All About Nursing (52)

You're listening to the BBM Global Network with 25 years in broadcast audio and video production. Our passionate team creates content and marketing for the world of Internet Talk Radio. If you've got a passion, come join us at BBMGlobalNetwork.com. The BBM Global Network, your voice is now heard.

Welcome to All About Nursing with your host Dr. Joyce Bachelor, executive nurse advisor Dr. Bachelor, who will present the significant role nurses play in providing health care in a multitude of health care settings. Listen to some of today's key nurses who work in practice in academia settings and talk about the challenges they face in today's modern medical world.

So please welcome the host of All About Nursing, Dr. Joyce Bachelor. Good evening. I'm your host Dr.

Joyce Bachelor on All About Nursing and we're live on the BBM Global Network in TuneIn Radio. This evening I have a wonderful guest that I would like to tell you about who is Dr. Lisa Campbell. She is a professor and director of the Postmasters Doctor of Nursing Practice program at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center School of Nursing.

She's been a registered professional nurse for 37 years with a focus in public health nursing. She is a former public health department director and founded Population Health Consultants to improve population health through a range of engagement, assessment and collaboration strategies. Dr. Campbell is the immediate past chair of the American Public Health Associate Public Health Nursing Section, chairperson of the Council of Public Health Nursing Organizations and a member of the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments Board of Directors.

I have the pleasure of working with Dr. Campbell at Texas Tech University and in some other ways and I can just tell you that I think you're going to really enjoy learning more about the many accomplishments that she has. So welcome Lisa. Well, thank you, Joyce.

It's a pleasure to be with you here this evening and your guest. So why don't we start with you telling us a little bit about when you decided that you wanted to become a public health nurse. So Joyce, I had traveled to South Africa in 2005 as a faculty advisor for a company and while there I was really taken back by how much the nurses did with the little. Because of the limited resources in South Africa, nurses really had to leverage their resources in the community and train community citizens to do things like education for new mothers, welfare checks for families, teaching families how to plant container gardens and those kinds of things.

When I returned home from that trip, I was so inspired that I began to contemplate how I could transition into public health nursing. And so then in 2009, I had an opportunity to explore, continue my education and I enrolled in the Dr. Nursing Practice Program at the University of Tennessee, Memphis School of Nursing with a focus in public health. So I had been a nurse for a very long time before transitioning into public health nursing 11 years ago, actually.

You know, as you're describing what you had as an experience, I was thinking to myself, this is the year of the nurse, Florence Nightingale's 200 years old anniversary. And we're talking about the year of the nurse and the midwife. And that midwife has just really been added because there's so many countries that really rely on midwives to be the primary individual that delivers a lot of babies. And so you were describing conditions that I think Florence found like over 200 years ago, we're still dealing with that in some countries, obviously.

So that's very inspiring. Was it an easy transition to go from private practice to public health? So actually, Joyce, it wasn't surprisingly. So I had been in practice as a geriatric nurse practitioner for a number of years before transitioning into public health.

And I saw it when I graduated, it was easy to find a job. I applied for every public health position I could think of, applied for anything that remotely related to public health. And I interviewed for a lot of positions and as a nurse with 30 plus years of experience, no one would hire me. I was really perplexed.

And so the reasoning was that I didn't have, they said I didn't have any experience in public health. And so as my mother taught me many years ago, and she's a retired nurse, by the way, she said, you know, if you can't find something, you better create it. So that's when I decided that I would start my own company. I started Population Consultants, LLC.

And for the first probably year and a half, I did pro bono work. I worked with the homeless coalition. I did a lot of work with program development for and with them. A lot of stakeholders engagement.

I used every single skill in all the knowledge that I gained from my Dr. Nursing Practice Program. And I applied that in the community. So my transition into public health was a little difficult.

