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Scott Webb: Though the pandemic has accelerated the need for nurses, things were turning in the wrong direction before COVID-19. The truth is that we just need more nurses in this country. And as we continue this series featuring some of McLaren's best nurses, we hope to entice more men and women to join this amazing and rewarding profession.

And joining me today are Courtney Berry, she's a registered nurse and critical care manager for McLaren Oakland, and Ryan Liddy, he's an RN as well and he's the manager of patient care services for McLaren Macomb. This is McLaren's In Good Health, a podcast from McLaren. I'm Scott Webb.

So I want to thank you both for joining me. We're going to continue this series that McLaren's been doing on Nursing. We know there's a nursing shortage in the country, and so we're doing our part fighting the good fight. And as we get rolling here, Courtney, why did you choose a career in nursing?

Courtney Berry: I was actually going to central Michigan for teaching and wasn't really loving it. I had the opportunity to work as a camp counselor. My sister and brother-in-law worked at Michigan United Conservation Camp up north. So my boyfriend at the time, now husband, and I went up and worked as camp counselors. And I took the job as a medical director, which helped manage the medications of the campers and communicated with the parents when the kids didn't feel good. A lot of what I dealt with at the time was homesickness, but doing that job really turned me on to nursing and said, "You know what? I had never really thought about doing this in my life, but it's something I think I might enjoy." So I changed my major that summer and went into nursing. Honestly, that's how it happened.

Scott Webb: That's such a great story. And of course, there is no magical cure for homesickness. Those of us who've ever been away at camp, we all know we're going to miss our home, miss our pets, miss our families, and there's no magic pill for that. But it is interesting how we get where are we get in life and how something totally unexpected can just open this whole world to us. And that's such a cool story that you were just like, "You know what? I really enjoyed helping these people. I enjoyed managing medications," and things like that. And it just was like, "Oh, I'll be a nurse," right?

Courtney Berry: Yeah, exactly. When I was growing up as a kid, I loved animals and really wanted to be a vet. And then got to a point where I was like, "Ah, I have a hard time with pets and, you know, pain. And I couldn't stomach that." For some reason, I'm able to handle that with people which is very odd, but I really do think that being a nurse was my calling and it happened the way it was meant to happen.

Scott Webb: Yeah. I've heard that before in speaking with nurses, that it really is a calling for them. And for so many, it's just like this light bulb went off and they were like. "Oh, my gosh, this is the thing, this is what I'm going to do." And Ryan, I'm sure you would echo that. And I wanted to ask you, when you started your nursing career, was it a goal to become a member of leadership or did that sort of evolve over time? And now that you've been in this leadership role, is it what you expected?

Ryan Liddy: Well, you know, actually when I started, I was just really excited to become a nurse and I did not have any plans at all of being in leadership. What ended up happening slowly over time as I continued to learn my role is that I realized I wanted to continue to engage myself with other people and my colleagues. I would volunteer all the time to take the charge nurse role and I really loved that. And I'd like to support the members of my team that I was working with. I joined the nurse practice council to help us develop our clinical practice and go towards more evidence-based practice and increase the safety and the outcomes of our patients.

And in doing that, I was recommended one day for an assistant manager role. And I thought, "Oh, I don't know. It's 50% clinical, 50% leadership. So, you know, let me try it out and see what happens." And I loved it and I continued to evolve in my career from there. I've now been managing for, I don't know, about 12 years in healthcare. And every day is a new challenge and every day is exciting to me in a lot of different ways. I think I like challenges and I do enjoy making sure that I can have the strongest impact possible on our patient care and our patient outcomes. So working with all of my team members to make sure that happens is actually what I really enjoy to do.

It's not exactly what I thought it was going to be, especially with this pandemic, you know, opening and closing COVID units here and there over the last year. It's been a little bit different than usual, but in the same token, very rewarding. And we've done a great job. I think all the team members have to put things together so that our patients get the care they need. And it's not something I expected, but it's something that we did and we did it together as a team. And I'm pretty excited that I was able to be here for it.

Scott Webb: Yeah. Well, I'm sure for you, you get to stretch a lot of muscles. You get to use a lot of your skills, both having been a nurse and as a leader and, you know, working with patients and working with your staff. It's quite a challenge, but it sounds like an exciting challenge.

Ryan Liddy: Sure is. I mean, you got to have a reason to wake up every day and I think that's a pretty good one.

Scott Webb: Yeah, definitely. And, you know, Courtney, when we think about reasons to wake up every day, you know, you told us how you got started and how you went from being a teacher to being a nurse. But now let's talk about and have you tell listeners how you made that transition into trauma nursing.

