79: Together We Can Stop Shame and Blame in Nursing-Kristy Meyer RN, BSN, NC-BC

79: Together We Can Stop Shame and Blame in Nursing-Kristy Meyer RN, BSN, NC-BC Transcript

Nicole Vienneau  00:00

Welcome, everyone, to the Integrative Nurse Coaches in ACTION! podcast. My name is Nicole Vienneau. I am your host, and I’m also a Board Certified Integrative Nurse Coach. And I’m coming to you today from La Jolla, California. I’m on a little vacation, and on my vacation, I get to do what I love the most, which is spend time with other integrative Nurse coaches. 

And today, we are welcoming Kristy Meyer. She is from Cottage Grove, Oregon, which is near Eugene, Oregon. She is a Board Certified Integrative Health Nurse Coach, and she’s the founder of Cultivating Shifts. And Cultivating Shifts is empowering Nurses, cultivating resilience and individualizing self care—  supporting Nurses and what we do on a daily basis. 

And Kristy is the perfect person to be doing this. She has been in Nursing for over… in healthcare for over 30 years. And really, what’s fabulous about Kristy, and what I know about her, is that she is an amazing listener, and she can pull threads together and really support people where they are. And so I’ve been looking forward to having Kristy on the podcast today. So enough about me. Let’s welcome Kristy.

Kristy Meyer  01:21

Hi, Nicole, thanks so much for having me here. I feel so honored and privileged to be talking to my fellow Nurses and Nurse coaches that are listening to this podcast.

Nicole Vienneau  01:32

Yes, and we’re so thankful that you are here today with us, yes. So we love to take a little trip down history lane and kind of figure out why you even decided to become a Nurse.

Kristy Meyer  01:47

Yeah, I think, honestly, I think I’ve been on a path to be a Nurse pretty much my whole life. I had really early experiences. My mom was always really interested in health, and I had several Nurses in the family that I looked up to. And early on, I actually… our family believed in natural childbirth, actually. 

And so my mom was a birth photographer, and she took me along with her to births when I was quite young. And I just remember being fascinated with the process and the health of the mom and the baby. And so that was a big, probably early childhood piece that really brought me into Nursing. 

And then as I got out of high school, I actually… I didn’t really know how to become a Nurse, so the first thing I found was medical assisting. And I was so lucky. I ended up—  my first job was so fabulous—  I ended up getting to work in a Diabetes Care Center at the University of Washington, and it happened to be a huge research site. 

And as I had entered into the medical assisting world there and learned more about their research, I realized I was helping with a really large research study that was ending after 20 years of being a research study—  a huge population of diabetics. And so I would say this is my first experience with integrative health before I ever heard the term. 

The research there was focused on working with the diabetic patient with a lot of different resources. So there was a behavioral health specialist on the team. There were many Nurse diabetes educators. There was dietitian diabetes educators, experts in endocrinology—  endocrinologists that specialized in diabetes. And it was my first awareness of how deeply our lifestyles affect our health. 

And that research was actually published and proved that, you know, through lifestyle management in a holistic way, whole person care—  attending to the body and the mind and their needs based on, you know, their own cultures and all the different pieces that make them an individual—  that they have less complications. They controlled their blood sugars better. 

They took care of themselves better because they developed knowledge. They had people that helped coach them on ways to take care of themselves that fit into their lifestyle. And so it was those Nurses that actually clinched the deal on Nursing for me, and that’s when I decided, like, that’s it. 

I’m going to Nursing school and I’m going to be a diabetes educator, was my goal at that point. And then once I got to school, you know, our training in school is very hospital based, overall, especially in the two year degree programs. And I instantly got excited during clinicals about all the wonders of the hospital and all of the exciting things that we did there. 

And I just totally shifted into I’m going to work in the hospital. I’m learning so much, I love what I’m doing, every day is a new learning. Every day is a new exciting thing happening that I get to be part of, and I get to impact all these people’s lives. And so when I graduated Nursing school, I actually came down here to Eugene and started my Nursing practice as a float pool Nurse, actually, because that’s all they would give me as a new grad. 

I really wanted to work in surgical. And also working in float pool was such a gift. Like, I learned so much. I floated to 10 different units. Learned a lot of things. Learned to actually build a lot of flexibility in my Nursing practice and learned how to use my colleagues to help me Nurse better and learn better. And you have to do that to survive in float pool, for sure, you can jump into each different territory. 