And then after about a year and a half, I actually was asked by the county judge what was, this is a loaded question, Joyce, what was wrong with the public health department? And you got to be careful how you answer that kind of question. So I said, well, yes ma'am. And I said, well, actually, I think the issue is they need some capacity building and they need to be connected out in the community because they're just not visible.

So after that conversation, about 10 minutes after I left, I got a call from the administrative assistant wanting me to put together a proposal on how to start really getting that health department out into the community. So Joyce, that's been about a month putting together a proposal, basic things. They had never done a community health needs assessment. So really identify what the needs of the community were and what the community felt they were.

They had never done a community assessment. And so I put the proposal together and presented it to Commissioner's Court. And after probably about, you know, everything, nothing in public health moves fast and you know, nothing in the government moves fast. So it took us about probably about five months between the time I presented several times to them.

They reviewed it and then they voted to approve the proposal. And I was engaged in consulting work with them for probably a little over a year to complete the project. So that's really how I got into public health. Well, that's wonderful.

And it's interesting because as you were describing, even with all the years of experience, the education, the training, everything that you brought in terms of great skills, you were still finding it was difficult to get into public health. And it really shows how many specialties we have within nursing and how sometimes we also may not be as good at helping people move from one specialty to another. But it's, it's, I think I applaud you for having the innovation in terms of putting a company together and going in at a different angle. So that's pretty exciting.

And I was just curious. Yeah. I mean, as you were talking, I was thinking, you know, what helped give you that like, like, you'd become really persistent and perseverance on it. I mean, how did you keep yourself motivated to do it when you kept having things come down and be like blockades for you?

Well, I can tell you, it was very difficult for a long time. And then really what turned the corner for me was when I made the conscious decision that I was going to have to, if in an effort to take control of situations and start my own business and just network. So that's, I just was determined, Joy. I was determined.

And thank you. Yeah. So we're going to need to move to a break. So this is all about nursing.

Dr. Joyce Bachelor, we're live on the Bee Bem Global Network and Tune in Radio and stay tuned. We'll be back. According to the American Nurses Association, there are approximately three and a half to four million nurses in the United States.

So where do all these nurses work? What kind of roles do they have? What kind of education and training help to prepare them for so many different settings? What kind of impact nurses have on patient outcomes?

The World Health Organization has announced that 2020 will be the year of the nurse, honoring the 200th Earth anniversary of Florence Nightingale. An international initiative called Nursing Now is underway to raise the profile of nursing. The National Academy of Medicine has convened a committee to create the future of nursing 2020 to 2030 that will focus on how the nursing profession can create a culture of health, reduce health disparities, and improve the health and well-being of the US population. Learn more and join Joyce Bachelor on all about nursing Wednesdays from 7 to 8 p.m.

Central Standard Time on the BBM Global Network. Attorney Renee Marie Smith is changing the way we sell real estate. She wrote a series of books called My Short Sale Guru Guides for all real estate practitioners. Whether you're a homeowner wanting to understand the process, an agent who has been handling short sales for years, or an industry analyst wanting to know how short sales impact your business, Renee uses her vast real estate experience to take a comprehensive look at the recent market phenomena while relaying it in an easy to understand format.

Through her company, Smith Titles Services, Renee has counseled thousands of short sale participants and processed in excess of a thousand short sales. Her knowledge is transformational for real estate professionals and layman alike, and her live presentations provide people the opportunity to ask specific questions about their issues. Find her books and schedule her to speak at your next event. Visit www.smithtitleservices.com or call 305-705-3428 or email her at Renee at smithtitleservices.com.

Isn't it time to sell your property today? Learn the My Short Sale Guru way. Welcome back everyone. You're listening to all about nursing live from the BBM Global Network and Tune in Radio.

I'm Dr. Joyce Bachelor, the host of this show, and I have a guest with me this evening, Dr. Lisa Campbell, who is the professor and director of the Postmaster's Doctor of Nursing Practice Program at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center School of Nursing. And prior to the break, Lisa had started to talk to us and tell us about how it was challenging for her to transition from private practice into public health.

