Dani:

Welcome back to the Handoff, the nursing leadership podcast from Trusted Health. I'm your host, Dr. Dani Bowie. Today we delve into the intersection of nursing in politics. I'm speaking with Dr. Lisa Summers and Dr. Kimberly Gordon, the co-founders of Healing Politics, a nonprofit dedicated to getting more nurses into elected office. We explore how nurses with their unique experiences and skill sets can play a crucial role in healing our political landscape and fostering innovative solutions in the realm of public policy. Lisa and Kim share stories about nurse legislators and discuss the importance of mentorship, support, and civic engagement within the nursing community. Here's our conversation on the impact of nurses stepping into the world of politics.

Dr. Summers, Dr. Gordon, welcome.

Kimberly:

Good to be here.

Lisa:

Such a pleasure to meet you.

Dani:

Well, I'm really excited to chat today and kind of talk more about flexible workforce, but from the lens of legislation, staffing policy, and just the political stance that nursing can take in, in a space regards to workforce and our profession, Dr. Summers, or Dr. Gordon, can you tell me a bit more about what you're doing at and with your, is it a company or organization, healing politics, and what inspired you to start that path?

Kimberly:

So it is it is a nonprofit corporation called Healing Politics. It's a 501C3 and it is the result of my D N P project at Yale. And that is actually how I met Lisa. I was a student at Yale School of Nursing, and she was assigned as my advisor.

And so when we got there, we were trying to decide what sort of, what would we explore for a D N P project? And I had come to Yale with a colleague, and we had kind of an unusual background. Sharon had run for elected office. We were both certified registered nurse anesthetists, and Sharon had run for office and I ran her campaign. And so while we wanted to do some pretty generic looking in retrospect, generic D N P project, Lisa had said, why don't you guys look at why more nurses don't run for elected office? And so that's what we did. Sharon looked at campaign schools. I interviewed nurses who'd run for office successfully and unsuccessfully, and we took that information and created the Yale Candidate School for nurses and midwives. And so we called that our third D N P project or Lisa's D N P project.

Dani:

<Laugh> <laugh>, you know, that's really great. I, I love how it comes full circle because also I did my D N P project at Yale and it really kind of set the course of my life's work around staffing, scheduling workforce, which I was not anticipating. So I'm so happy to hear the Yale legacy continues on and, and the work that was inspired academically is now turning into something very powerful professionally.

Lisa:

That has been exciting. And I'll just add the somewhat unfortunate end of that story at Yale is that the campaign school was scheduled for May of 2020. So if you, usually when I say this in a live group, there's a groan in the audience because everybody realizes what happened with something planned in person in May of 2020. So Kimberly and Sharon did graduate having gone on a little bit of a pivot for a webinar that we, we did. But when they graduated, we thought, wow, you know, we've got this curriculum, we've got faculty, we had applicants from all over the US who had applied and been accepted to the campaign schools. So we thought, well, we just can't let this go. So as Kimberly said, it became this nonprofit healing politics, and we are now on track for May of 2023 to hold that in-person campaign school.

Dani:

I love it. You kept perseverance in a place of, you know, you saw the need and kept pushing forward. And you're right, everyone does groan as we think about March of 2020 and how that just kind of halted everything. I, you know, I I was curious before we jump into some of the legislative solutions around staffing, Kimberly, Kimberly, or Kim, you mentioned that you led a campaign, so you were, were you, did you lead a campaign for a, a colleague and had you had experience doing that? Or how, how did you even get into that space?

Kimberly:

No experience whatsoever. Okay. since I had become a registered nurse, I'm a second degree nurse. I was an accountant first and then became a nurse, and then a nurse anesthetist. And, and ever since I became a nurse, I realized how important it was to understand policy, be involved in politics, and that was my background. I did a lot of advocacy work at the state and the national level. And through that had met other nurses who were very engaged in policy and advocacy. And so my colleague Sharon ran for office and she said, would you manage my campaign? And I said, yes. She'd never run for office. I had never managed a campaign. And we lost pretty miserably in the primary. We had no idea what we were doing, but we really learned a lot and we thought more nurses need to do this and then enter the perfect opportunity at Yale for that to happen. Lisa and her really kind of teasing that age.

