can argue is maybe it's a distinction that under your theology you think the Bible implies. It's definitely not explicit [laughter]. You can look at Leviticus, where there are so so many different provisions where God is requiring people to use the fruits of their own labor to provide for the poor in their neighborhood, and not in particularly efficient ways [laughter]. And Jesus is obviously, or John the Baptist is telling people, “If you have two coats, give one away.” There's the spirit, the direction where everything's going with the kingdom of God is so opposed to that way of thinking, in my view, that it's incredibly frustrating that we have to… Kevin, in particular. I'm frustrated for him, for advocates, and then for most of all, for the actual people who aren't getting housing, who are literally out on the streets. Some of them are freezing to death or starving to death because of our insistence on this moralism.Jonathan Walton: Right. The fundamental thing is at the end of the day, moralism is an argument that you need to earn the stuff, like you were just saying. And then it's like, I'm gonna create an entire ecosystem that justifies your poverty and my comfort.Christians Should Actively Invite Unhoused People into Our NeighborhoodsSy Hoekstra: My other thought was around markets, and a lot of how some of the intractability of housing policy is that so many people just have decided that when you put out public housing or low income housing somewhere, that that lowers the value of the property around it.Jonathan Walton: Yes.Sy Hoekstra: Which is by economists, the way they speak, it's an inevitability. It's just the way things are, and it can't be changed. But that is ultimately because the potential buyers of that property are bigots toward poor people [laughter].Jonathan Walton: Yeah. No, it's true. Right.Sy Hoekstra: It's such widespread, systemic bigotry that it changes the value of homes and buildings and land. And that's a choice. It is a choice that I will grant you most societies have made [laughs]. Like most societies, rich people want to cordon themselves off from everybody else and to use their money to try and escape the things about this world that are difficult and make us sad and uncomfortable and hurt. But that doesn't mean that it's not still a choice for which God absolutely holds us accountable. Go and read Amos, or whatever [laughter]. There's no question, it does not make God happy, and that we have a different way to go. But what we would need is something that seems kind of impossible at the moment, which is a… you've heard of a NIMBY?Jonathan Walton: Yes.Sy Hoekstra: NIMBY people, like Not In My Back Yard. So that means, “Don't put that new methadone clinic, don't put that new housing project anywhere near me.” We would need a YIMBY movement.Jonathan Walton: Yes.Sy Hoekstra: You actually have to have people who say, “Yes. I want poor people around. I want people who are trying to recover from drugs around. I want people who have mental health issues around. Because of my positive value for human life and communal flourishing.” And that truly feels impossible to me. I don't think it is, again, I think it's a choice. And one thing that I'm trying to do, I have narrow influence in the world. One person over whom I have a lot of influence is my two year old. I walk around New York City with her all the time. I take her to daycare, other places. And I'm trying to make a point that, we're not going to be afraid of the person who's having the mental health crisis, because the actual reality is, in that mental health crisis, they are in more danger than we are. They are the ones at risk, we are not.Most of them are not violent. A lot of us want to be violent towards them. Aka Jordan Neely, who was killed on the subway because he was having a mental health crisis, and people were sufficiently afraid of him. And so if I'm on the subway platform with my daughter and someone's having a mental health crisis, and they're not that far away from us, and people will move away from that person because they're afraid, I will stay there. And that has never been a problem, not once. You can tell me that that's dangerous or risky, and I don't care, because I know you're wrong, and I'm going to teach the person that I have the ability to teach that you're wrong [laughs]. And we're gonna stay there, and we're gonna be completely fine. I've been here for 16 years now. I've lived in New York City, and I've been around people having, I've worked with even my clients as a lawyer.These are not alien, weird people having scary freakouts to me. These are real people, who by the way, are fully conscious when they're having their mental health crises, and they can see everyone walking away from them, and they know how afraid everybody is of them, and that affects them deeply.Jonathan Walton: Yeah.Sy Hoekstra: And I'm not gonna be part of it. I will be the yes in my backyard person, even if nobody else is. There are other people who are. I'm not saying it's me against the world, but that is something that we need to insist on it.Jonathan Walton: Yeah, and honestly I think that ties literally perfectly into Which Tab Is Still Open.Which Tab Is Still Open? — Ta-Nehisi CoatesSy Hoekstra: Oh, yeah. Let's get into it. So this is Which Tab Is Still Open. This is the segment where we dive a little bit deeper into one of the recommendations from our newsletter, which you can get by joining the free mailing list at KTFPress.com. You'll get resources articles, podcasts, books, everything, recommendations from Jonathan and I on ways to grow in your discipleship and in your political education. So go to KTFPress.com, sign up for that free mailing list. Jonathan, we're talking about Ta-Nehisi Coates today. Why don't you tell us what we're talking about exactly?Jonathan Walton: Yes. So Ta-Nehisi Coates has a new book, it's called The Message. A very significant portion of it is about his trip to Israel and Palestine, occupied West