And she created her own company and really used a lot of the knowledge and skills she had learned in her Doctor of Nursing Practice Program. And you had started to talk about doing a community needs assessment. And so I was curious if we could have you tell us a little bit more about that. How did that lead to you then looking at where you would start in terms of improving things that you were seeing were really needing to be improved?

Yes, so Joyce, that's a great question. So there were several tools that you used when you do a community health needs assessment. And one of the tools that I selected was a pre-tool from the Centers for Disease Control and one that the stakeholders actually did the assessment. Many times you'll find that companies will go in and they'll do the assessment in a silo of a community and not really engage with community stakeholders, which in my opinion is very unethical.

You've got to really talk to the people to see what they need. And so what they identified were several issues that put across social determinants of health. And let me explain that. So really when you look at a community needs assessment and then a community health improvement plan, which really that plan should include strategies that improve the health of all the citizens in the community or the geographic area regardless of their ability to pay.

So their social programs or policies that will help all community members. So as we think about that, the particular community health needs assessment really was structured around guiding stakeholders through looking at what are the social determinants of health. And there's a lot of conversation around social determinants of health choice. And those are really social and economic conditions that exist where we are born, where we live, where we play and where we work.

So there was literally those types of conditions that are typically structural and the most effective strategies to address those happen to be policy strategies, systems changes and environmental changes. And if you don't mind, I'd like to just give you an example of each if that's okay. Well, happy, great. Okay.

So as you think about it, so in this particular community, they wanted to address tobacco use because we know smoking can affect your health, your cardiovascular health and otherwise. So one strategy was to work with the community and they effectively put through and pass the smoke free ordinance for the city. Excuse me. And that's a policy change that not only affects those who don't smoke from secondhand smoke, but the goal of that would be to change the social norms in the community through this policy so that it would then support those who are smoking.

And within that community health improvement plan, Joyce, we were able to get grant funding to provide free or no cost smoking cessation programs for those who wanted to quit. So it was very comprehensive. So you were helping improve the community's health with the policy and then you were providing individuals who wanted not to smoke with this program. And other thing around systems, and I'm going to kind of jump ahead just a little bit, but I think it's really important.

So when you think about systems, it's really good to look at the community. Let's say, for example, transportation. Is there public transportation within the community that could get people say to their doctors appointments, to the grocery store and so forth? So one thing that the group working on the community health and assessment improvement plan wanted to do was to look at how they could expand transportation so it could help people have easy access to grocery stores and easy access to getting to healthcare providers and work because that's really important.

So we worked with the city transportation to increase the bus line service areas that really were in need based on assessment. And then the third thing that we worked on, actually that worked continued through this year. I did some consulting work with the county. They wanted to look at complete streets.

And in many cases, that means that they want to look at sidewalks and so forth. They're crossing to make sure that not only can citizens of the community be safe, but they also have a way to increase their physical activity with sidewalks and so forth. So this is a way to address social determinants of health through policy, systems and environmental change to really improve the health of the overall community. That's awesome.

Your example of transportation, I was thinking about how when we were looking to build a new hospital in Austin, the initial site that they had thought they would go to was caused a lot of concern because it did not have really good access with the public transportation. And so many of the people that needed to have care that were used to going to the hospital that had always been the safety net hospital, they would not be able to get there. And so the outcry in the community really did influence greatly because that plan got axed and we went in a different direction. So I think what you're describing really is important because there's a lot of people that really rely on that.

And that's the only way they can get around to get to their needed appointments, et cetera. So that's a great example. I also was thinking about how we just recently heard that they're cutting back on not necessarily having the same requirements for healthy food in the schools. And I just thought, well, we're going to go in the wrong direction.

So maybe we can chat more about social determinants after the break. We're coming to you live from the BBM Global Network and Tune in Radio. This is all about nursing about your choice, Bachelor. We'll continue this conversation when we come back.