Courtney Berry: Sure. I've always been at McLaren Oakland. This was the first and only hospital that I worked at. And I told you about how I wanted to become a nurse. And honestly, working with school aged kids, I had planned on you know, "I'm going to be a school nurse." And that was my goal out of nursing school. I never had intentions of working in a hospital. Well, as you may know, there's not a ton of school nurse jobs out there. They're actually starting to pop up more, which is really interesting. And I think that speaks to exactly what we're seeing in the pandemic. The schools are needing more support from a medical standpoint.

But I ended up working at McLaren Oakland. A great friend of mine worked here and got me a job and I worked in the step-down unit for about a year. I transitioned over into the ICU, and did bedside ICU nursing for about six years. I did some clinical coordinating in the critical care as well as some nursing supervision for a couple of years. Loved both of those roles very much. I had a young family at that time. And there was some schedule changes that happened, so I ended up going back to bedside ICU nursing. And then the trauma program here had been started up for a few years. And the manager at the time was able to get a position for trauma clinical coordinator. She reached out to me and said, "Hey, I know you enjoy taking care of the trauma patients. I have this position that's coming available. I'd like for you to put in for it. And I want to talk to you about it."

So honestly, that's kind of how things got rolling. I transitioned into that role. Shortly thereafter, the manager at the time moved on to a different role. And then I just kind of said, "Okay. It's time. I've learned enough and I'll learn as I go. I pick up things quick," so I did put in for the manager position, and I did that for about eight years. So that was kind of how I made it into trauma.

Scott Webb: Yeah. And I just love hearing these stories. And Ryan, you touched a little bit on this and I'm sure, Courtney, you've experienced this as well. You know, we know that nursing is a fast paced profession, right? And the pandemic, Ryan, has added this whole new level of stress and you kind of hit on that just a little bit. How do you manage that work-related stress and how do you help your team that nursing staff do the same?

Ryan Liddy: Well, sometimes it's a little bit challenging. I suppose I come in everyday with a good attitude. I try to encourage everybody to do the best that they can with what we have. You know, sometimes the little details can't always get taken care of when they don't impact the patient care, right? So patient safety, staff safety always come first. So when we're prioritizing care, it's not always about certain little things that aren't necessarily going to impact our patient. So I say sometimes we have to do what we can do and just focus on the priorities.

But kind of overwhelmed and we're kind of struggling with our time management and we're struggling with making sure that everybody gets the care that they deserve and need, we focus on patient safety, staff safety every time. We can't take care of patients if we don't take care of ourselves, right?

When people are stressed and overwhelmed, you just remind them of that. We always try to do little things to engage each other. Good conversation, "How's your family. How's life?" Right? We all have personal lives outside of here, and we don't want to bring the bad stuff from our personal lives to work, of course, but we do want to talk about the positive things that I think inspire us and encourage us to do the best that we can at work, so we can go home to continue to live life, right? So everybody has a story and you got to listen to that too, so that everybody's treated as an individual and a person because their stories all matters as well.

Scott Webb: Yeah. I mean, that sounds right. Safety first, doing the best you can do, patients first. Little things, stocking shelves, whatever it might be, "Ah, we'll worry about those later. Let's focus on our selves and make sure that we're safe, patients are safe, getting the best care possible." That all sounds right, Ryan, for sure.

And, Courtney, I'm sure that you've dealt with hundreds, maybe thousands of patients over the years. Maybe you can share sort of a patient success story or that patient that you'll never forget.

Courtney Berry: Sure. We had a young man that came in. He was visiting from Canada, went skiing with some friends at a local ski resort and ended up with a pretty significant severe traumatic brain injury. He was young. He was here. He was by himself with friends and family had to come over from Canada at the time. We developed, myself and the ICU staff developed such a strong relationship with the family. They were just absolutely wonderful people.

It really is something when you get to see a strong family bond and people that just love and care for each other so much. I would love to say that's how every family and every patient that we take care of is but, unfortunately, that's not reality. So the family was, you know, at the bedside working very closely with us. They were very appreciative of the care that we were providing.

Because of him being from Canada, they wanted to get him back over there across the border. So the physicians had to meet with the physicians in Canada and the insurance companies daily until we got him to a point where he was stable enough to get him back over to Canada. We did develop a bond. I've actually stayed in contact with his mom and him. His mom and dad shared their anniversary here at the bedside over a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. They were lovely, lovely people and someone that I'll never forget. His mother sits on the Ontario Brain Injury Association through the mentoring program. And then she is also a representative at the Windsor Regional Hospital as an advocate. And she regularly references her experiences here at McLaren Oakland, what was positive, what worked, what didn't, so that she can help be an advocate for future patients and families. So yeah, it was that family and that patient, for sure.