Dani:

Yeah. And you know, I, I was curious. I was gonna ask, did you when or lose, but you know, you didn't really lose because it sounded like you learned and things continue to grow and evolve, and you're paid me a path for a profession in this space that feels a bit untapped, but a lot of potential here. You know, can we talk a bit more about some of the legislative solutions around staffing and workforce issues? You know, either ones that exist are being considered. This is a really hot topic, a lot of hashing around it and has been for years, but with covid, things have definitely accelerated and highlighted some of the brokenness of the existing solutions system approach. And people are looking to solve this. So I would love your guys' perspective on the legislative approach around this.

Lisa:

So I'll start, and I'm sure Kimberly has a lot to add. You know, when I think about this, Dani, I think about the problem of staffing as a good example of a problem that has multiple solutions. And solutions need to come from a variety of places. Legislation is certainly one of them. I I am not an expert in this area, but just having watched it and seen what happens state to state, it's another example of how differently politics, policies, issues play out from state to state. The story in California is very different than the story in Massachusetts or Washington or Nebraska. And so I think it is, again, a good example of, you know, it's often been said, all politics is local. And I think if you're looking at legislative and political solutions to staffing it's a good example. Granted, there are some national conversations about federal legislation, but it's my perception that most of the action has happened at a state level. Do you wanna add to that? And I, I wanna come back to something else that's maybe a little bit more of a side tangent for that. Yeah.

Kimberly:

Well, obviously Covid has shown us that there are some really big problems in our healthcare system, and my nurses are dealing with those problems on a daily basis. A lot of what's happened isn't new, it's just amplified. And so I do think that Covid has kind of sped up the innovation around this area, but one of the best ways I can think to talk about this is last May, we went to the nurses march in May of 2022, and 10,000 nurses from around the United States came and they were marching on Washington. And part of that was better staffing, better work conditions, violence in nursing. And while there were some legislative pieces to address that at the national level, when we spoke to nurses, nurse to nurse, how many nurses do you have in your state legislature?

Have you ever thought about running for office? We're here and we're marching and we're visible today, and that's wonderful, but what are we going to do tomorrow to solve the problem? Because it's not, we've identified what the problem is, and nurses now need to sit down and innovate and solve that problem. And I think the way that we are educated, the way that we're trained, and the way that we practice, that if you cut a group of nurses in the room in a room together to innovate about this, where locally, wherever, wherever they are, whatever state they're in, I suspect that they would come up with a lot of solutions. And some of them are legislative and some of them are working ahead to address the things that legislation can't. So those unintended consequences of legislation just reading about California, and they were talking about, you know, the staffing ratios 20 years later.

But what hospitals did is then they got rid of support staff because they had to hire more nurses. Well, I suspect that if we had a nurse in the California legislature, or that if there were a group of nurses that were tackling that they would've thought about these innovative practice models and innovative ways to deliver care. That yes, staffing ratios are very important, but so is, so are all of the professions and assistive personnel around nurses. And I suspect that a nurse probably would've come up with, with that if given the opportunity. And so that's why it is so important to have us at these tables, whether they be national in, in Congress at the state level, locally, when we're talking about where dollars go that are allocated from the state level to, to public health and public hospitals, but within our hospitals too sitting on those committees and adding taking that leadership role to say, I'm gonna help solve this problem. I'm living it, but I wanna help solve it as well.

Dani:

Absolutely. You know, I've, as I mentioned, I spent, I've spent my career around workforce and have thought about it day in, day out due to academia as well as some of the positions I've held in healthcare and have, have often, you know, and lived in different states, Oregon, Washington, Ohio. So I've experienced a state staffing approach to nursing and, and, you know, who doesn't wanna get the right number of nurses to care for patients. I think the intent is good, but I agree, I think, you know, understanding holistically happening at the workforce and drawing the solutions from the frontline, the managers and the leaders. And I, you know, I'm curious to also understand how would you encourage nurses to get involved or seek out those opportunities? I have done some state staffing prepared for testimony as we talked about legislation that was going whether to the house or I believe it was the house at the state level, and I, you know, others could correct me if I'm wrong there, but we've done preparation and we are preparing nurses and our professional organizations to speak.