I'm your host, Dr. Joyce Bachelor in All About Nursing. We're live on the BBM Global Network and Tune in Radio. Before the break, my guest, Dr.

Lisa Campbell, was sharing what kinds of initiatives she really helped to lead once they had done a community needs assessment and the kinds of social determinants of health that they began to address. And I had started to share that I was a little dismayed when I heard that we were going to roll back the requirements of having healthy food choices for school lunches and start to allow some of the things that many people thought to get rid of because of the huge issue we have in terms of obesity in children. And I was just curious, Lisa, if you had an opinion on what's that going to do to the kind of progress we have begun to make and addressing obesity in kids? Yeah, so Joyce, you've asked a really valid question that has been deeply concerned.

One thing when we put out choices, you know, Joyce, when you go to the grocery line at checkout, sometimes there'll be candy bars lined up and things that probably because we're hungry you really shouldn't eat. Well, that's a point of decision prompts. Those are strategically placed. And so what we want to do is make the healthy choice, the easy choice.

And one way we can do that is to educating our children and providing our children wholesome well-balanced foods that house whole grains, vegetables and fruits and rolling back the provisions that were in the school lunch programs to not offer the healthy foods that we had in place is a huge mistake. It's a huge mistake to help our children. I mean, if you think about it, there are less teenagers. Talk about a security threat.

There's less teenagers that could pass the physical for the military now, never before, because of obesity. And so that sends a terrible message to our children. We're not really looking out for the welfare of our children when we do that. Yeah, no.

Thank you for sharing that. Yeah, you're welcome. It'd be great to tell us a little about your transition and into becoming a public health department director. That must have been another huge step given the fact that you shared your hands so many barriers, given, you know, put up in front of you as you're trying to make these changes.

Maybe you could share a little bit about that. Yeah, sure choice. I'd like to think about it. You know, transitioning from doing the consulting work with the County Public Health Department director, it's like going from zero to 60 miles an hour and about 10 seconds, because that's what it felt like.

So I, one of the commissioners had come in on one of our meetings that I was conducting with the stakeholders as we were wrapping up and talking about where we were with the community health improvement plan after we had done the assessment. And there was 27 stakeholder groups represented. So we, you know, I had a room full of about 20, 27, 30 people in there. And commissioner came in and he said, I want to talk to you when this meeting's done.

And so I said, okay, so he asked me to be the public health department director. And Joyce, they had to ask me three times before I said yes. And so, and so what, what the first proposition was that I would come in and be the administrator and work with the medical director. And I said, no, I can't do that.

I can't do that. And so we, we negotiated and to make a long story short, I came in as the public health department director with, they knew it would be short term. I had a clear goal to transition the entire health department. And then they consult, they contracted with the physician because by law in Texas, you have to have medical, actually a public health authority, a local public health authority.

And so we contracted with the local physician to do that component. And then I was the health department director. And so I had administrative control over the, you know, working with our team over the whole health department. And I had actually three counties under my purview.

That's exciting. Can you share some highlights of some of the things that you're proud of that you did while you were in that role? Well, sure. Well, first let me tell you, the first day on the job, actually that evening I got a call with a rabies call for a raccoon.

So that was my first bathroom by fire into the public health department director. So, yeah, so, so, but really seriously, some of our highlights, I never saw it as a nurse that I would have animal control under my purview choice. And I went out to assess what was going on and putting on, you know, thinking about everything I learned, what we did there, we totally turned around animal control and did quality improvement. We implemented best practices in small shelter medicine.

We also added vaccines that had not been given before to reduce bordetella or kennel cough, which if you have kennel cough in an animal control shelter, a public animal control shelter, you cannot afford $400 in animals to treat them. So, that can wipe out your whole population. So, we did best practices in animal control medicine. We, you know, started sedating animals before euthanasia.