And after a couple years of that, I decided I was going to become a NICU Nurse. There was a training program that came up, and I was like, you know, I want to dive deep into something. And that’s funny, because, you know, it’s just like Nursing is sometimes, I remember in school going to the NICU and being like, no, there’s no way I’m doing this. 

Like, this is so scary, touching these little babies. And then here I found myself, like, three years later, like I’m going to do the training program. And so I really found a lot of passion, and stayed there for about 10 years, a little under 10 years, and built up my practice all the way up into transport Nursing. 

So, you know, I’d get in the ambulance with a respiratory therapist, and we would go out into our region and pick up babies in some of the rural hospitals or smaller hospitals that didn’t have the specialists or capabilities, and we’d stabilize them and transfer them back to our own really great NICU. 

And again, this was a place where I kind of found home and found some passion, because NICU has a lot of whole person care, where you really take care of the entire family, the development of a tiny little human being like that is so special. And I was really proud of our NICU—  had really great outcomes, because we really, you know, made sure that they only ate breast milk, they never had formula. We just did a lot for their developing minds and bodies. 

Created as quiet of environments as we could, you know, again, just really integrative, in a way, when I think back on it. Anybody that works in NICUs, I think, has experienced the ebb and flows of NICUs, you know, sometimes you have a lot of patients, and sometimes you don’t. Therefore it can be a job where you get low censused a lot, or sometimes you reorg your unit occasionally to equalize the staffing where it needs to be. 

And through that, I kind of saw there’s a lot of times where people were so fearful of losing their jobs or not getting their hours, and I decided it was just time for me to grow at that point, and expand my knowledge, because I hadn’t done a ton of adult care at this point, and I just I wanted to explore that. 

So I went from there to an ICU training program, and worked several years in ICU. And again, just really enjoyed that. Enjoyed all the learning. Although I would say that’s where I probably started feeling some burnout in my own career at times, for many different reasons, things that happened in the ICU. 

And so I actually ended up getting injured, physically, pretty bad during a combative patient experience, and I worked really hard to get back to ICU and then would re-injure. And so I made a choice at that point to figure out how else I could utilize my Nursing without using my physical body so much and exacerbating the nerve injuries that I had. 

And so at that point, I actually found a job called value analysis, and I love the sound of it, because you were looking at data and patient outcomes. And I was like, yes, right up my alley. 

And ended up doing that in the supply chain for a couple of years, and I learned a lot about the behind the scenes in healthcare, and really got to work with the Nurses on what their needs were for supplies and improving what they were using and getting the best patient outcomes with the supplies that we’re using, and there was also the cost component in it, as there often is. 

But huge emphasis on the triple aim of patient outcomes. And so I got super bored in that after a couple of years, because I kept having people tell me, well, practice is not for you to worry about. And I was like, I’m a Nurse. What do you mean practice is not for me to worry about? 

That’s exactly what I’m worried about. So I said, I gotta get myself back in and into the Nursing units where practice is my thing again, and where I can impact Nursing practice. And so I became an educator, and I got to be an educator for an emergency department, a psych unit and a med surg dementia unit. And that was just such a great job on so many levels. 

And I learned so much. I also really started to see, in a more supportive role of Nursing, I started to, I would say Nurse the Nurse right then and there. As far as my focus really became them and their needs and what they needed to practice healthy with the information and knowledge they needed. 

We were having a lot of problems with people getting hurt through combative situations in this— not so much the psych unit, because I think they always had a lot of training on how to deal with psych situations— but within our ED and our dementia units. And so I really got to spend a lot of time with Nursing, understanding where their gaps were and where they felt insecure in their practice, and help them have better knowledge that they were trying to seek. 

Because a lot of times they were saying, like, we’re not getting education on de-escalation. We’re not getting, you know, we work in a dementia unit, yet we’re not getting any education on how to promote healthy behaviors in dementia patients and manage that, and therefore also stay safe psychologically and physically with these patients. 

And so I felt like I was able to make a lot of impact there bringing a lot more education to the bedside, and we can get to that later. I mean, I think a big part of Nurse well-being is having the information we need to feel good about our practices and be able to impact our outcomes and also keep ourselves safe while we’re Nursing. And so education was exciting. 

And again, I found limits there where I really felt like I need, I would really like to have one team that I work with, and really be able to make some impact in a different kind of way with that. And so I made the choice to become a Nurse leader and Nurse manager of dementia and swing bed unit in our small hospital. Small hospitals I’ve never worked in prior to this. 