Bank, Hebron, places like that. Some important points he makes are that when you see how Palestinians are treated up close, it's not really that hard to see it as apartheid or Jim Crow or any other exploitative, discriminatory system that has been set up. And he took a trip to the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, and found it profoundly moving as well, but just couldn't shake that the lesson Zionists took from the Holocaust was that, “We have to obtain our own power at all costs to prevent this from happening again.” He's had some really fascinating media appearances while promoting the book that we'll link to in the show notes.One of them, you mentioned the newsletter, was a great interview with The Daily Show. The interview that instigated a lot of this fervor and dialog and will probably help him sell a lot of books, which he's also said [laughter], was with CBS because he was basically ambushed by Tony Dokoupil, and was called an extremist in asking him pretty nonsensical questions for people who are against genocide, totally normal for people who are for Zionism. And the question he asked that many people ask is, “Does Israel have the right to exist?” And it's a rhetorical question, which Ta-Nehisi Coates actually answered when he said that countries don't have the right to exist, they exist by power. Just that turn was really great.But about the interview, there was controversy, because it came out that the interviewer went around CBS's editorial process and just went off on his own without telling anybody what he was doing. So Sy, what are your thoughts?The Power of Clarity and Focus in Prophetic Truth-TellingSy Hoekstra: I am so happy that Ta-Nehisi Coates is back writing nonfiction [laughter]. That's my main and primary thought. Everything he wrote in the 2010s is very formative for a lot of my thinking. I just love his approach to writing and journalism. He said many times he just, he writes to learn. He really appreciates the power of writing, and he has an incredible amount of moral clarity, a really impressive inability of everyone who's trying to distract him, to distract him. Like he's very focused. Like that question that you just brought up was a good example of it. Somebody says, “Does Israel have the right to exist?” He says, “Israel exists. States don't have the right to exist, they just do. They establish themselves with power. And now I'm gonna talk about, because Israel does exist, how does it exist, and why is that a problem?”It's just, I'm going to acknowledge your question. I'm going to say very quickly why it doesn't make any sense, and then I'm gonna get back to the point that matters [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Yes.Sy Hoekstra: And that is something I want to emulate in the way that I go about my writing and my commentary and all that. I mean, those are kind of my… [laughs] I'm not sure I have a lot of substantive thoughts about what you just said, I'm just happy he's back. He took a long path down the fiction road and was writing comic books and all kinds of other stuff, which is also very cool. And he also did that because he was like, “That's the challenge for me as a writer right now. I've never done this. I'm a little bit scared of it. I think being nervous is good as a writer. And I'm gonna go do this thing that makes me sort of uncomfortable, instead of just continuing to churn out bestsellers about whatever.” You know what I mean?Jonathan Walton: [laughter]. Right. Let me go and be challenged. Right right right.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, which I really respect that too, even though it means there were several years where I didn't get his commentary on stuff that I would have appreciated [laughter]. That's what I have been thinking as I've been watching him. But how about you, and you said you were gonna connect it back to what we were talking about before?Jonathan Walton: Yes. So one, amen, I'm glad he's writing nonfiction as well.Sy Hoekstra: [laughs].Jonathan Walton: It's really powerful to me what truth telling does. He is stewarding a platform. He is leveraging his voice. He is doing what I would hope followers of Jesus would do in the ways that we can and the lives that we live every day. You're leveraging your platform with your daughter. You are her biggest influence. You and Gabrielle. The stewardship of his power and platform to elevate and center the most marginalized voice in the media landscape over the last 65 years, people from the Middle East. That we say the Middle East, because we're the center of the world.Sy Hoekstra: [laughs].Jonathan Walton: And so that reality comes from… I've listened to so many interviews. I listened to his one with The Daily Show, MSNBC, Zeteo with Mehdi Hassan. I listened to the one with Trevor Noah. I'm gonna listen to the one for Democracy Now!, I'm gonna listen to the one with The Gray Area, because I need to be reminded every day that there are people willing and able to say the hard things, not be distracted or dissuaded from what they're trying to say, and be willing to communicate that they would risk their own injury. He said, “It doesn't matter what someone else has done to me or how evil someone is, we should not kill them.” Over and over again. There is no world where it's, “Oh, it's complex. Oh, it's complicated.”No, no, no, it's not. It's not complicated. It becomes complicated if you don't think about it. Everything's complicated if we don't think about it. But if you actually sit down and think about what it would mean to be Palestinian and what it would mean to be a Jewish person post Holocaust, post multiple pogroms, I would love for us to arrive at the point where we're like, “I don't want to perpetuate that against anyone else, because it was perpetrated against me,” which is love your neighbor as yourself.