So, we got animal control squared away. We improved our clean practices and reduced feline diseases and so forth. One other thing, several other things I did, I worked with, I actually gambled. A lot of people don't like to gamble in these positions, but I did.

So, I knew that the county commissioners would not leave grant funding on the table. I also knew we had an issue with higher rates of tuberculosis in one of the adjoining counties that was under my purview. At that time, it was 13.5 per 100,000, which was hired in the state rate of 4.7, 100,000. Yeah, and so, we implemented a TB control program.

I got a registered nurse for the first time in eight years. So, I hired an FTE. And I looked at the stats actually a couple of weeks ago, and the TB rate in that county's down to 9.3 from 13.5. So, that is significant decrease in TB.

So, we did that. I also worked with increasing the grant funding with three quarters of a million increased by the time I left. And then we, because funding is a big problem with public health, as you can imagine. And I also worked with the county commissioners on hydrofracking injection wells.

So, we did a lot of environmental work. That's very exciting. Congratulations for so many wonderful accomplishments. We'll talk more about that.

We're coming to you live from the BeeBinglle Network and Tune in Radio. This is all about nursing. I'm Dr. Joyce Bachelahosa, the show, and we will be right back.

The earliest human societies worshipped a female goddess. Little is known about this time because we did not always have a written recorded history. It was around 3,100 BC when the Sumerians invented the first written language, and everything that proceeded this time is prehistory. The prehistorical record includes all of women's unwritten history from 30,000 BC to the time that men began achieving political power around 3,000 BC.

Male feminist artist Kimberly Berg maintains a strong position in educating and inspiring both men and women through his devotional art to the goddess in all women. Studying their history is paramount to understanding who women were and who they would become later living in a patriarchal society. To learn more about this important time in our history, go to www.isisrising.net. Have you ever wondered why some children recover from their symptoms of autism while others never seem to get any better?

After 13 years of research, Karen Thomas has recovered her own son from his symptoms of autism naturally. She now shares how she did it with you in her free webinar so that you can have the right resources and knowledge to help your child. The first definition of recovery is to regain health. Karen offers this to you in four stages, healing the gut, natural heavy metal detoxification, balancing the co-infections of autism, brain support and repair.

Register now for this free webinar to help you know what you can do to help your child to sleep better, be more calm, improve focus and reach their fullest potential to live a happy, healthy life. Go to NaturallyRecoveryAutism.com forward slash free workshop empowering parents with the resources to naturally recover autism from a mom who's done it. You are listening to all about nursing life from the BBM Global Network and TuneIn Radio. I'm Dr.

Joyce Batch, the host of the show and I have Dr. Lisa Campbell as a guest with me this evening. She's a professor and director of the Postmasters Doctor of Nursing Practice Program at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center School of Nursing. She's been telling us about her career in public health and how to make, how she made that transition even though there were many roadblocks and then eventually now moving into being the public health department director for a period of time and some of the highlights so that she was things that she was able to accomplish.

I was struck when you were talking about the TB that it's wonderful that there's been a decrease but I think sometimes what the public doesn't always understand is that the risk that that then has for the caregivers when you have that kind of disease not and it's something that is so preventable that it's, you know, kudos to you that you all were able to help reduce it but that's something that certainly should be continued by that, hopefully by that organization. So maybe you could tell us a little bit about what was some of the greatest challenges. I mean you've had some fascinating stories already in terms of the barriers you found but are there other things you'd like to share? Yeah, so Joyce, thanks for asking.

Some of the challenges I faced initially was really, when I first took over the role it was, I really had to think strategically about where I needed to start and the main thing was really establishing trust with our team because the health department really belongs to the community, right? Our doors are open, our services, their public services for the public's good and so I really wanted to establish trusting relationships with the staff really quickly. It was really essential to do that. So we started having meetings which hadn't been done before, I read more meetings with the staff and then I quickly realized we needed a strategic plan because as you know a strategic plan really provides you direction and I knew it needed to be something that we did together and I'll talk to that in just a minute but something that we did together but that wasn't a complicated plan, maybe three clear goals or aims that we could move toward.