And that was a whole other thing, being a leader in a rural, critical access hospital, you never know what you’re going to do on any given day, including jumping into patient care. And then I helped oversee the emergency department there as well. And I went into there right as we were going into Covid. And so there was a lot of lot of changes happening, as we all know. 

Even a changing climate, I would say, and how our patients were coming in for care as far as in a rural area, we had a big area of people that really didn’t believe in masking and so there was some daily issues that the Nurses were dealing with, with people that didn’t want to mask or abide by hospital rules. 

And so there’s a lot of turmoil at times, even just on the day to day, just rules of the hospital, let alone not having visitors for our patients that were heading into end of life and that had dementia needs, that needed to be around familiar people and faces, or people that experienced big strokes. 

So anyways, I would say for me, I really burned out in the Nurse leader role. I feel like several times through my career, I hit little hitches, injuries, burnouts, and then I always kind of recreated what I was doing and built a lot of resilience through that, actually, and learned each time, a new tool to take better care of myself. 

But in the Nurse leader role, there was no boundaries to it. It was kind of a 24/7 job, and again, you were jumping into anything and everything. I had a traumatic experience with a baby delivery that came in, and that for me, I actually developed some trauma from that and decided to take a break, not a break break, but just knew, really recognized that I had an acute trauma reaction to a bad patient event. 

And there really wasn’t a lot of the normal guardrails around that event that I’ve experienced in my past experience as a Nurse, things like debriefing, doing event review, learning from what happened, and creating better systems out of it. And I think that just really affected my ability to move forward as a leader, and I really needed to take a break. 

So I took a leave of absence during that period of time, and decided it was time to really focus on, you know, managing the symptoms that were related to that event. And so thankfully, I’m really glad I took the time. I feel like it took a lot of bravery and very hard, there was a lot of guilt in leaving my team and going on leave. 

And so I ended up, as soon as I went on leave for this, I sought out the care that I needed. I got coaching, actually, I got some Nurse coaching and other therapies, and was able to create a lot of self-care and safety for myself, again, around Nursing and all of that. So while I was on leave, that’s when I discovered the INCA program.

Nicole Vienneau  17:22

Alright, let’s take a… let’s take a pause here. Kristy, gosh, your history is vast. You know, I’m imagining you as a little girl, even going with your mom as she’s taking pictures of births, and you going alongside her. And then you know, all your experiences before even realizing that you wanted to be a Nurse. 

And then experiencing integrative Nursing without even… or integrative care, without even knowing about integrative Nursing in your past, and realizing about how much lifestyles impact our health and well being and the way we live day to day. And then you decided to become a Nurse. 

And then that’s when everything, all that experience within Nursing, led you to where you are today. And I really was listening to you speaking about how each of the Nursing roles that you took led to something different, and also some challenges within each role as well, which also led you to discover different ways to care for yourself in ways that were meaningful to you. 

And also the courage to actually seek the help and ask for help and look for help and explore what possibilities there are for you in your own wellbeing. So I know that this is probably going to come up as we keep on talking some of the things that you’ve learned, but before we even get there, hey, let’s talk about how you discovered integrative Nurse coaching and the Integrative Nurse Coach Academy, and then maybe some of the top learnings you found from the program.

Kristy Meyer  19:10

Yes, it was really funny because I… as soon as I went on leave, you know, it’s so typical, I feel, of Nursing that we’re like, okay, well, what am I going to do while I’m on leave? I can’t just be on leave. I can’t just heal myself and do self-care. I’m going to, you know, because I think part of that is an integral part of our being, and part of our self-care sometimes is growing and having purpose, right? 

And so I decided I was going to learn a new skill during that time. And when I had actually gone back for my BSN, my Bachelor’s, I’d become hugely interested in more, again, really kind of check back in with lifestyle medicine and functional medicine. And there was all these Nurse entrepreneurs starting to come out, actually, about that time. 

This is about 10 years ago, that I was in podcasts, and people just really impacting Nursing in interesting ways. And I remember seeing the integrative coach program back then and being like, huh, that really sounds like something for me and a skill that I’d like to develop. And it must have been really pretty close to when it was starting as a program. 