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: Which he's not a follower of Jesus, but where we have instead landed is where he is willing to wrestle, he talked about this with Trevor Noah, he would hope that he would not become someone who would commit acts of violence to keep acts of violence from happening to him. That, I think is a rub. Like Nat Turner's rebellion and what happened on October the seventh when the quote- unquote, Hamas escaped. Even the words we use to describe the attack that happened, it literally is described like a breakout a lot of the times, in Zionist literature and communication. All of these things frame the Lebanese, or frame now the Iranians as not people. And what Ta-Nehisi Coates is trying to do is actually say they are people.And that gets back to what you're talking about with, yes in my backyard. This is a person. Jordan Neely is a person. The person on the street having the mental health crisis, the person who's going through a messy divorce and doesn't have anywhere to go, the folks that are unemployed or bust up here from Texas, these are individuals made in the image of God, who do not deserve harm. That is the thing that draws me back to Coates' interviews, because he's not avoiding the hard questions, but what he is doing is communicating a truth that the people asking hard questions don't like. We are no better than the person that we're shooting or bombing or killing. We're just not. And so why are we doing that to someone who is literally just like us?And so I will keep watching, I will keep listening, keep reading. I hope that there is a shift happening. I'm not optimistic. I'm grateful for him and driving the conversation, because it feels something has broken through that I hope continues, because that was a conversation on CBS Morning Show. That was a conversation on progressive, liberal, conservative. Like people are talking about the book, even if you're critiquing it, you got to talk about it. I'm glad that that's happening, and I hope that this is taking the trajectory of what happened in South Africa, that's the best case scenario.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: It's not the best case scenario, but politically in the limits that we have, it's the best case scenario.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. And I think he thinks that way. Like when he talks about the power of writing, he's not talking about the power of my book to end the war, he's talking about the power of my book to influence some people who so

The blending of conventional and holistic practices sparks both innovation and debate in modern healthcare, but could it also be a new ally in patient care and even our personal lives?  Join Eric, Laura, Maritess, and Neil as they share their own personal stories and perspectives as well as the perceptions and emerging realities of integrative nursing in the modern healthcare environment.    MEET OUR CO-HOSTS Samantha Bayne, MSN, RN, CMSRN, NPD-BC is a nursing professional development practitioner in the inland northwest specializing in medical-surgical nursing. The first four years of her practice were spent bedside on a busy ortho/neuro unit where she found her passion for newly graduated RNs, interdisciplinary collaboration, and professional governance. Sam is an unwavering advocate for medical-surgical nursing as a specialty and enjoys helping nurses prepare for specialty certification.    Laura Johnson, MSN, RN, NPD-BC, CMSRN has been a nurse since 2008 with a background in Med/Surg and Oncology.  She is a native Texan currently working in the Dallas area.  She has held many positions throughout her career from bedside nurse to management/leadership to education.  Laura obtained her MSN in nursing education in 2018 and is currently pursuing her DNP.  She has worked both as a bedside educator and a nursing professional development practitioner for both new and experienced staff.  She enjoys working with the nurse residency program as a specialist in palliative care/end of life nursing and mentorship.  She is currently an NPD practitioner for oncology and bone marrow transplant units.     Neil H. Johnson, RN, BSN, CMSRN, epitomizes a profound familial commitment to the nursing profession, marking the third generation in his family to tread this esteemed path. Following the footsteps of his father, grandfather, grandmother, aunt, and cousin, all distinguished nurses, Neil transitioned to nursing as a second career after a brief tenure as an elementary school teacher. Currently on the verge of completing his MSN in nurse education, he aspires to seamlessly integrate his dual passions. Apart from his unwavering dedication to nursing, Neil actively seeks serenity in nature alongside his canine companions. In his professional capacity, he fulfills the role of a med-surg nurse at the Moses Cone Health System in North Carolina.   Eric Torres, ADN, RN, CMSRN is a California native that has always dreamed of seeing the World, and when that didn't work out, he set his sights on nursing.  Eric is beyond excited to be joining the AMSN podcast and having a chance to share his stories and experiences of being a bedside medical-surgical nurse.   Maritess M. Quinto, DNP, RN, NPD-BC, CMSRN is a clinical educator currently leading a team of educators who is passionately helping healthcare colleagues, especially newly graduate nurses. She was born and raised in the Philippines and immigrated to the United States with her family in Florida. Her family of seven (three girls and two boys with her husband who is also a Registered Nurse) loves to travel, especially to Disney World. She loves to share her experiences about parenting, travelling, and, of course, nursing!   Sydney Wall, RN, BSN, CMSRN has been a med surg nurse for 5 years. After graduating from the University of Rhode Island in 2019, Sydney commissioned into the Navy and began her nursing career working on a cardiac/telemetry unit in Bethesda, Maryland.  Currently she is stationed overseas, providing care for service members and their families.  During her free time, she enjoys martial arts and traveling. 