It was really clear to me also Joyce that the health department had to become very visible. Actually many people in the community had no idea we had a health department. Literally. Oh wow.

Yeah, so as part of my plan, I, and a lot of people don't like to do this. But I became, I became really, I had a good relationship with the media and which I know can be surprising to some but with the local news station and also with the newspaper, I would say even more so with the news station with Mike over at that news station, I established a good relationship because I wanted the public to get good information when we had critical issues and push out also health promotion information to the public because we had a range of issues we had to deal with. So in financing budget, the health department employees, the supervisors and managers have never been involved in the budget before and so I engaged them in the budget discussions that we presented, that first budget that I presented to the county commissioners. So for me, some of the greatest challenges I had to move quickly was to get our strategic plan done and Joyce, one way I did it was really leveraging our resources.

So at the same time I was the public health department director, I was also working at Texas Tech and the Dr. nursing practice program part time and I engaged several of our Dr. nursing practice students and asked them if they would do strategic planning for us. And I had four DNP students that came to the health department to facilitate our strategic planning because you know the director can't facilitate strategic planning, you've got to be part of the process.

So I really leveraged that academic partnership and pulled them in and provided the technical assistance and we used, we used to guide that's often used in public health departments to do strategic planning, which is really instrumental in increasing our visibility and credibility actually with the community. Joyce, we had people come in the health department like regularly seeking information about latest issue that we were facing as example Zika and wondering about travel or Ebola and things like that. So it was really wonderful to see the public come into the health department. The employees just totally transformed after we got the strategic plan.

We had a big kick off, a community kick off in celebration. We really rebranded the health department is what we did and we even got a website going, which provided great information to the public and it helped brand us. So that was really important moving forward and getting them a good solid foundation before I left. You were smart to really engage the media so that you became the resource they would go to if they were getting calls or concerns being raised that they would know that you had the expertise with your team and yourself to be able to help answer those questions accurately.

That was very smart on your part. Thank you. And when you said a little bit about how the DMP students helping you and that was part of the academic partnerships, why was that so important to you? Well, being faculty member there too, so I really, because we have an executive nurse leader program, most of the students that come in have not had an experience in public health and all those similarities with systems, hospitals and so forth.

There's a lot of differences because remember when I said earlier that South Africa saw how nurses did so much with so little. In public health, in public health joy, if I can get a $50,000 grant, which is not a lot of money, it's a huge amount of money and I can do a lot with $50,000. And so I wanted the DMP students to really experience that. And from that actually we wrote a manuscript, we did a couple presentations, so we were able to disseminate that process to help other people as well, other public health departments as well.

So that was why it was really important for me. Well, they had the wonderful opportunity being mentored by you with your background and the experience that's great because part of the responsibility of organizations is to really know who's in their communities and try to help. So that's wonderful. Well, this is all about nursing.

I'm your host, Dr. Joyce Special. We're live on the Bee Bim Bubble Network in Tune and Radio and right now it's time for us to take a short break. Mike Zorek, a three-time California state champion in Greco, Roman wrestling at 114 pounds.

Mike Blindsitzberg was born in Hartford, Connecticut. He was a six-time national place, including two seconds, two-thirds and two-fourths. He also won the veteran's book style wrestling twice at 152 pounds in all these tournaments. He was the only blind competitor.

Nancy Zorek, a creative spirit whose talents have taken her to the stage and into galleries and exhibitions in several states. Her father, a commercial artist who shared his instruments with his daughter and helped her fine-tune her natural abilities, influenced her decision to following his footsteps. Ms. Zorek has enjoyed a fruitful career doing what she loves.

Listen Saturday mornings at 12 Eastern for the Nancy and Mike show for heartwarming stories and interesting talk on the BBM Global Network. Hello, I'm Steve Fagan and I'm president and CEO of Fagan Associates, but I'm also a life coach. I'm Steve Fagan, and I'm here for you. Welcome back everyone.