And so I found it again online, and I was like, I’m gonna really rather than focus on something that’s critical care or… which had always been more of my focuses… or leadership, I’m really going to look at a holistic health type of thing. And so I picked integrative health coaching. And honestly, I just intuitively did it, like I instinctually just pushed that button. 

I was like, this is crazy. What am I doing? You know, do I have time for this? Do I have the money for this? Do I have this for this? And I hit the button, I was like, no, this sounds like everything I need right now. And I think I registered literally, like, a week before it started. And when it started, I remember the very first day, and I had Pam Melson as my instructor. 

She always said, and she said on that first day, welcome home. You’re here. And I just remember just feeling like, oh yeah, this does feel like the right place, and it just was such a supportive environment. So I think what I wasn’t anticipating as part of the program was the personal growth and support that I was going to get from that. 

And while I knew it, there was a lot of evidence based nature to it, and I knew Barbara Dossey was attached to it, and I really treasured my holistic Nursing textbook. That was my one little piece of holistic knowledge I always had in all my Nurse educator office, my leader office, and I’d always refer to that. 

So I knew that it was based in a lot of evidence. I just was thrilled to learn there was like it modeled the Nursing process, but in a different way, and it really honors the autonomy of the patient rather than diagnosing the person. It’s more of that finding that internal knowing and wisdom of the patient and what they are knowing needs to change in their life. 

And so I really just loved every aspect of it. I love the connection with the other Nurse coaches, which also somehow landed there through I don’t know, it’s kind of funny. I feel like a lot of people land there at that point of like something just needs to change, or I need something new and different. 

And so a lot of us were in that same place of transitioning our Nursing career into maybe more what we’ve dreamed of the whole time, of taking care of the whole person, and that desire to do that. Also, I was absolutely shocked at what good coaches we were to each other almost immediately. 

And so, in my peer groups anyways, my experience was deep connection almost immediately with each other and so much wisdom being shared, and the deep listening we were able to offer each other, but then also just that understanding and knowing, because we’re all Nurses. 

So I think, you know, there’s so much value in Nurses getting together in a healing nature, because there’s that shared knowledge, that shared experience. And it makes me think of there’s a point in my career when I was deep into ICU and super intense, and witnessed so many things as an educator of the ED and just witnessed so much, I was like, I’m just not fit for regular company anymore…

Nicole Vienneau  24:21

Yes, yeah. I often say, no one can understand… no one understands the ins and outs of a day on the job of a Nurse except another Nurse, because no one in normal everyday life could ever even dream or fabricate some of the things that we witness on a daily basis. Yeah. 

And so yeah, Nurses supporting Nurses is just such an easy shift into finding… and what you’re doing, you know, and helping other Nurses. It just is such an ease. Because you don’t have to share all of the backstory. You can just get right into it, because you know what’s going on. 

So there’s not this draining of energy. Sometimes I’m trying to explain something to somebody who has no idea what it is that I’m talking about, it’s such a drain of energy for Nurses to really try and explain all of that to people who don’t know. So it does make sense that Nurses just… yeah, we get each other.

Kristy Meyer  25:31

Yes. So again, I would say… I don’t know, it was some of the best six months of learning I’ve ever invested in, and again, huge personal growth, but also healing as well occurred during that time. Much needed healing. And so… and then really restored my focus and purpose. 

Because honestly, you’re kind of… it’s really hard to go on leave and not know when you’ve been a Nurse for so long, and that’s what you do every single day. You feel a little less grounded not being in it and not knowing if you’re going to heal enough to go back into a position, which frankly, was really not a healthy position for me to be working in anymore, and it was time for me to transition and grow into something new. 

And so having that space was just hugely important. And really, I did so much reflection during that time, and self awareness work, which I’d already been doing for, you know, years, but just really finessed that and grabbed onto it on a whole deeper level. And I really took the time to think about like, what do I really enjoy about Nursing at this point, and what do I want to do next?

And especially once I got the news that my job had been eliminated while I was on leave, I was like, oh, I gotta figure out do I want to go back to the bedside? What do I want to do? And so I was like, I want to take care of the Nurses. You know? 

I want to find a way to create my own business and really focus my time, because my last, I would say, five to 10 years of Nursing was all about the growth and mentorship and leading of Nurses, but now I even had more skills, and I really just wanted to bring my own shared experience and then also my new knowledge to the Nurses to help with their healing. So yeah. And growth.