Ever wonder what it's really like to be at the AMSN Annual Convention or simply looking for powerful insights from this year's event?  Join Laura, Maritess, Neil and special guest co-hosts AMSN President Marisa Streelman and Alissa Brown as they share their own personal stories and insights LIVE from the 2024 AMSN Annual Convention in Toronto.   SPECIAL GUESTS Dr. Marisa Streelman, DNP, RN, CMSRN, NE-BC began her career in Chicago as a staff nurse in oncology at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. She progressed into leadership positions, such as charge RN, and clinical coordinator, and then changed specialties as the unit manager of a medicine unit. Her life moved out West to Denver, where she managed a cardiology and progressive care unit at University of Colorado Hospital before returning back to Chicago where she served as medical center unit director at Rush University Medical Center. She currently is a staff specialist with the nursing leadership team at Michigan Medicine in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Dr. Streelman was a founding member for the Academy of Medical Surgical Nurses - Chicago Chapter, and she has been involved with the AMSN Volunteer Committees. She was elected to treasurer for the Board of Directors for AMSN in 2015 and continues to serve on the board. She recently earned her doctorate in nursing practice in transformational leadership systems from Rush University.    Alissa Brown, MSN, RN, CMSRN, NPD-BC is a clinical nurse educator from the University of Utah Health. She has been working in the health care industry for almost 12 years, and started her nursing career as a med-surg bedside nurse on an Ortho, Trauma, and Surgical Specialty Unit. It was through that experience in the med-surg unit where she discovered a passion for education, and pursued a master's degree. She is a lifelong learner, and loves to teach.  Born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah, she's not all work, and definitely enjoys play! She loves to travel, and tries to plan as many vacations each year as she can with family and friends. Alissa loves to read, listen to podcasts, and geek out to documentaries and crime shows on the weekends. She's a total fair weather fan when it comes to Utes Football, but will cheer in all the right places, or get mad when her husband tells her to during a game.    MEET OUR CO-HOSTS Samantha Bayne, MSN, RN, CMSRN, NPD-BC is a nursing professional development practitioner in the inland northwest specializing in medical-surgical nursing. The first four years of her practice were spent bedside on a busy ortho/neuro unit where she found her passion for newly graduated RNs, interdisciplinary collaboration, and professional governance. Sam is an unwavering advocate for medical-surgical nursing as a specialty and enjoys helping nurses prepare for specialty certification.    Laura Johnson, MSN, RN, NPD-BC, CMSRN has been a nurse since 2008 with a background in Med/Surg and Oncology.  She is a native Texan currently working in the Dallas area.  She has held many positions throughout her career from bedside nurse to management/leadership to education.  Laura obtained her MSN in nursing education in 2018 and is currently pursuing her DNP.  She has worked both as a bedside educator and a nursing professional development practitioner for both new and experienced staff.  She enjoys working with the nurse residency program as a specialist in palliative care/end of life nursing and mentorship.  She is currently an NPD practitioner for oncology and bone marrow transplant units.             Neil H. Johnson, RN, BSN, CMSRN, epitomizes a profound familial commitment to the nursing profession, marking the third generation in his family to tread this esteemed path. Following the footsteps of his father, grandfather, grandmother, aunt, and cousin, all distinguished nurses, Neil transitioned to nursing as a second career after a brief tenure as an elementary school teacher. Currently on the verge of completing his MSN in nurse education, he aspires to seamlessly integrate his dual passions. Apart from his unwavering dedication to nursing, Neil actively seeks serenity in nature alongside his canine companions. In his professional capacity, he fulfills the role of a med-surg nurse at the Moses Cone Health System in North Carolina.   Eric Torres, ADN, RN, CMSRN is a California native that has always dreamed of seeing the World, and when that didn't work out, he set his sights on nursing.  Eric is beyond excited to be joining the AMSN podcast and having a chance to share his stories and experiences of being a bedside medical-surgical nurse.   Maritess M. Quinto, DNP, RN, NPD-BC, CMSRN is a clinical educator currently leading a team of educators who is passionately helping healthcare colleagues, especially newly graduate nurses. She was born and raised in the Philippines and immigrated to the United States with her family in Florida. Her family of seven (three girls and two boys with her husband who is also a Registered Nurse) loves to travel, especially to Disney World. She loves to share her experiences about parenting, travelling, and, of course, nursing!   Sydney Wall, RN, BSN, CMSRN has been a med surg nurse for 5 years. After graduating from the University of Rhode Island in 2019, Sydney commissioned into the Navy and began her nursing career working on a cardiac/telemetry unit in Bethesda, Maryland.  Currently she is stationed overseas, providing care for service members and their families.  During her free time, she enjoys martial arts and traveling.   