You're listening to all about nursing live on the BBM Global Network and Tune in Radio. I'm Dr. Joyce Batcher, the host of the show. And just before the break, Dr.

Lisa Campbell, who's my guest, who's the professor and director for the Postmaster's Doctor of Nursing Practice program at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center School of Nursing was telling us about a lot of the great work that she has led of being involved in the public health sector and some of the challenges that she faced as she moved into being the director. And then you began to tell us about the phenomenal strategic planning that you were able to do and how you leveraged having Dr. nursing practice students, which was great for them to be learning how to help facilitate strategic planning, but also really learning public health, because many of them I know have hospital backgrounds and not necessarily involved in this kind of specialty. So what maybe you could tell the audience a bit more about what is an academic partnership and why do you believe they're so important?

Well, so Joyce, thank you so much for asking that question. I think academic partnerships can be formalized with a memorandum of understanding. The way I've engaged in these academic partnerships, they're usually, for example, in my role as the public health department director, I was the administrator and I could make the decision to bring or to invite the NP students into this project to facilitate the strategic planning, because quite frankly, Joyce, I didn't have any money to go out and hire consultants to come in and do the strategic planning. And here we have this wealth of experience that these DNP students have had, many of them, had done strategic planning in their organization or for a professional organization, and those skills translate anywhere you go.

It just looks a little bit different because of the context. And so I was able to provide them a guide for them to do the strategic planning. And then I carried that further because of my relationship with the region. So the state of Texas is divided up into 11 health service regions, okay?

And whatever, whenever there's not a public health department, so there's only about 60 local public health departments in the state of Texas, now some of them cover more than one county, okay? And we have 254 counties in the state of Texas, so the region that we were under, right, the region that we were under had 29 counties. And I established a really good relationship with their deputy director and their medical director. And so when I was no longer public health department director, I said to them, hey, what can I do for you with our DNP students?

What do you mean? If you had a wish list, how could we help you? So through the relationship with them, they wanted to do strategic planning, Joyce. And so I was able to, yeah, I was able to take in five DNP students to do their regional strategic planning using the same methods that the student, a different group of students had done with our local public health department.

And then we went back again three years later to do a follow up strategic plan evaluation with another set of, we had, I had four DNP students at that time. And then I've engaged the DNP students at a professional level to do strategic planning with our professional public health nursing organization. So I'm constantly looking for opportunities for DNP students to learn a skill set that they can translate in any situation. And that's why those academic partnerships are important.

And specifically outside of the hospital domain, right, those systems, we need to be looking at schools as, I'm sorry, excuse me, we need to be looking at public schools, health department, nonprofit organizations, city, county government, those kinds of places that nurses with our perspective have a lot to offer. And as faculty, we can provide the technical support for those students going through these projects and mentor them and coach them. That's how we develop leaders. That's why those academic partnerships are so important because they're learning from the partner and they're learning from the faculty as they go through this process and from each other.

That's great. I think it'd be kind of fun for you now to share maybe a little bit more about your new role of the director of the Postmasters DNP program at Texas Tech Health Science Center School of Nursing in Lubbock. And this is a new role for you. What are you hoping to achieve and what is the role about?

Yeah, so thank you for asking me. So I've just been in the role since the first of the year. And I'm really excited about it. So as the director, my job is to, you know, to handle any student-related issues.

We're very much focused at Texas Tech School of Nursing on listening to student input and feedback and how we can do continuous quality improvement with our courses, with the processes that we implement within the online platform and so forth. And having meaningful deliverables for the students so that they really learn skill sets that translate really almost in any practice setting. So my job is to really, you know, very strongly engage with students. And also I am in charge of really overseeing or working with faculty on programmatic initiatives.