Nicole Vienneau  27:49

So much growth, and it’s interesting, because we’re all growing, yes, we know that. And yet some of us are able to take time to actually really grow and really focus on ourselves and what we need. And then we can… 

then we’re better able to show up for others and show up for the people that we want to show up for, which is… sounds like what you are doing now with Cultivating Shifts. Your business. So tell us a little bit about it, like just a little bit about what it is, what your vision is for the work that you’re doing now.

Kristy Meyer  28:37

Yeah, so when I really think back at some of the things that have helped me along the way, this is where I came up with the name Cultivating Shifts, because I realize every time in my life I’ve hit that time of stress or time of change, it’s usually just a small shift in something that you’re doing that helps you get to the next thing, but it’s usually big change. 

And so, for Nurses, I really want to create a supportive environment that is exactly what they’re needing at the time that they enter in. And so I feel like we have a growing awareness of burnout and self-care in Nurses, and so through Nurse coaching, I want to provide that safe space to debrief experiences that might need to be debriefed. 

By safe, I mean, again, there’s that shared experience, like you said, there’s not the burden of… I feel like sometimes we’re also taking care of others and not sharing certain aspects because we don’t know how to share them. So having a safe space with a knowing person that’s been through a lot of different things in Nursing. 

Also, I don’t know what people’s answers are, and that’s, I think, the big piece of it, is helping them find their own answers. There’s so many different ways as Nurses, we can shift into a better wellness or better mindset. And again, what I really loved about the integrative Nurse coaching is it really focuses on the strengths of the individual, through motivational interviewing, through asking positive, you know, inquiry, appreciative inquiry on, you know, reflecting back to people what they’re saying. 

And so I feel really able to work with a Nurse on a variety of different ways. Because when you’re experiencing stress or burnout or a toxic work environment or a physical injury, even a small change can make a big difference. So you know, it might be as little as having a goal on hydration, because you realize you go through a 12 hour shift and you don’t even drink water the whole day. 

And, you know, it’s really hard to manage stress when you haven’t even drink water and taking care of your own basic need. To, you know, do we need to work on sleep and set goals around sleep. I think what’s different with working, you know, with Nurses, and really anybody, but Nurses is the world I know, is we have special needs. 

We work long shifts. We sometimes work night shifts. Every program doesn’t really fit our absolute needs. We can adjust that to meet our needs, but having somebody that can help you be creative and help you elicit what you need to do to create that self-care, but not bring any extra work into your life, if that makes any sense. Because I feel like self-care is often discussed in a way like, well, you’re burned out, it’s because you’re not doing self-care, or you’re burned out, that means you’re not resilient. 

And I feel like there’s a lot of shame and blame in there, when really, we work in really tough environments, and we see really hard things, and a lot of times we have a lot of defensive mechanisms, I believe, like shielding ourselves from that, not feeling some of the feelings, and that’s a good skill at times, because that’s what you need to do to get through your work shift. 

But internalizing a lot of feelings and not taking care of your own basic needs just leads to a lot of health problems for us as Nurses. So… I’m sorry, Nicole, I feel like I’m rambling here. I have so much in my head I want to talk about and feel like I’m just jumbling it all together.

Nicole Vienneau  32:54

No, it’s great. Well, I want to go back a little bit about this shaming and blaming in our healthcare systems, and some of your perspectives on that. You know, I’ve felt some shame and I felt blamed for some of the things that I have brought to the surface. You know, that is a complaint or it’s, you know, it’s not a valid thing to discuss, or bring that to me with a solution, instead of just talking about it, you know, it’s all of that kind of, those kinds of things. And so I’m curious what your thoughts are on that, on this topic?

Kristy Meyer  33:33

Yeah, oh, I have so many thoughts on this topic, including what you just said. And I want to be clear, you know, I mean the system, I don’t want to come across like I’m just dogging the healthcare system. It is a system, and there’s so many different pieces to it, and there’s so many needs being fulfilled within that system. 

I believe a lot of us get into this for the right reason, and the ultimate thing is the patient outcomes, but achieving those outcomes sometimes we’ve just built in some really bad habits. And I think, you know, one thing is we don’t often validate people when they bring us an issue, just like you said, you know, an issue is brought to you about a patient need, a staffing need. 

This is me thinking as a leader, some of the things that would come. And the last thing the Nurse wants to hear is, like you said, well, what’s your solution? Don’t tell me about the issue unless you have a solution. Some of these things are issues we’ve had for a long time in healthcare— staffing for one. 