Who is it? Join Laura, Maritess, and Neil PLUS a special mystery guest co-host for this 2024 AMSN Annual Convention episode to meet and experience the story of the 2024 AMSN President's Award recipient.  MEET OUR CO-HOSTS Samantha Bayne, MSN, RN, CMSRN, NPD-BC is a nursing professional development practitioner in the inland northwest specializing in medical-surgical nursing. The first four years of her practice were spent bedside on a busy ortho/neuro unit where she found her passion for newly graduated RNs, interdisciplinary collaboration, and professional governance. Sam is an unwavering advocate for medical-surgical nursing as a specialty and enjoys helping nurses prepare for specialty certification.    Laura Johnson, MSN, RN, NPD-BC, CMSRN has been a nurse since 2008 with a background in Med/Surg and Oncology.  She is a native Texan currently working in the Dallas area.  She has held many positions throughout her career from bedside nurse to management/leadership to education.  Laura obtained her MSN in nursing education in 2018 and is currently pursuing her DNP.  She has worked both as a bedside educator and a nursing professional development practitioner for both new and experienced staff.  She enjoys working with the nurse residency program as a specialist in palliative care/end of life nursing and mentorship.  She is currently an NPD practitioner for oncology and bone marrow transplant units.             Neil H. Johnson, RN, BSN, CMSRN, epitomizes a profound familial commitment to the nursing profession, marking the third generation in his family to tread this esteemed path. Following the footsteps of his father, grandfather, grandmother, aunt, and cousin, all distinguished nurses, Neil transitioned to nursing as a second career after a brief tenure as an elementary school teacher. Currently on the verge of completing his MSN in nurse education, he aspires to seamlessly integrate his dual passions. Apart from his unwavering dedication to nursing, Neil actively seeks serenity in nature alongside his canine companions. In his professional capacity, he fulfills the role of a med-surg nurse at the Moses Cone Health System in North Carolina.   Eric Torres, ADN, RN, CMSRN is a California native that has always dreamed of seeing the World, and when that didn't work out, he set his sights on nursing.  Eric is beyond excited to be joining the AMSN podcast and having a chance to share his stories and experiences of being a bedside medical-surgical nurse.   Maritess M. Quinto, DNP, RN, NPD-BC, CMSRN is a clinical educator currently leading a team of educators who is passionately helping healthcare colleagues, especially newly graduate nurses. She was born and raised in the Philippines and immigrated to the United States with her family in Florida. Her family of seven (three girls and two boys with her husband who is also a Registered Nurse) loves to travel, especially to Disney World. She loves to share her experiences about parenting, travelling, and, of course, nursing!   Sydney Wall, RN, BSN, CMSRN has been a med surg nurse for 5 years. After graduating from the University of Rhode Island in 2019, Sydney commissioned into the Navy and began her nursing career working on a cardiac/telemetry unit in Bethesda, Maryland.  Currently she is stationed overseas, providing care for service members and their families.  During her free time, she enjoys martial arts and traveling.   

Chinese adoptions halt, debate recap, and Taylor Swift. Find us on Youtube. Today's episode considers the recent end of Chinese international adoptions with guest Aimee Welch (former journalist and an adoptive parent and advocate), who has been waiting for her adopted daughter to come stateside since before adoptions were paused during COVID-19. Then, Clarissa and Mike recap the week's presidential debate. Finally, Bob Smietana (national reporter for Religion News Service) drops by to talk about friendship across political divides with—who else?—Taylor Swift as a case study.   GO DEEPER WITH THE BULLETIN: Follow the show in your podcast app of choice. Find us on YouTube. Rate and review the show in your podcast app of choice. Leave a comment in Spotify with your feedback on the discussion—we may even respond! TODAY'S GUESTS:  Aimee Welch is a former journalist and an adoptive parent and advocate. Bob Smietana is a national reporter for RNS based near Chicago, covering evangelicals, weird religion, and the changing religious landscape. Smietana is an award-winning religion reporter and editor who has spent two decades producing breaking news, data journalism, investigative reporting, profiles and features for magazines, newspapers, trade publications, and websites. Most notably, he has served as a senior writer for Facts & Trends, senior editor of Christianity Today, religion writer at The Tennessean, correspondent for RNS and contributor to OnFaith, USA Today, and The Washington Post.  ABOUT THE BULLETIN: The Bulletin is a weekly (and sometimes more!) current events show from Christianity Today hosted and moderated by Clarissa Moll, with senior commentary from Russell Moore (Christianity Today's editor in chief) and Mike Cosper (director, CT Media). Each week, the show explores current events and breaking news and shares a Christian perspective on issues that are shaping our world. We also offer special one-on-one conversations with writers, artists, and thought leaders whose impact on the world brings important significance to a Christian worldview, like Bono, Sharon McMahon, Harrison Scott Key, Frank Bruni, and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

