Ep 45: Empowering Nurses in Electoral Politics

Nurses have all the right attributes to be successful in politics but there are so few in office around the country. We want to help change that by empowering nurses to feel confident and comfortable running for office. We’ll spend this episode discussing why it’s an important topic and we’ll learn more a new campaign school that Sharon Pearce and Kimberly Gordon are working to launch in 2020. On this episode:  1:52 – Introducing our topic and our guest Kimberly Gordon. 2:19 – Sharon talks about what her and Kimberly have done together in the past. 3:45 – Why is this topic so important? 4:57 – Only two nurses serve in office at the Federal level right now. 5:21 – Why aren’t there more nurses in office? 7:01 – North Carolina has three nurses in state legislature, including Gale Adcock. 8:10 – Who are the two nurses on the national level? 8:52 – Neither of those are advanced practice nurses, which we’ve never had at the Federal level. 10:01 – Let’s talk about the breaking down barriers project Sharon and Kimberly are working on at Yale. 12:37 – We’ve met nurses from all over the country and they feel like this is very important. 13:40 – We as nurses are really late to this game. Physicians have been training people for politics since the 70s. 14:34 – Is it intimidating for nurses to consider running for office? 15:35 – Occupation-specific schools have become popular for a reason. 16:29 – A huge barrier is we don’t like to ask for money or help and that’s an issue.                                                                                                                    18:41 – We’re not asking people to run for governor. We want to build a pipeline that starts in county commissions, school board, places like that. 19:32 – Maybe one day we’ll have a nurse as president. 19:55 – What kind of timeline are we talking about for this project? 20:34 – Yale has provided so much acceptance and assistance through this process. 21:39 – “If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.” 22:51 – Applications open on January 1, 2020. Get the full show notes and additional resources here: https://beyondthemaskpodcast.com/?p=2135