And but I'd just be curious to know how you would encourage nurses to seek out those opportunities. And I know, Lisa, you also mentioned that there is a side, side note that you wanted to talk about, so I just wanna make sure you bring that up as well.

Lisa:

Yeah, and actually you said the phrase that I think is really critical in terms of how can nurses really amplify their voice and, and engage in a very productive way. And that is through professional organizations. Certainly the ANA has made staffing central to their policy and advocacy work. I know you've been engaged in that. It occurred also at the state level. So I think from, you know, the what can I do? How can I get engaged? I can't think of a better way to join your voice with your professional association and learn what's happening at the, at local level, at the state level, and at the national level as well.

And for our work, that involvement in professional organizations is really critical because it's through that work that nurses begin to appreciate the role of politics. You know, I'd be really interested to know, well, your thoughts and your listeners. I really feel like in my generation, we sort of grew up with this idea that eh, nurses didn't really have a role in politics. We should sort of be above politics. And politics has kind of messy, and we should really stay out of politics. My sense is, particularly in my students and the younger generation that I teach, but there's more openness to engagement in politics. It's, it's seen actually is a professional responsibility by many nurses. So I think, again, it is in professional associations that nurses, they meet lobbyists, they learn from the advocacy standpoint how to prepare testimony, testimony, how to go speak to elected officials, et cetera.

And, and I'll just segue into the comment that came to mind with an earlier question, and that is simply, what do we know about how nurses are in elected office? And when you think about legislative solutions in your state legislature or in Congress, how many people debating this from their position as an elected representative are nurses? And that was one of our first questions that, you know, from a scholarly inquiry point of view at Yale that we began to look at, well, how many nurses serve an elected office? Well, at that point, when this project started, we had six nurses in Congress. We only have three today. There's never been a nurse in this senate. And we have some data from Darlene Curley, who's done some work on this. In the last year that the number of nurses in state legislatures is actually declining.

We have 16 states in the nation do not have a single nurse in their legislature. Part of the incentive for our work is let's change that. One of the things that I think about also in terms of the staffing conversation, I remember a nurse, I think this was at the nurses march, but I remember a nurse being really frustrated about the press, around conversations about capping nurses pay. And I believe this is when the travel nurse pay was really a hot topic in the press. And this nurse said, well, how many of these legislators talking about this have ever dealt with this? How many of them have ever gone in and been understaffed or gone how worrying about the safety of their patients? And she was justifiably very emotional asking this question and saying, they've never lived this. They don't know. To which I was really tempted to say, well, what are you gonna do about that <laugh>?

How can we change that? Yes, that's a problem. We, you know, we're not gonna have every legislator have that experience, but we need more legislators that have that experience, can speak to it, and can bring groups together to speak from their personal experience about what that means.

Dani:

I would agree. And turning, you know, passion into purpose and forging a path forward into how to make that a reality, which I'm so thankful that you are both helping our profession move into this new reality. Lisa, you touched on, you know, a generational kind of approach that your generation of, as you mentioned, was kind of above. It wasn't, it wasn't something that it, it was the path for them, but you're seeing a difference and a difference in the new generation coming up. And what do you think is increasing the enthusiasm for political involvement? And now where's the, the motivation enthusiasm coming from, from those nurses? If, if you have a sense, either of you?