(RNS) — A group of evangelical broadcasters is suing the Internal Revenue Service over the Johnson Amendment, a tax law that bars nonprofits from supporting political candidates. National Religious Broadcasters convention attendees await Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump, at the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center Thursday, Feb. 22, 2024, in Nashville, Tenn. (RNS photo/Bob Smietana) Lawyers for the National Religious Broadcasters, along with two Baptist churches and a conservative group called Intercessors for America, argue in their suit that the ban on engaging in politics restricts their freedom of speech and freedom of religion. They further argue that the IRS ignores the politicking of some charities, while threatening to punish others. In particular, lawyers for the groups claim that newspapers and other news outlets that have become nonprofits in recent years, such as the Philadelphia Inquirer, endorse candidates. Why can't churches or other Christian groups, they want to know, do the same? “Plaintiffs believe that nonprofit newspapers have a clear constitutional right to make such endorsements or statements,” read the complaint filed Wednesday (Aug. 28) in the United States District Court of the Eastern District of Texas, Tyler Division. “Plaintiffs simply contend that they should also have the same freedom of speech.” The lawsuit is the latest challenge to the Johnson Amendment, a 1954 law that has long been the bane of conservative groups and, in particular, preachers seeking to become more involved in politics. The ban on taking sides in campaigns — including endorsements or campaign contributions — applies to nonprofits that fall under section 501(c)(3) of the IRS code. For years Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal group, organized “pulpit freedom” Sundays designed to have preachers violate IRS rules by endorsing candidates from the pulpit. As president, Donald Trump signed an executive order designed to give more leeway under IRS rules. The current lawsuit pitches its argument toward similar religious freedom principles. “For too long, churches have been instructed to remain silent on pressing matters of conscience and conviction during election season or risk their 501(c)(3) status,” said NRB President Troy A. Miller in a statement announcing the lawsuit. But the growing number of nonprofit newsrooms has added a new twist to the arguments over the Johnson Amendment that has to do with fairness. Those newsrooms, the complaint argues, should be required to abide by the same rules as other charities. Access to MinistryWatch content is free.  However, we hope you will support our work with your prayers and financial gifts.  To make a donation, click here. “Hundreds of newspapers are organized under § 501(c)(3), and yet many openly endorse political candidates,” lawyers for NRB and its co-plaintiff argued in their complaint. “Others make statements about political candidates that constitute forbidden statements under the IRS' interpretation of the statutory prohibition against supporting or opposing candidates.” The Institute for Nonprofit News, with about 450 member organizations, including RNS, does not accept members that endorse candidates. “Nonprofit news organizations do not endorse candidates and, under IRS guidelines, should not favor any candidate for public office in coverage or other action,” the INN's guidelines for members state. Karen Rundlet, the CEO and executive director of the INN, told RNS in an email that grants made to nonprofits often bar those funds from being used for political activity. The complaint points specifically to the Inquirer's candidate endorsements, as well as articles critical of candidates in other nonprofit publications from 2012 to the present, claiming all violated IRS rules with impunity. While nonprofit newspapers such as the Salt Lake Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times no longer ma...

From early job experiences to personal struggles, join Eric, Laura, Maritess, Neil and Sam as they share their stories and perspectives regarding the many ways our personal experiences can enhance our nursing practice.  MEET OUR CO-HOSTS Samantha Bayne, MSN, RN, CMSRN, NPD-BC is a nursing professional development practitioner in the inland northwest specializing in medical-surgical nursing. The first four years of her practice were spent bedside on a busy ortho/neuro unit where she found her passion for newly graduated RNs, interdisciplinary collaboration, and professional governance. Sam is an unwavering advocate for medical-surgical nursing as a specialty and enjoys helping nurses prepare for specialty certification.    Laura Johnson, MSN, RN, NPD-BC, CMSRN has been a nurse since 2008 with a background in Med/Surg and Oncology.  She is a native Texan currently working in the Dallas area.  She has held many positions throughout her career from bedside nurse to management/leadership to education.  Laura obtained her MSN in nursing education in 2018 and is currently pursuing her DNP.  She has worked both as a bedside educator and a nursing professional development practitioner for both new and experienced staff.  She enjoys working with the nurse residency program as a specialist in palliative care/end of life nursing and mentorship.  She is currently an NPD practitioner for oncology and bone marrow transplant units.             Neil H. Johnson, RN, BSN, CMSRN, epitomizes a profound familial commitment to the nursing profession, marking the third generation in his family to tread this esteemed path. Following the footsteps of his father, grandfather, grandmother, aunt, and cousin, all distinguished nurses, Neil transitioned to nursing as a second career after a brief tenure as an elementary school teacher. Currently on the verge of completing his MSN in nurse education, he aspires to seamlessly integrate his dual passions. Apart from his unwavering dedication to nursing, Neil actively seeks serenity in nature alongside his canine companions. In his professional capacity, he fulfills the role of a med-surg nurse at the Moses Cone Health System in North Carolina.   Eric Torres, ADN, RN, CMSRN is a California native that has always dreamed of seeing the World, and when that didn't work out, he set his sights on nursing.  Eric is beyond excited to be joining the AMSN podcast and having a chance to share his stories and experiences of being a bedside medical-surgical nurse.   Maritess M. Quinto, DNP, RN, NPD-BC, CMSRN is a clinical educator currently leading a team of educators who is passionately helping healthcare colleagues, especially newly graduate nurses. She was born and raised in the Philippines and immigrated to the United States with her family in Florida. Her family of seven (three girls and two boys with her husband who is also a Registered Nurse) loves to travel, especially to Disney World. She loves to share her experiences about parenting, travelling, and, of course, nursing!   Sydney Wall, RN, BSN, CMSRN has been a med surg nurse for 5 years. After graduating from the University of Rhode Island in 2019, Sydney commissioned into the Navy and began her nursing career working on a cardiac/telemetry unit in Bethesda, Maryland.  Currently she is stationed overseas, providing care for service members and their families.  During her free time, she enjoys martial arts and traveling.   

