Season 2 of The Ritual Nurse: RISE First – The Season of Radical Nursing
Nursing is at a crossroads. On the news, we’re seeing headlines that make it painfully clear: the profession is under siege from every angle. The VA just canceled massive nursing union contracts, cutting away at hard-won protections for thousands of nurses. A nurse was arrested for filming ICE activity, no charges were ever filed, but they still put their hands on her. On social media, the same story repeats across platforms: “This job is killing me. I hate it. But I became a nurse because I wanted to help people.” Here in Nevada Governor Lombardo refused to sign the safe staffing ratios. It died on his desk. Media is trying to use the nursing shortage and nurses standing up for themselves (like nurses on strike, or nurses speaking out) as a way to erode the unshakeable trust people have in us. To withstand all of this and force change, on behalf of our patients, ourselves… we must be healed and whole. We will continue to advocate for patients and keep them safe. We will also do the same for ourselves by committing to putting ourselves first, so we CAN take care of others.
I don’t really know what needs to be communicated to clearly get people to understand what they will be facing if they lose nurses. No nurses, no healthcare. Period. (I said what I said)(I obviously feel the same about our doctors and providers as well, but I don’t do a doctor podcast, I do a nursing podcast)(… and providers can’t provide… without nurses)
This is where we start Season 2. Not in the comfort of pretending things are fine, but in the raw space where reality lives.
The theme this season is RISE First. It is a challenge and a promise that before we can care for others, we must be willing to rise for ourselves. This is not a soft slogan. It is survival. Nurses are leaving the profession in numbers we cannot ignore, and those who remain are often doing so at the expense of their health, families, and mental well-being. We are in a profession that can heal, but we have normalized the idea that the healers themselves must be broken to do the work. We have normalized not being able to truly talk about it without being seen “as the problem” or “having a bad attitude”. That’s gaslighting and sick. If we don’t talk about it, we can’t fix it.
When I discuss things from the perspective of “fixing them” it’s never from the perspective of forcing the nurse back into being the model asset and a complacent FTE. It is strictly from the perspective of NURSE FIRST. We deserve the right to know and be skilled in the art of healing ourselves, setting firm boundaries that protect our mental and physical health, and thriving in the profession we sacrificed so much for. For some nurses that means never returning to the bedside, for others that means being at the bedside but in a totally different capacity. “uh… how are you helping the nursing shortage then????” Well first, there isn’t a nursing shortage. There is a shortage of nurses being willing to be subjected to the conditions, pay, and abuse in corporate healthcare systems. Secondly there is ZERO shortage of people trying to become nurses, but the for-profit systems of nursing education have vastly taken over the space and are creating scarcity and demand by underpaying educators, moving everything online, and limiting spaces. There aren’t enough educators because schools won’t pay them what they are worth and are trying to shift everything to self taught online modules with educators “making up the difference by teaching in clinical settings”. I’m not entirely sure how the nursing boards and organizations are actually approving these educational pathways as certified.
What I do know is that there are nurses who love being at the bedside, if they could just survive. I do know there are still tens of thousands who want to truly help others, but not at the expense of destroying themselves. I also know that ‘bedside’ nursing is NOT the only way to nurse no matter how much hospital and healthcare systems want to tell people that so they have more FTE assets to burn through. Nursing as a profession is needed in so many different areas of healthcare, public spaces, IT, education, and more. Our training and expertise combined with our critical thinking and ethics, make us perfect candidates for areas where decisions impact lives and shape futures.
In this launch episode, I share my own breaking point. Late in the pandemic, I was injured while responding to a code blue. That injury was the final push after years of carrying secondary trauma from my patients and primary trauma experienced as a critical care nurse. As a covid frontliner, structures that had held together the spaces that drove us onward, were collapsing all around. Healthcare was unrecognizable. We knew how bad it was but no one had openly voiced it and the pandemic ripped every single emerald curtain down. Nurses were dying. I was diagnosed with PTSD, and in that moment, I realized the research I had been doing on burnout and moral injury wasn’t just academic. It was my lived experience. As was my realization that I couldn’t discuss it, couldn’t get help for it, and was expected to be silent about it… just like the thousands that answered my research surveys.
The Code Team educational platform grew out of that realization. The RISE Theory of Nursing started with recognizing the absolute fracture and cognitive dissonance between what we are trained to provide with high levels of skill and dedication, but yet also taught to imminently deny ourselves at all costs. It is a framework built for nurses, grounded in trauma-informed care, and backed by evidence-based behavioral science. This season, we will work through the RISE Curriculum together: that includes six categories of skills that go beyond survival to help nurses build a foundation strong enough to weather both the shift and the system.
We are going to talk about the silenced truths. The culture of denial and repercussion around mental health in nursing. The professional gaslighting that tells us we are “resilient” when what they mean is “we will endure anything without complaint.” The way policy decisions made far above our heads can dismantle the protections we rely on in a matter of hours. And we will not just talk about it , we will work through it, with tools you can carry into your next shift and your next season of life. Resilience is actually a real component of psychological survival; they don’t get to keep using as a buzzword anymore.
Season 2 is about reclaiming the humanity in nursing. It is about refusing to accept harm as part of the job. It is about saying, without apology, that our lives matter as much as the patients we serve. This is not a palliative podcast to make you malleable at the bedside. This is to make us strong enough to do what we love and force the systems around us to change. We are millions and millions strong. This podcast is the fastest way to get this information directly to nurses lost in the noise, the corporate nonsense, the trauma exposure. They can’t stop soundwaves. They shouldn’t want to but that’s another episode ;). Share this podcast. Share it everywhere. My goal is to reach as many of the millions of nurses as I can… because we are truly a world-shifting-force.
If you are tired, you are not weak. If you are angry, you are not alone. If you are still here, you are not beyond repair. This is where we begin again, together.