Lisa:

Well, you know, one of the things that we have built a lot of our programming and our marketing around is a concept that we call see it to be it that you have to see someone in that role before you can imagine it. Every month in our newsletter, we highlight a nurse, an elected office, a photo, and a little bit about what they do. And we're building out a page on our website that will have photos and bio of nurse legislators. And the idea is to put that in front of nurses to say, you can do this. And there's, and so much press around our first Gen Z member of Congress. And I think, you know, the sad reality to me is to listen to this generation concerned about gun violence, concerned about climate change, sort of looking around and saying, you know, somebody's got a deal with this and we may be young and we may not have, you know, this kind of experience or law degrees or whatever they think, you know, the older generation felt like one needed to run for office, but they're looking around and saying, someone's gotta deal with this.

And I think as we see more young, I'm one of our nurses in Congress, Lauren Underwood is very well known. I'm trying to remember how old she was when she got elected 32, I believe. So I think it's that, see it to be at, and I think younger folks are being inspired by more younger people in elected office. I don't know, what do you think, Kimberly?

Kimberly:

I, there's definitely is extremely important. One thing that has surprised me as we've watched applications roll in how many 25 year olds are applying for the campaign school. And that gives me such great hope because they're angry understandably, but they're also gonna do something about it. And they are looking at more than, yes, staffing affects their day-to-day work, but like Lisa was saying, they also may have an interest in climate change or an interest in their, something that's happening in their community education.

So they wanna run for school board, or they have children that are about to go to school. And so they're really picking up on this. We do hear some, I wanna run for Congress. Well, we hear a lot of, there are things in my community that need to be changed in, in my immediate community because my family's affected, or I'm affected or work is affected or how I get to work is affected. But what they don't put together with that is their nursing piece. And that's that they see, they've got all this experience, I'm glad that they're jumping out and doing this, but what they see in their practice when they see, you know, a non-compliant, I'm using quotes here, patient that has anything to do with the fact that they don't want to take their medication. They may not be able to get to it, they may not be able to afford it, they may not be able to read what we're giving them.

I mean, nurses see all of that as well. And I, we don't do as good of a job at putting that together. And I wonder if our younger generation is doing a better job of that.

Dani:

You know, I would agree. As I think about our profession, we're trained in systems thinking, whether it's at the macro or micro level, for instance, for a patient, you know, and we look at all the, the, all the labs vitals, and then even holistically, what's their community of support? What does it look like when they're inpatient, outpatient, you know? And so we're trained to be holistic thinkers around health and translation into that, into our communities, into the places that we live. And seeing, you know, thinking about from a lens of health and for instance, what's, whether it's education, the younger generation, our older generation, how do we care for in aging generation?

You know, can you help provide some examples of maybe how nurse lawmakers are facilitating cross aisle collaboration in this new space and, and how they're forging a path in that way?

Kimberly:

I have a great example of a nurse taking a clinical issue. I'll, I'll get to the, the collaboration and which I think nurses in particular do very well. But Karina Reyes is an assembly woman in New York City. She represents the Bronx. But during that first covid outbreak in New York City, she went back and worked clinically in her oncology unit. And that is when we learned that there was an adequate PPE nurses were wearing garbage bags, and she was able to go back when they went back into session via Zoom and say, I am living this right here, and we need to change. They passed legislation almost immediately to address some of those concerns.

And that was fantastic, not only because we had a lawmaker that could make an immediate change, but because her colleagues got to see the power. Having somebody in that position and having that line to the people who are making the policy, sitting in that room, pressing yes or no makes a difference. And so it was, it's an incredibly powerful story to hear her tell it. And it's just incredibly important, not just for her, the nurse and her legislator colleagues, but her nursing colleagues as well. Now, the one thing that we do know, we don't know a lot about nurse legislators and word, we don't have many of them as Lisa had, but the one thing we do know is that women, when they're elected to office and nurses are 88% female as a profession, they're better legislators. They collaborate more, they're willing to find a shared solution that everybody can live with.

An anecdotally we hear that, in fact, one of my favorite articles is from Gail Adcock. She's a nurse practitioner, she's a democrat, and she talks about she lives in the aisle. She doesn't sit on one side or the other, she lives in the aisle because that's where everything is happening. That's where things get done. And I do believe that is really very much a nursing construct, a nursing state of mind that I might not, even if there's a plan of care that I don't agree with, I still bring the team together and say, I have these concerns I have, and we work as a team to solve it. And legislating is no different. And that's why I think we had more nurses, we'd be much better off in our problem solving for our political solutions to some of these issues.

