Transcription:
Advanced Practice Perspectives: A Podcast for Advanced Practice Providers

Trisha Williams, RN, APRN, CPNP (Host): Hi guys. Welcome to the Advanced Practice Perspective podcast. This is a podcast made by advanced practice providers for advanced practice providers.

Tobie O'Brien RN, APRN, CPNP (Host):  We are your hosts Tobie O’Brien.

Trisha: And I'm Trisha Williams. We are friends and colleagues that have decided to take on this exciting and new challenge. We are lucky enough to have the support of Children’s Mercy as well as support from other colleagues, nurse practitioners, physician’s assistants, physicians, and nurses as we dive into this exciting world of podcasting.

Tobie:   That’s right Trisha. Well, let’s start by telling our listeners a little bit about ourselves. My name is Tobie O’Brien and I'm a pediatric nurse practitioner in the ear, nose, and throat department at Children’s Mercy. I have 12 years of experience in ENT. Prior to this role, I worked at a pediatrician’s office doing primary care for three years in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. I love my role in ENT. What I enjoy the most about ENT is helping families feel comfortable with the decision to have ear tubes placed or a tonsillectomy. I also enjoy helping kids feel comfortable when they have to have an ear procedure done. Specifically we do a ton of cleaning ear wax out or cleaning foreign bodies out of ears. We use Child Life, and this helps a lot, but it doesn’t help completely. So a research project I am working on right now is trying to understand if by using Versed for super anxious kids if this will help their procedure be done a little bit more effectively or perhaps with less anxiety. I only work part time. So when I'm not busy with clinic and this research project and this podcast, I spend time with my three kids, my husband, and our sheepadoodle Trixie. What about you Trisha?

Trisha:   Your project sounds amazing Tobie, by the way. I love that you're looking at ways to make our kiddos more comfortable during procedures. I am also a pediatric nurse practitioner in the ENT department at Children’s Mercy. I have been a nurse practitioner for six years. A little over six years I think. I've been with the ear, nose, and throat department the whole entire time. Prior to that I have a pretty extensive career at Children’s Mercy. I've been there for over 21 years. I can't believe I've been there for that long.

Tobie:   That is a long time.

Trisha:   Yeah. I have had a career in perioperative services and also in the pediatric intensive care department where I have worked as a registered nurse. I have a special interest in otology. So otology—for those that aren’t in the ENT department—is specifically the ear part of what we do in our job. So I have a specific interest in otology. I love to work with hearing loss kiddos. I love to work with chronic ear disease and to try to help those kiddos handle their ear issues is a huge interest of mine. I am currently doing a research project that is looking at chronic ear drainage. So it’s chronic otorrhea with ear tubes. So ear tubes is a very common procedure that we do in the ENT department. They can have chronic problems with ear drainage from those ear tubes. So I am looking at a multi-arm study to look at developing an algorithm to treat persistent or chronic otorrhea. So it’s been a huge undertaking for me that I am doing, but a big interest. So I am hoping to get that off the ground and running and see it through to fruition.

Tobie:   I will love to see it as well because that is one thing I do not like is persistent otorrhea. So I think it will be helpful to me.

Trisha:   Right? Right. Yeah. So I'm hoping to get that algorithm completed. It’s a huge undertaking. When I am not working, I'm a full time mom of two very active teenagers. I currently have a sophomore and a freshman in high school. I have two very lazy cats that are helping my kids with their virtual school. So thank goodness for my cats that can help my teenagers through virtual school.

Tobie:   That’s right.

Trisha:   So I am a busy mom of two. Full time working mama. I love what I do. I love my job. I love my life. I'm pretty much just living my best life out here. So I know that a few of you are probably thinking, “Man, these two women are crazy busy. What are they doing taking on this podcast? What are they even thinking or going on? How do they have the time?” I think that we both have this huge passion for—what would you say Tobie? Just giving our nurse practitioners and physician’s assistants a platform. Like we both completed the Academy for Professional development, which we’ll talk about. I'm super excited about it. You guys will learn about it later. So a little teaser out there. We were so impressed by the work that our fellow advanced practice providers have done when we took this class. They're so smart, articulate, compassionate. The people that are just doing extraordinary things. So we thought how great would it be to provide them a platform to showcase what they're doing? To showcase these amazing humans and provide education for these people and to give little takeaway points and little tips and things like that. So that is how our podcast journey began.