That’s pretty unfair to say to one single staffing member who’s expressing to you, like, I’m tired, I’m burnt out, I don’t want to… I just don’t want five, you know, texts or calls on my day off. I’m angry about the fact that we have no staff that I don’t feel good about calling in sick when I need to and taking care of myself. 

And some of the toxic work traits I think that can be in there sometimes is maybe the Nurse even used language the leader didn’t really like to hear, and so they shame and blame like, well, you sound angry, and that’s not going to help, and your teammates need you. 

And you know, there’s just a lot of things that naturally happen or are said without even thinking I think sometimes the impact on the person, when really what they just need to hear is like, I’m sorry, I hear that you’re really tired, and you’re right, we don’t have enough staffing. 

And then maybe, yes, you have some ideas, but not putting this, I don’t know, this unfair burden for that person who’s experiencing and expressing pain in that moment that it’s for them to solve completely. And so I think about workplace violence, which really was increasing in the last 10 years, I would say. 

It just feels like every day it increases a little more, from both verbal aggression to really some big physical threats. I think this is a common example that’s used is people that are then asked, you know, something bad happens, they get hit by a patient, and they’re going through emotional distress because, you know, it’s not normal to be hit while you’re working. 

And maybe the first question is, well, what could you have done differently? And immediately that blames the person. And so that’s where I think debriefing is an art, and people that just go straight to the outcome and what did you learn from that, that’s not really helpful, and that’s done a lot in healthcare, when something goes wrong. 

Versus what was done well, what was done good? Tell me more about the situations that were happening around this situation, because, again, we’re working in a system, and there’s so many reasons, generally, why things are happening, why we’re… there’s a lot of reasons why we’re short staffed, there’s a lot of reasons why sometimes we have poor health outcomes. 

There’s a lot of reasons why workplace violence exists and is changing. And, you know, I just want to be part of that supportive person that offers, I don’t know, one, some deep listening around that in the beginning of healing and validating what the person is experiencing. But then doesn’t really stop there, and helps that person find their right solutions to deal with the difficult nature of the environment. 

So I feel like it’s so funny, because I have so much passion for Nursing, and I love Nursing, and I feel like I’ve been in this mode of I’m always talking about the dark side of Nursing these days, which is, you know, I just think it’s really hard to keep your wellbeing up. 

And I know so many people I’ve worked around, one, they don’t want to maybe burn… you know, I even hesitant to say I work with Nurses that are burned out, because, hopefully I work with Nurses to prevent burnout. But also, there’s the other shame pieces— we are working in a culture where people don’t identify that they’re burnt out or don’t want to… they see that as a weakness, to admit that they’re stressed, depressed, not functioning at their highest level or want to be. 

But then also what I’ve really seen, and just since Covid, is a lot of people actually starting to talk about how Nursing is impacting both their physical, mental and emotional health, and wanting to leave the profession potentially or find something new, or find a way that they’re not being impacted as much, and they like Nursing, but they also are really acknowledging, like, it’s really hard to get my own needs met in this profession. 

So I really want to focus on, well, how do we get those needs met? And you know, whatever those are for you, and whether it’s finding your voice and speaking up for your needs, or is it just acknowledging like this shift just doesn’t work for me anymore, or acknowledging and validating, like, it’s okay that I don’t want to pick up another shift. 

It doesn’t mean I’m a bad team member. It means I’m a good team member because I’m taking care of myself, and therefore I’m going to be a better Nurse for it when I come back to my next shift.

Nicole Vienneau  40:17

Right. And it could even mean, is this even the job that I want to be doing at this point in my career?

Kristy Meyer  40:24

Exactly. And that’s also okay. I think it’s always interesting to me, because, like, again, a lot of our education is based around inpatient Nursing, and I think people are… I mean, I’ve known people that were ICU Nurses for 25… 30 years, and just felt like I just gotta stick it through. 

And they weren’t really happy, and sometimes when they finally found their way to make the change to something different, they just really were grateful that they made a change. So just again, supporting that Nurse in whatever their wellbeing and professional and personal needs are through that real integrative health focus. 

I think, you know, for me, I’ve learned a lot of tools, everything from… I laugh because I used to, I used to get angry when I was in ICU, and somebody was like, you know, you just need to breathe. I was like, Oh, my gosh, you’re minimizing. You have no idea. I do not have time to breathe. Are you nuts? And I remember the first time I tried to do breath work, I realized, like, Oh, I think I’ve not breathed in like, 10 years.