Scott Webb: That's such an awesome story. That must be one of the most difficult challenges of being a nurse, is helping people, saving lives, getting close to families and then they leave and then you have to move on because there's always more patients, right? It's the one thing we know about hospitals is there's always more patients, you know, especially maybe during the pandemic. How do you deal with that? How do you deal with that emotionally? Getting to know people, getting to know families. And in those cases where you aren't able to stay in contact with them, how do you deal with that, just that sort of, you know, bond that you form and then they leave and then the next group comes in?

Courtney Berry: So, honestly, those are the cases that keep you going. Those are few and far between. But establishing those relationships and seeing your hard work pay off in a positive way, seeing that this is going to have a lasting effect on every one of these people in their life and that, you know, our hard work paid off and is worth it, those interactions and those encounters are the ones that keep you coming in every day, knowing that it can happen. You've seen it before and it will happen again.

Scott Webb: Yeah. I'm sure that that's what helps keep you all motivated. And when we think about motivation, Ryan, you know, you've got new nurses joining your team, and some of them are straight out of nursing school and you can imagine it's pretty overwhelming, right? So how do you help them get acclimated and build confidence in their skills so they can ultimately do podcasts and tell us these amazing stories?

Ryan Liddy: You try to get them excited every day with the new experiences that they encounter and the new patients that they're meeting and seeing and caring for and helping them understand all the little wins that we have every day. I remind everyone, especially the new folks that come in, we try to touch base at least every week one-on-one. But I do speak to my crew every single day and I always tell people, "You got to remember to think about what you did well every day. And you always also got to remember, like what positive experiences you had for the day." You know, "Who did you help? How did you successfully care for somebody? How did you keep someone safe?" These small things are big to us, you know. And if you don't remind yourself of it, it's hard to continue to support your why, I suppose, and why you come in and why you do what you do. But if you tie everything together every day and you remind yourself, "I was able to help all these people. And I was able to successfully manage the care of this difficult patient. And I was able to successfully communicate with this individual that was really challenging. I was able to make this person smile, even though they've been in the worst pain of their life."

You know, it's exciting to remind yourself of everything you've done every day when you leave work and you really need to reflect on that. You reflect on that, and then it really kind of encourages you to continue to go and it keeps your mind positive. It's just like anything, you know, the power of positive thinking. You've got to think of good things. It's kind of showing them and making sure that they realize the impact that they have every day and that they remind themselves of that.

Scott Webb: Yeah, focus on the positives, right? There's a lot of things that happen at hospitals for doctors and nurses that despite no matter, you know, their expertise and the teamwork and everything that they do, where those stories don't end up positive. But it's the positive ones that keep you going, right? It's the success stories. It's, as you say, the smile on the face of someone who really didn't want to smile, that's what keeps you going, right?

Ryan Liddy: Sure is. You know, it's exciting and it's refreshing to know that even when those really difficult situations or those painful situations or heartbreaking situations occur, you still have positive impact every day. You just have to remember that. Even when it's sometimes the worst case scenario, you might have impacted a family member who really needed you at that time, when something didn't go the way you wanted it to. So, we're here for our patients, but we're also here for their family members, right? And we just have to remind ourselves of those times.

Scott Webb: Yeah. And just staying with you, Ryan, I wanted to have you talk about the importance of nurses building relationships with the patient's family. You mentioned there, we're here for the patients, but we're also here for the families. And sometimes these aren't success stories. But I'm sure there's an element of your job where you know, that I think I helped to make this go at least a little bit better. Maybe the outcomes weren't what everybody wanted, weren't what the family wanted. But I was able to help just a little bit during this time of trauma and grief or whatever it was. So maybe, you know, when you think about working with new nurses and yourself, how do you build those relationships with patient's families?

Ryan Liddy: One thing is they have to know your intention, right? You got to let them know and you got to them that you care and your actions and your body language and how you communicate with them is key. But you got to show them and tell them that you are going to take good care of their patients or their family member, their loved one. I mean, I am here to take care of your loved one. And I'm going to do the best I can for them, right? And in turn, I need to include you because if we all work together, we're going to have the most positive outcome that we can have.

It doesn't always go the way you want it to go. But if you include the patient and the family in your conversations, and you come in with confidence and you come in strong and you tell them, "I'm going to do this and you do it and you follow up, those are the things that instill confidence in you and the family members then engage you more.

And, you know, ultimately what happens is you get better patient care, you get better outcomes because you get more information from family members. Oftentimes than you do the patient because they're overwhelmed. They're thinking about the new diagnosis they have or the new challenges they're going to be facing or that they just got a needle in their arm 12 times in the last two days, you know. It's very overwhelming to think about all the things that a patient thinks about when they're in the bed, right? Family members often help us bridge the gap and help us understand the full picture. Because sometimes they have information that we would never have had if we didn't engage them, which could contribute to the outcome of the patient being much better.

