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Interview of Theresa Brown, RN on Her New Book "Healing" (Part 2)

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Episode page and links: https://valuecapturellc.com/he65

Welcome to Episode #65 of Habitual Excellence, presented by Value Capture.

Joining us again today is Theresa Brown, PhD, BSN, RN. She is a nurse and writer who lives in Pittsburgh. Her third book — Healing: When a Nurse Becomes a Patient — is available now. It explores her diagnosis of and treatment for breast cancer in the context of her own nursing work. Her book, The Shift: One Nurse, Twelve Hours, Four Patients' Lives, was a New York Times Bestseller.

Theresa's BSN is from the University of Pittsburgh, and during what she calls her past life she received a PhD in English from the University of Chicago.

Today's episode is the second part of a two-part series with Theresa that started in episode #64.

In today's episode, Theresa talks about the conviction of RaDonda Vaught -- why is this triggering a lot of fear amongst nurses -- and they talk more about the issues she raises in her books.

Host Mark Graban also asks Theresa questions and discusses topics including:

  • 250,000 Americans a year are dying from medical errors and “no one is doing much to change that” — why is that?
  • What can be done (or needs to be done) to reduce infections and medication errors?
  • You’ve written about mistakes you’ve made… and you wrote about how that wasn’t easy. What happened with the mistake you made (and I hate how that sounds blaming) — the mistake you were involved with regarding the steroid injection?
  • You wrote about being “too proud” to tell your manager that a shift’s assignment was “potentially overwhelming” — Why was that?
  • Thoughts on laws requiring certain nurse to patient ratios?
  • What can be done about the problem of nurses not getting breaks or time to eat lunch
  • Thoughts on 12-hour shifts? Increased risk of error, but fewer handoffs. Can we improve the way handoffs are done?
  • “One of the key factors in burnout, though, is employees feeling like they have little control over their work environment. That’s pretty much status quo in hospitals for nurses and doctors.” — What can be done about that??
  • Epilogue - your main recommendations for our American health system?

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