So in looking at how we can improve things like applicant reviews and turnaround time and any kinds of faculty development, any types of improvement that really falls under my, that's in my mind, if you will. I'm really excited about looking at this role in a very creative way and appreciate the mentorship of Dr. Barbara Cherry going through this process. Well, I'm very excited about you being in the role since I'm on faculty at Texas Tech in the degree program.

And so I think what direction of the program is going and with your leadership, I'm very, very excited because I think one of the things that we've been proud of is the number of our graduates that really are out there working and leading in state organizations as volunteers and different volunteer things that they're doing. We can talk a little bit more about that, but it's very, very exciting. So congratulations. Thank you, Joyce.

This is all about nursing and your host, Dr. Joyce Bachelor. We're live on the B B.B.M. Global Network and I have Dr.

Lisa Campbell with me who has recently started in a new role as the director of the Postmasters DNP program at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center School of Nursing. And she was sharing a little bit about what that role entails and I started to talk about how exciting it is that, because I work with Lisa, that she's in this role because I think we have a phenomenal program, pretty wonderful graduates that are out there leading all kinds of work. So you've shared with us a whole lot of great information this evening, Lisa. And I was curious, based on your experiences, what are the three most important actions any nurse can take?

So Joyce, thanks so much for asking that question. So I'm going to bring this a little bit with the public health blend. The first one, I recommend any nurse to build strong trusting relationships because I've found in public health and really in anything that we do as a nurse that to get anything done, it depends on those individual relationships with key stakeholders. It might be an elected official, it could be a colleague at work, a leader at work, it's just really, really important to build those strong relationships.

Don't you find that's true, Joyce? Absolutely, and I was going to say that's a theme that other people have brought up is you've got to have good relationships. It's all about relationships. So yes, it really is.

The second thing I would recommend for any nurse's strategy is to network, network, network. And when you network and take your business card, it's really main, I'm very, I'm very embarrassed and maintain those and maintain the connections. Those are really important. So when you were asking me about academic partnerships, I remember when people talk to me about needs, like what their needs are, and in my networking, and then I may have an opportunity to connect them or to leverage resources to help them somehow by really listening to people, by really listening to their needs and remembering those.

And then the third thing I would say is I believe every nurse, nursing is a political story. And what I mean by that is every nurse should engage in policy and advocacy work at whatever level that is. And I would recommend that nurses do their homework and talk to all stakeholders. One of the biggest mistakes I made when trying to get vaping added to the smoke-free ordinance in our city was not going and talking to each of those city council members individually before I presented the proposal in city council because it ended up looking like a telenovela.

And I wish that I had talked to them beforehand. So do your homework and talk with stakeholders and be strategic about it. So those are my three strategies that I recommend for any nurse to engage in. That's great.

And then one other final question I would have for you is that if you had one wish, what would it be? Well, Joyce, I thought about this a lot. And I think I know it would be more transparency and truth-talent in everything that we do. If you make a mistake, own it.

The public health department director, the public wanted to know the truth, no matter what it was. And you've got to figure out how to deliver that message in a transparent way at the right time and the right dose, as you will, you know, paking out that information. That would be my one wish. Well, I really want to thank you for being on the show.

Lisa, you have shared just a wealth of information. Like, again, this is another specialty that you've been able to provide to our listeners with a lot more detail on. So thank you again. And you are listening to All About Nursing, Live from the BBM Global Network and TuneIn Radio.

I'm Dr. Joyce Bachelors at the Hostess Show. And I hope that you'll tune in again next week. Thank you.

You've been listening to All About Nursing with your host, Dr. Joyce Bachelors. Tune in each week and get a daily dose of nursing and the healthcare services they provide and how nurses are finding innovative ways to address the key healthcare issues they're facing today. Here on Dr.

Joyce Bachelors, All About Nursing. You've been listening to the BBM Global Network. The Ideas, Views and Opinions of this broadcast are those of the participants of the program and are not necessarily the Ideas, Views and Opinions of the BBM Global Network Company.