Lisa:

So it's interesting because when we first started looking at this and began to read the political science literature and talk with political scientists, this idea that there are some significant gender differences in Canada emergence and how candidates run and are elected and legislate that Kimberly just mentioned we certainly learned about that.

And many of the political scientists were really interested in what we were doing because they were looking at it through the frame of gender. And so we, we were very quick to say to them, well, that's very relevant and important for the majority of our profession, but we are really interested in learning how nurses come to this question of candidate emergence political engagement, and that will include women and men. So that's been an interesting piece of our learning. And it sort of gets to, you know, the comment you made, Dani, about nurses being systems thinkers and Kimberly talking about those other characteristics that the political scientists see associated with women in elected office. But we very often think about them as nursing characteristics. Nurses are great communicators. We negotiate, we bring teams together, we do all those things every day in our clinical practice. We learn it from early on.

The other thing that has come up in so many of our interviews with nurse legislators is that idea of trust. You know, we often hear at reference to the Gallup poll about nurses being the most trusted profession. But what many nurses will say when you ask them what did they bring from their nursing experience to legislation? And this gets to your question of working across the aisle, many of them will say, you know, I remember in nursing school being taught when I walked in a patient's room, I had about a minute to establish trust. I had to walk in, create a relationship and make that a trusting relationship. And I had to do it quickly. And nurses pretty quickly learn how to do that. And it becomes pardon and parcel of what we do every day when we're in a clinical setting.

And so nurses talk about how they use that in a legislative environment. They're able to meet people, established trust, open lines of communication. And as Kimberly said, we don't have enough nurse legislators for the political scientists to be doing good research yet <laugh>. But we believe that we will see that about from nurses in general because we share those skills, those abilities, those characteristics that we believe can begin to change some of that conversation that is not so productive in political circles today.

Dani:

I love it. How yous we're, we're gonna not yet, we don't have a nurse yet for significant research, but it's coming and you're right, who knew clinicals was training you for a political career, potentially, if that's the desire of, of the nurse that's so inclined. You know, I would love to get some perspective from both of you. We've been talking to our guests this season really around flexibility.

It's a hot topic. I have studied the literature, it's a driving force for the frontline nurses. They want flexibility, control over their schedule. But I'm really trying to understand what does flexibility mean? And so I wanted to understand from both of your perspective as nurses with unique backgrounds, you know, what does flexibility mean to you as a leader in the space that you're in, but also to the frontline nurses that you're working with, particularly around, you know, the work that they're doing. So whether that's caring for a patient or in politics and how flexibility is a topic, or maybe it's not a topic when you're talking with those that you are working with or serving or helping along the, the path.

Kimberly:

I don't necessarily, I have not heard anybody use flexibility. I hear that a lot for workforce issues. I have not heard that in relation to nurse, but I will say what I hear a lot is what Lisa had touched on, innovation, open-mindedness, the ability to look at a problem differently or come from a different perspective.

And that is very much a nursing characteristic. And I've got another example of another legislator. Sophia Aragon is the mayor of Burlington Bur in Washington. And she tells a story that when she was a council member, they a city was taking over a building and was going to put nonprofit businesses in it. And she looked at the, you know, a whole city council, this is a great idea, the city is doing a fabulous thing. And she's like, this is fantastic. But when they got the reports back there, there was asbestos in the building, and she said, we can't do this. We can't bring people in there and mitigate it while they're in there, move them in. And everybody's like, oh, no, no, no, we're gonna fix it. We'll just fix it. And she's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. But her ability to look at this is a great idea, we should be doing this.