On today's program, Morningstar Ministries is undergoing a leadership shakeup…after its CEO resigned, allegations of sexual misconduct began to arise. We'll have details. And, many Christian colleges have fallen on hard times. But a Christian university in Georgia has been trying out new ways to grow enrollment…and it appears to be working. We'll take a look. Plus, Trinity International University is on the look out for a new president….just six months after its current president took the reins. But first, the National Religious Broadcasters is suing the IRS over the Johnson Amendment. The producer for today's program is Jeff McIntosh.  We get database and other technical support from Stephen DuBarry, Rod Pitzer, and Casey Sudduth. Writers who contributed to today's program include Bob Smietana, Kim Roberts, Chris Moon, Tony Mator, and Brittany Smith. A special thanks to the Christian Standard for contributing material for this week's podcast. Until next time, may God bless you.     MANUSCRIPT   FIRST SEGMENT Warren: Hello everybody. I'm Warren Smith, coming to you from Charlotte, North Carolina. Natasha: And I'm Natasha Cowden, coming to you from Denver, Colorado. And we'd like to welcome you to the MinistryWatch podcast. Warren: On today's program, Morningstar Ministries is undergoing a leadership shakeup…after its CEO resigned, allegations of sexual misconduct began to arise. We'll have details. And, many Christian colleges have fallen on hard times. But a Christian university in Georgia has been trying out new ways to grow enrollment…and it appears to be working. We'll take a look. Plus, Trinity International University is on the look out for a new president….just six months after its current president took the reins. Natasha: But first, the National Religious Broadcasters is suing the I-R-S over the Johnson Amendment.. Warren: A group of evangelical broadcasters is suing the Internal Revenue Service over the Johnson Amendment, a tax law that bars nonprofits from supporting political candidates. Lawyers for the National Religious Broadcasters, along with two Baptist churches and a conservative group called Intercessors for America, argue in their suit that the ban on engaging in politics restricts their freedom of speech and freedom of religion. They further argue that the IRS ignores the politicking of some charities, while threatening to punish others. Natasha: Do they have examples to support their claim? Warren: Lawyers for the groups claim that newspapers and other news outlets that have become nonprofits in recent years, such as the Philadelphia Inquirer, endorse candidates. Why can't churches or other Christian groups, they want to know, do the same? Natasha: The lawsuit is the latest challenge to the Johnson Amendment, a 1954 law that has long been the bane of conservative groups and, in particular, preachers seeking to become more involved in politics. The ban on taking sides in campaigns — including endorsements or campaign contributions — applies to nonprofits that fall under section 501(c)(3) of the IRS code.  Warren: The current lawsuit pitches its argument toward religious freedom principles. But the growing number of nonprofit newsrooms has added a new twist to the arguments over the Johnson Amendment that has to do with fairness. Those newsrooms, the complaint argues, should be required to abide by the same rules as other charities. The complaint points specifically to the Inquirer's candidate endorsements, as well as articles critical of candidates in other nonprofit publications from 2012 to the present, claiming all violated IRS rules with impunity. A spokesman for the IRS declined to comment, citing the pending litigation. The NRB did not respond to a series of questions from RNS about the lawsuit. Natasha: Next, the president of MorningStar Ministries, a prominent charismatic ministry just outside of Ch...