Tobie:   Absolutely Trisha. Really our goals, I think, we both feel with this podcast are going to be to really share pediatric practice updates, hopefully some current legislative issues, research projects that people are working on, and then really just to highlight our colleagues. They are, like you said, doing amazing things. We really just wanted to share who they are and hopefully help us build this community better. Just network, and hopefully it will be a great way to connect everyone. Really the best part of it, I think, is that we get to interview Children’s Mercy advanced practice providers, nurse practitioners, and PA’s to share this information.

Trisha:   I am so excited about that. I am so excited to learn about what advanced practice providers are doing within our own institution. We have almost 400 physician’s assistants and nurse practitioners are Children’s Mercy. So it’s going to be super excited to learn from them, and it’s going to be amazing. Since this is our very first podcast, Tobie, how about we do a little introduction, a little teaser and put out there what we are going to highlight and maybe give a little taste of what we’re going to do. What do you say?

Tobie:   I think that sounds perfect. Well, let’s talk first about our guest in October. Our October podcast will begin by talking with Cathy Cartwright. She’s the director of the advanced practice professional development at Children’s Mercy Hospital. We are going to talk with her about the advanced practice provider role at Children’s Mercy and her role in developing the Academy for Professional Development, which Trisha, and I both took a couple years ago. Really, that’s how this whole process got started.

Trisha:   It kind of lit a fire under us and put a spark in us to get this going. So I'm super excited to talk with Cathy. She’s a very huge asset to Children’s Mercy. So I can't wait to talk with her.

Tobie:   She’s been so supportive in helping us create this podcast.

Trisha:   That she has. That she has. We are hoping to do two podcasts a month for our listeners to tune into. So we’ll give you a little taste of who our second guest is in October. We will be talking with Jamie Neal Lewis. She is a nurse practitioner in the developmental and behavioral medicine department here at Children’s. This is going to be a great conversation for our listeners. You'll get to hear how she made the move to developmental and behavioral med. Also her thoughts around how our kids are handling all of the chaos of 2020. 2020 has been quite the year for all of us, I think.

Tobie:   It has. It has.

Trisha:   I don’t know if I really think—I know, right. It’s been crazy. So I would love to hear from Jamie like how is this effecting our children, our youth? How we can help them as providers kind of guide them through what is happening. More than COVID. There are so many things out there. So it’s going to be great to speak with her about that.

Tobie:   Oh yeah. You guys will really enjoy listening to her story. Well guys we really would like to end each episode on a much lighter note. So I'm going to ask Trisha. Trisha what is one outrageous thing or way you have taken on the challenges of 2020?

Trisha:   Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. This podcast for one. I kind of threw myself into professional growth and development and love in developing this podcast. Also on a professional level, our department as well as many other departments in Children’s Mercy kind of took on a telemedicine role. So I've thrown myself into learning the best ways to do telemedicine and provide care for our families via virtual world, right. Also I'm trying to get my kids through virtual school, which a lot of us are doing so that’s nothing new. Just trying to make it fun and interacting for them and help my children maintain mental health. Outrageous things I've done. One of the things we did as a family, which I thought would be a lot of fun to share, is that my daughter came up with the COVID Olympics. So my family and I put on a COVID Olympic with different things.

Tobie:   Oh that is funny.

Trisha:   Yeah, it was hilarious. We had a really great time. It was fun. So that was a fun family adventure that we did was a COVID Olympics since our vacation got cancelled because we were supposed to go to Canada, which didn’t happen. So.

Tobie:   Oh that’s right.

Trisha:   What about you? What’s something crazy you’ve done?

Tobie:   Well, I'm with you as far as threw myself into professional growth. This podcast is definitely a big step for me to do. So this has been kind of an outrageous thing for me to do as well. On a personal level, we did some fun stuff as well as a family like we would dress up and pretend we were going out to dinner and just make dinner here. So that was kind of a fun thing we would do. My kids loved that. Then one thing…My 11 year old is doing hybrid school. So she doesn’t get to see friends very often. So what we are doing is we are doing book club with her 11 year old friends coming up with once a month meeting with them and their adults outside to discuss a book. So that’s kind of a fun little adventurous thing that I'm doing.

Trisha:   That is fantastic.

Tobie:   Yeah.

Trisha:   I love it.

Tobie:   It will be fun. Yes. Well you guys, thank you so much for taking the time to listen and to support us in the podcast journey.

Trisha:   Absolutely. We really appreciate you taking the time to listen to the novice podcast hosts that we are. If you have a topic that you want to hear about, please let us know. If you have any interest in being a guest on our podcast, we would love to have you. You can email us at tdobrien@cmh.edu or at twilliams@cmh.edu. Once again, thanks so much for listening.

Tobie:   Have a great day guys.