This is how we're going to, but this is how much money it'll cost. This is the city's bid do. But saying, bringing that little extra perspective of health in all policy, but had nothing to do with healthcare, but it was her healthcare background. So I would say that nurse, from a nurse legislator standpoint, just by having nurses there, gives legislators, legislatures flexibility in how they look at a program or how they look at a certain policy and can unwind those unintended consequences ahead of time. And that's the value of having a nurse perspective, but from flexibility from, from our point of view at the at the frontline for a frontline worker, it would be for nursing leaders to also understand how important this work is. So if a nurse comes in and says, I wanna run for my local school board that we can actually make that happen.

And that's the one thing we've seen in nursing is that our nursing leaders, our CNOs, our C-suite level nurses actually understand the importance of that. So again, that ability to support someone's desire to do that and kind of hold them up and say, yes, we want you to do this. This will help improve our profession, our patients, our institution, we want you to do these things. And to also put it forward as a possibility because nurses just don't think of it as a possibility.

Lisa:

When I think about flexibility I think about it kinda from a career trajectory. You know, you are saying, Dani, that you know, you've been involved in workforce issues. It was your passion when you came to Yale to study for your D N P. And you've continued in that. And I think there are many nurses who identify a problem, a passion, a place where they can work and, and, and they dig deep and do it for a long time.

And that is really valuable. I, I think about when I went to pursue doctoral education, I was on the faculty in a school of medicine and I had a very clear idea of what I was gonna do with that doctoral degree. And I was gonna spend my career in medical schools with that wonderful tryout of clinical practice and research and teaching. And that's what I wanted to do. And it was really my frustration with policies was regulations that led me to do more and more and more policy and advocacy work. And I'm doing something completely different right now. So when you asked about flexibility, and I think about that personally for me, it's allowed me to explore some really exciting new ideas. And when you think about nurse leadership, it's not just in the C-suite, it's not just as being an entrepreneur or an innovator starting a new company.

Those are all really important ways for nurses to bring their talents to bear. They should also be doing that at the ballot box. We sh and, and certainly, you know, it's gonna be a small percentage of us that want to run for office and do that, but we all should be thinking positively about whether or not we can support a nurse and a run for office and be open to thinking that's another place nurses can bring their talents to bear. And it's Bethany Hall Long was saying on a webinar recently, you know, we, we shouldn't say just a nurse or used to be a nurse. She's a lieutenant governor of Delaware and speaks very eloquently about how she has brought her nursing skills to bear as the lieutenant governor. So anyway, that's my thought about flexibility and how we can encourage nurses to use that.

Dani:

We're getting near the end. And I just wanna wrap up with a couple last questions. What would you say to a nurse leader who might be listening who's never considered the idea of running for office, just any pearls of wisdom that you would wanna share with those that, you know, this conversation is starting to spark something inside of them. And so what would you, what would you say to them listening maybe as next steps or thoughts or ways to think about this very important topic?

Lisa:

Well, one of the things we're trying to do at healing politics is to take that spark, you know, not make anybody make any promises, but to say on our website, one can sign up for our newsletter comes out once a month, and it's not just, I mentioned earlier, see it to be it, the section on nurse legislators, something about what we're reading.

 We do monthly online events that are not just about running for office, but also about civic engagement. We have went from the League of Women voters, et cetera. So we've tried to design our offerings to be not only applicable to those who are thinking, yeah, I'd, I'd like to run for office someday, but also to people that that spark has just gone off. And then for folks that are really more seriously investigating that, well, what would that mean? What would that look like in my life? The campaign school is been designed for that. And the other thing I would say, we're still fairly new. And we have tried to be really responsive to our, our subscribers. We don't have members from that standpoint, but in a lot of the public speaking that we've done, we've gotten great questions, had good conversations, and we really want to know from nurses, what is it that you need to think more about this?

Again, I, that campaign school follows many of the standard approaches for curriculum. It is definitely designed for nurses, but it's the kind of typical campaign school curriculum to address those issues. That would be my answer. What about you, Kimberly?