So, having dialogues and being inclusive and everything you can to make them feel comfortable and trust that you're going to do the best for their loved one, I think that's how you get those relationships to develop and to be strong and to hopefully provide the best care that way to the patient.

Scott Webb: Yeah, that's been my experience. You all have jobs to do and you have another room to get to, but in that moment, in that room, you're trying to help the patients, help them understand, help the family understand. And sort of juggling those balls I'm sure is challenging, right?

Ryan Liddy: Absolutely. But if you do it the right way, it's a time saver. Honestly, you spend the time then, you stay focused, you engage. And honestly, I think that saves you time down the road, because you're going to be able to take better care of that person, that family, and you're going to know more. So ultimately, I always try to remind people, "Hey, you know, sometimes we got to spend extra time in the front even though we're busy, so that down the road, it's smoother and easier and we have a better outcome and we have a better relationship, and we have better trust." It makes things a lot easier when you're not arguing or having challenges with people that don't trust you, right? So you got to set up that ground work for so many different reasons.

Scott Webb: It really is about trust. And we as patients, you know, we need to be able to trust the nurses and doctors. And when we do, the whole experience is better. And I'm sure it is for nurses and doctors as well. And Courtney, as we get close to wrapping up here, this has been a really educational and informative conversation. I love this series we're doing on nursing and I hope it's helping to recruit more nurses to this awesome and exciting and challenging field. What advice do you want to share with someone who's considering a career in nursing?

Courtney Berry: I think that, especially now, going through the past year and a half, coming up on two years of this pandemic, it has changed healthcare significantly, probably forever. We are trying to figure out a new normal. We need people to go into healthcare so we can continue to care for these patients that are coming in every day and providing the best care, keeping them safe.

And I think that if you can assume the best in everyone, that everyone that's coming in is doing the very best that they can, which is all we can ask of anybody at this point, and if you can assume that everyone's doing that because that's how we feel, we come into work every day, I'm sure that we all feel we do the very best that we can, given the support that we have, is to just really have a little bit of grace with each other. It goes very far right now, and everybody needs that right now.

Scott Webb: Yeah, we do. And, you know, Ryan touched on this earlier, but just making time, you know, the group of nurses, the brother and sisterhood of nurses, making time for each other to spend time, perhaps outside of work. But when you're at work, really, you know, listening to each other, supporting each other, knowing that you're all in this together, right? You're all on the front lines, whether it's the pandemic or just the regular business of a hospital, I'm hoping that you all find time for each other.

Courtney Berry: Yeah. The people that have been here, the team that you either had or built or has grown during this past year and a half, are your people. Those are the people that keep me coming in to work every single day. I've built stronger relationships, developed new ones. I had the opportunity to work in the ICU. I went up and was the manager in the ICU for the last year and a half during the pandemic. And I will tell you that I've never seen anything like it. The nurses worked so hard to not just take care of the patients and the families during this just unthinkable event that we've gone through and continue to go through, but the love and support that they showed each other was really something to behold. It was very humbling and, as difficult as it was personally and professionally, I have no regrets and I am really honored to have been able to work among and with some of the people that I have over the last year and a half..

Scott Webb: Yeah And I said, this has been such a great conversation. I always wished these conversations could go on longer, but listeners don't want to listen all day. So Ryan, as we wrap up here, what's your best advice that you would share with someone who's considering a career in nursing?

Ryan Liddy: Well, if you want a job that's rewarding, that's exciting, that's constantly changing, and you're passionate about people, nursing is the way to go. I think that's all I can say about it. That's how I was driven to it. I think that's how a lot of people are driven to it. And, honestly, it is really exciting. It's really rewarding and I get excited about it sometimes just when I meet new people or I'm experiencing a new situation, because we're all learning from it and we're all engaging with it. And we work with such awesome people too. You know, healthcare providers, they're a good kind. We have unique humor. We experience things that a lot of people in different fields don't experience and it's actually quite fun. And it's a beautiful field to get into if you care about people.

Scott Webb: Yeah, I think that's a perfect way to end. You know, that does seem to be a common thread when I speak with providers, but specifically nurses, is really just that passion. That passion motivates them, it drives them. It keeps them going to work even during a pandemic when they have to strap on full PPE and all of that. Without that passion, it would be an almost impossible job to do. So thank you both for your time today, your compassion, your passion, your expertise, everything, and you both stay well.

Courtney Berry: You too. Thank you so much.

Ryan Liddy: Thanks. I appreciate it. You take care.

Scott Webb: And to learn more about nursing at McLaren, visit mclaren.org/nursing. And if you enjoyed this podcast, please share it on your social channels and check out the entire podcast library for additional topics of interest. This is McLaren's In Good Health, the podcast from McLaren. I'm Scott Webb. Stay well.