Nicole Vienneau  41:46

Right? I’m laughing because I totally understand this. Yes, yes, what is this magical thing that we have?

Kristy Meyer  41:55

Yeah, I was like, what do you mean breathe into my stomach? I breathe right up into my clavicles. That’s about as far as I breathe. So… and that’s the other thing, is just giving real life skills. You know, if that’s where our time takes us in coaching and people are open to learning some simple tools and skills that might just help them, you know, even stay there if they want to be where they’re at, then how do we help you manage where you’re at?

Nicole Vienneau  42:32

Right, and being where you are is sometimes… or realizing where you are, is sometimes some of the most meaningful work you can do to know where you are and understand where you are and then move from that point. Instead of thinking about where I was before and how come I can’t get to back to that, or looking too far ahead and not being quite ready to go there yet.

Kristy Meyer  43:05

Yeah. And you’re actually making me think of a huge piece of this. And what I hope to be able to mentor and teach and coach and empower people to feel is self compassion for exactly where they’re at, and just self awareness of all the wonderful things they’re achieving where they’re at ,as well. Which is part of that self compassion, right?

Nicole Vienneau  43:30

Yeah. And I think this work is really important, because sometimes in the environments in which we work, we talked about the shaming and the blaming, but really often I recall, you know, just stick it out, just do it, just get the stuff done. And no matter what you’re feeling. And somehow trying to find moments to reconnect with really who you are. 

Your authentic being has so many different emotions, and it can’t just not acknowledge the things that we see and the things that we feel and hear and experience with people in the most troubled times of their lives, let alone some of the other things that are happening with the system as well. 

So we’re dealing with our patients, things in our own lives that we’re going through at home and relationships and all those. And then we’re working in systems that have its own agenda as well. So the self compassion— coming back to our own needs and acknowledging who we are and what we need, and just with some love for yourself. 

Like you mentioned, Pam Melson at the beginning, you know, welcome home. Like, we’re home in ourselves. And how do we get back to that? Because sometimes I think we’re missing that, or we forget that, or we’re just not in environments that are supportive of this languaging, of this self awareness and self love.

Kristy Meyer  45:07

Yeah, and I think, you know, I think I was so fortunate as a younger Nurse. I feel like 20 years ago, when I entered Nursing, we had a little more time to help each other through, to hear each other’s stories, to give somebody a break off the floor when something traumatic happened on the floor, and give them some space. 

And I was so lucky to have some great Nurse mentors that kind of taught me like, yeah, that was really tough. But also, there’s that environment that I experienced even back then, that sometimes was there was a time for that, but then there’s a time for pull your big girl panties up, fake it till you make it. 

And I think there’s just a lot to unpack within that, because that’s the beginning of a space where that might not have been the time for you to share what you needed to know, or ask questions you needed to ask. But that when do you get to go back and get the support that you needed to learn what you’ve needed to learn, and maybe not just suck it up, but actually go, wow, that was… 

what we just saw, that was a big deal, you know. How does everybody feel about that? You know? And just being able to share some of the emotions. Instead, I think at least in critical care, is what I can speak to, there’s so much of just moving on to the next thing and not processing maybe what you’ve just been through. Then there’s that thing of, like, just move, you know. And again, there’s some necessity there, right?

Nicole Vienneau  46:48

Right. There’s definitely necessity, I agree, like, we have to keep going. There’s another patient who’s coming, so we’ve got to, you know, we’ve got to deal with those critical situations. And then how do we go back and unpack? And that’s what you’re doing. That’s the environment that you’re creating for Nurses. 

And I do some of this work too, in different hospitals in my area, and it’s that rumination, you know, when you go home and all of a sudden you’re starting to think about what happened in your day, and you just can’t get it off of your mind and heart. It’s just there. 

And it’s a continuous cycle that tends to morph and change over time that you know, those kinds of situations I see, you know, work with you, and in that one to one scenario where you can get some of this stuff off of your heart and mind so that you’re not carrying it around with you anymore.

Kristy Meyer  47:50

Absolutely, absolutely, and you just have me thinking like I’m such a systems thinker, which is good, and that’s why integrative health works for me. It’s why I’ve always just loved the thought of homeostasis, even in the body. You know, all these things kind of come together to constantly try to achieve that balance. 