On episode 489 of The Nurse Keith Show nursing and healthcare career podcast, Keith interviews Bevens Goodman, RN, MSN, FNP-C, the Chief Brand Officer of Array Skin Therapy. As a company founded by a nurse practitioner, Array is the only stand-alone purveyor of narrowband UVB light therapy, a highly effective treatment for psoriasis, vitiligo, eczema, and other challenging skin conditions. Array offers visionary nurse practitioners (and ambitious RNs) the opportunity to purchase an Array Skin Therapy franchise and build a business with the support and expertise of the dynamic team based in Array's California corporate headquarters. In the course of their conversation, Keith and Bevens discuss the nature of franchises, the challenges of the mainstream nurse practitioner career path and lifestyle, and how curiosity and saying yes can lead to unforeseen treasures and success. Bevens Goodman, MSN, FNP-C, has been a nurse practitioner at Array Skin Therapy since 2016, specializing in narrowband UVB light therapy for patients with chronic skin conditions like psoriasis, vitiligo, and eczema. Inspired by her work with Array's CEO, a pioneering NP, she developed a passion for branding, leading her to become the Chief Brand Officer. Bevens is on a mission to increase awareness of narrowband UVB light therapy as a drug-free solution for skin conditions, and make it more accessible through franchising. Connect with Bevens Goodmand and Array Skin Therapy: Array Skin Therapy Array Skin Therapy Franchise Opportunity Facebook Instagram Tiktok YouTube Bevens Goodman on LinkedIn Contact Nurse Keith about holistic career coaching to elevate your nursing and healthcare career at NurseKeith.com. Keith also offers services as a motivational and keynote speaker and freelance nurse writer. You can always find Keith on LinkedIn. Are you looking for a novel way to empower your career and move forward in life? Keith's wife, Shada McKenzie, is a gifted astrologer and reader of the tarot who combines ancient and modern techniques to provide valuable insights into your motivations, aspirations, and life trajectory, and she offers listeners of The Nurse Keith Show a 10% discount on their first consultation. Contact Shada at TheCircelandtheDot.com or shada@thecircleandthedot.com.

Former video editor claims he was fired for failing to follow Ramsey's faith-based beliefs on how to deal with COVID-19 pandemic. By Bob Smietana for Religion News Service A federal appeals court has ruled in favor of a former employee who claimed Ramsey Solutions, the company run by Christian personal finance guru Dave Ramsey, discriminated against him during the COVID-19 pandemic. Brad Amos, a former video editor at the Franklin, Tennessee-based company, sued Ramsey Solutions in 2021, saying he was fired for not agreeing with Ramsey's faith-based views about how to respond to the pandemic. During the pandemic, Dave Ramsey downplayed the risk of COVID-19, referred to those who wear masks as “wusses,” barred employees from working at home and said his company would be guided by faith not fear. Amos' attorneys alleged that at the Lampo Group — which does business as Ramsey Solutions — wearing a mask or social distancing was seen as “against the will of God,” and employees were required to agree with Ramsey's beliefs about the pandemic. Attorneys for Amos also claimed that his faith, including Amos' belief in the so-called Golden Rule — doing unto others as you would have them do unto you — required him to mask, social distance and comply with other CDC recommendations during the pandemic. His insistence on doing so, Amos alleged, led to his firing. “Amos says that his termination was based on his failure to submit to Lampo's religious practices and his expression of his own religious beliefs with regard to COVID measures. These facts form the basis for Amos's religious-discrimination claims,” according to a ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth District. Amos' attorney also claimed that Ramsey Solutions had committed fraud by allegedly lying to him about the “cult-like” atmosphere at the company. In December, a U.S. District Court had dismissed both the discrimination and fraud claims before they went to trial, saying Amos had failed to show he was discriminated against. In the lower court ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Eli Richardson wrote that “it is not enough that a plaintiff's sincerely held religious beliefs do not align with the religious beliefs that underlie the employment policy (requirement) that the plaintiff was terminated for non- complying with. Instead, the plaintiff needs to have alleged a religious belief that conflicts with an employment requirement,” Richardson wrote. On Thursday (Aug. 8), the Sixth Circuit ruled that the district court had erred in dismissing Amos' discrimination claim. The court ruled that federal law protects employees from discrimination based on “religious non-conformity” — also known as reverse discrimination, or requiring an employee to follow a religious belief or practice. The Sixth Circuit Court also ruled that a belief in the Golden Rule qualified as a religious claim and was protected from discrimination. During the appeal, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a friend of the court brief, urging the appeals court to reverse the lower court ruling — saying Amos had made a plausible claim for religious discrimination. The EEOC also argued that the term “reverse religious discrimination” was not accurate and said the term “religious non-conformity” was more accurate in cases like the one involving Amos. “As with all other types of religious-discrimination claims, the employer is accused of discriminating against the employee on the basis of religion,” the EEOC wrote. “Here, however, it is the employer's religion that is the focus. But that doesn't make the discrimination ‘reverse.'” “We're happy with the result and look forward to the opportunity to continue fighting for our client,” Jonathan Street, an attorney for Amos, told RNS in a statement. The case will now return to the lower district court for trial. Ramsey Solutions did not respond to a request for comment.

We had a great program on Monday with Terry Fletcher CPC CEMC CCC CCS CCS-P CMC ACS-CA SCP-CA PACS QMPM Christine Hall Stephanie Allard, CPC, CEMA, RHIT Scott Kraft and John Paul Spencer and their take on some hard-hitting issues: 1. Practices wanting to use RNs or MAs to do post of visits after 90-global surgery 2. Medical necessity for E/M services and the fact that a face-to-face visit has occurred in the office not being the only required component to be able to bill. And so much more!