Kimberly:

I would be to slowly begin speaking with nurses that serve an elected office. But, and it doesn't have to be the office that you necessarily wanna run for. I mean, as long as they're involved or have run, whether it's successfully or unsuccessfully, if you know somebody in your circle engaging, like Lisa had said earlier, we discussed with your professional organization, almost every nursing professional organization has an advocacy arm. And so there you're dealing with lobbyists who are dealing with the legislators, and they may be able to help you to say, well, your, your representative isn't going anywhere anytime soon, but your senator might be retiring, your state senator might be retiring, or if you really wanna test this out, maybe city council, maybe that's where you wanna start.

That's legislating. And it's a more doable campaign. And, and 2023 is municipal election year. So we've had nurses say, you need a pair of tennis shoes and the willingness to knock on doors, that's what you need for local office. So trying it out there, or since this is a municipal election year, working on a local campaign and just trying it out and seeing, is this something I could do?

Lisa:

I'm gonna just quick story about we were speaking to a nurse who had served three terms in a state legislature, and several people from the state had mentioned her and the other nurses as, as individuals who had been so responsive to healthcare needs and to nursing. And they really valued these nurses role in their state legislature. So we had reached out to them, we've tried to reach out to lots of nurse legislators and tell them what we're doing, get their feedback, et cetera.

So I was talking to this nurse legislator who said, you know, when I came into the legislature, there were three nurses in the state legislature at the time, now there are none. And I said, why is that? And she said, well, in my case, and in one other case we were term limited, we have term limits in our state. So I served my three terms and I couldn't run again. And the third one was somebody who'd actually left the state to be closer to her children. But I said to her, so when you were nearing the end of your term, did you ever have a nurse or nurses come to you and say, gee, we're about to lose these incredible advocates in our legislature. What can we do to encourage nurses to run? And she stopped and thought, and she said, you know, I had lots of nurses visit me over the years about issues.

We talked about staffing, we talked about violence, we talked about healthcare access, but I never had a nurse ask me about running for office. And that was really kind of a wake up call for me. It was like, oh boy, wait a minute. If you got a nurse in your state legislature and you value that person, whether they're term limited or not, you ought to be paying attention to how open you use that nurse as a role model in your space to inspire other nurses to do the same.

Dani:

Yeah, it's like passing the baton, right? Is there a way to continue the legacy? And even through mentorship and, and those connections and relationship, which are key. My, my longtime mentor, she's actually who got me into our professional organization at a young age. She's like, Dani, you've gotta, you've gotta act professionally. You've gotta invest into your professional organizations.

And then that was my exposure to the advocacy work and more of the political arm. So I think that's a really good call out. Lisa, you know, I wanna ask the final question that I ask all of our, our guests, and as you think about, you've shared a lot of powerful pearls of wisdom for our listeners today about a unique topic that we, I really haven't spent a lot of time discussing, so thank you. But what would you like to hand off to our listeners today as the final pearl of wisdom from both Lisa, you and, and Kim?

Kimberly:

Mine would be that there are 4.1 million nurses in this country, and we're not all going to run for office, but if the other 4,099,995 helped those that ran, we would be so powerful. We'd have such a powerful voice. And so really making that effort, if you're not gonna run, that's perfectly fine, but support the nurses who do.

Lisa:

And, and I'm willing to amplify that and just encourage nurses who are comfortable in this space, who knocked on doors for a campaign for a nurse or anyone, but have been engaged politically to mentor other nurses in that space. Eight nurses out when you're going door knocking and be an example, a role model for the idea that we do have a professional responsibility to be engaged politically to find our voice and to use our voice politically because I do believe it maybe is a little naive or an audacious goal, but we're called healing politics because we really do believe that the skills and abilities that nurses have could begin to change the political environment in this country and bring about better public policy.

Dani:

That's powerful ending with, you know, amplifying the voice through community. We are a large profession and in healing a space that I do think has had a lot of division and, and it's just sometimes like very anxiety provoking or emotional. So bringing some healing and, and solutions to that. Thank you both for this really powerful conversation, new perspective and helping me understand more about the political space and, and the ways that the profession of nursing is impacting it. I can't wait to share with the listeners and just thank you again for your time.

Kimberly:

Thank you. We really appreciate the opportunity.

Lisa:

Thank you Dani.

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