But we tend to look at everything in a silo. And so like, if you go home ruminating, likely you’re not sleeping. You potentially aren’t sleeping well, right? And then a lot of the research on burnout right now is really correlating lack of sleep with burnout. But I really… when I read that, I’m like, well, what came first? You know, I think Nurses are often chronically sleep deprived. 

I think of colleagues I’ve worked with that worked the night shift, and then they spent all day caring for their kids during the day, and would get like three hours sleep and come back and do another 12 hour shift. And man, if that three hours you get to sleep is spent ruminating on top of that. So just where can we shift some of the burden, or shift into change for better health? 

Because sometimes, I mean, those folks that I worked with, their situations couldn’t always change completely, but how they approached it could make change, right? And maybe do something to stop ruminating.

Nicole Vienneau  49:26

Right. And you mentioned at the beginning, the Cultivating Shifts aspect comes from the small, the tiniest little change that you could make, or the just a minute shift. It doesn’t have to be something dramatic and big and, you know, crazy, it can just be the tiniest little thing that can make a big change, or help you move. 

I equate it to like jumping up and down in one spot, just jumping up and down, and so much energy is taken just doing that one thing. And what could happen if you just like move forward just a little bit instead of just jumping up, or even just shifted your positioning in a different way? So I just love what you’re doing. It’s so needed. We need it. All of us do. Humans do. And guess who are humans?

Kristy Meyer  50:23

Nurses. It’s so funny you said that. Because one of my colleagues just recently came back to me, and she’s in Nursing leadership right now, and she was like, I went to my leadership and I told them, we’re just humans here. And she’s like, I just had you in my head of like, we’re just humans, what you’re asking is not possible. 

I can’t work five, you know, 14 hour days and then be on call and come in and work as a Nurse in the middle of the night. Because I’m human, and I need sleep and I need to eat and I need to drink, and sometimes it’s just the basics. 

And it gets you thinking about Maslow’s hierarchy, and how do we attend to that for ourselves? You know, of getting our own basic needs met.  And also we’re highly capable of doing it. It’s also not a shame thing that those needs are so hard to meet.

Nicole Vienneau  51:31

Yes, yes. And they are truly needs. We need those things, we do as humans. Where humans are caring for other humans, yes, and humans need, all humans need those things. Well, shoot, we’re almost running out of time, and I’m sure we could talk about this all day and all night, although we do need to get some good sleep. 

We could have a great meal, and then we could have some great liquids along with that meal, and we could continue this conversation to get our needs met. So I love to ask this question, and I’ve asked it to every single guest that we’ve had on our podcast, and the question is, what is on your heart that you would like to share with our listeners?

Kristy Meyer  52:32

What is on my heart? I would say, Nurses are on my heart. I just have this deep, compelling need, my own need and my own purpose, I feel like, is to serve and help heal Nurses. And so I’m just so grateful for the opportunity to make this shift in my own life to practicing Nursing in a different way and really focusing my Nursing practice on the care of Nurses and their wellbeing.

Nicole Vienneau  53:04

Everyone, soak that up. Yes, so Kristy, how can we find you when we’re looking for you?

Kristy Meyer  53:15

I have a website that is cultivatingshifts.com. Or an email: kristy@cultivatingshifts.com. I do have a Facebook page that there’s a link to. It’s really not exciting at this point, but I hope to make it more exciting at some point with. I want to share a lot of good information. 

I’m an educator at heart, so I do hope to also have an education focus as part of this business. And then my booking link is on the website, and I do encourage people to connect with me. I’ve got a free initial consultation, because I think the other thing is, it’s really important to make sure we have the right working partnership, and so we could explore, again, what your needs are. 

I do practice in Oregon and Washington, you know, that’s where I’m licensed, although I just had a great call with somebody that was from another state, and I’m happy to get you connected to other resources and people that could help you. There’s so many great Nurse coaches out there, honestly.

Nicole Vienneau  54:32

Yes, we do have so many great Nurse coaches. So for our listeners, definitely check the show notes, because we will have all of Kristy’s links there. And if something rang true to you as you listen to this podcast, please reach out to Kristy. 

She is willing and able to help you. And we look forward, Kristy, to seeing you shine as you go through your rest of your Nursing career supporting fellow Nurses. And thank you so much for being a guest on Integrative Nurse Coaches in ACTION!

Kristy Meyer  55:06

Thanks for having me, Nicole.