See You Now Podcast

History and experience show that nurses raising their voices shape health policy. From advancing the profession to advocating for patients, nurses are well-positioned to articulate and champion the changes and legislation needed for better health, care, and access.

March 2024 marks two years since President Biden signed into law the Dr. Lorna Breen Health Care Provider Protection Act. This landmark, first-of-its-kind legislation has funded more than $100 million in grants to implement strategies to reduce and prevent burnout, stress and suicide, sustain well-being, and build workplace cultures and practices so our healthcare workforce can thrive!

In this episode, the SEE YOU NOW team digs into our past episodes to highlight women who have and continue to shape history and share our perspectives on why the work of these women -- many of whom are using their nursing superpowers -- to identify, advocate, and hasten equity and representation creates a better future for all and a writes a history that carries forward these important lessons, roadmaps, and contributions.

In this episode, we meet nurse Vincent Guilamo-Ramos, PhD, MPH, LCSW, RN, executive director of The Institute for Policy Solutions at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, a new institute working to redesign the US healthcare system with the goal of shifting policy and practice to more preventive, value-based and whole-person care.

A choir for nurses, art tours for clinicians, on-demand meditation for all healthcare workers. In this episode, we’re sharing a panel discussion recorded live at Aspen Ideas: Health, hosted by Jon LaPook, MD and featuring Winnie Mele, RN, David Ko, and Eric Wei, MD, to learn how clinical settings are testing support and wellness interventions to boost emotional health and tame the widespread stress and burnout among nurses, physicians and all healthcare providers that intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic and continues to strain so many. Clinical staff are reporting remarkable improvements in morale and motivation from these creative approaches. Effective patient care is best delivered by a compassionate care team, and that means designing programs to heal the healers.

Homelessness across the U.S. is on the rise. The National Alliance to End Homelessness reports the number of unsheltered and chronically homeless individuals and families has climbed ~6% annually since 2017, and an estimated 582,462 people experienced homelessness across America in 2022. Advocacy groups and researchers say a big driving force is the decline of affordable housing, a problem decades in the making but one that has grown significantly worse in the past few years. And when people lose their homes, housing and shelter, their lives, health, and safety become far more complex and at risk.

We’re swapping episodes with our friends at Radio Advisory to hear what they’re learning that can help address pressing workforce issues in healthcare, while Radio Advisory listeners are checking out an episode of SEE YOU NOW. In this Radio Advisory episode, host Rachel (Rae) Woods speaks with Advisory Board's Chief Nursing Officer, Carol Boston, and two leaders from University Hospitals – Chief Quality & Clinical Transformation Officer, Peter Pronovost, and Chief Nursing Executive, Michelle Hereford – about recent data and their experiences navigating the complexity of the workforce vacancies.

In this episode, recorded live at Aspen Ideas: Health, an expert panel led by nurse economist Shawna Butler, RN, MBA, vividly describes how many of our health workplaces and practices are exhausting, overly burdensome, and causing moral distress and early career departures of our talented, dedicated, and overworked healthcare professionals.

In this conversation, hear from nurse Gretchen Berlin, RN, and McKinsey's Thomas London, MBA, Robin Roark, MD, MBA, and Senthu Arumugam, MBA, about the findings from a McKinsey survey to explore why nurses are considering leaving their roles, what energizes them to keep going, and how nurses around the world are eager to innovate and deliver care in different and better ways to solve what has become a consequential global problem.

In Part II in our series on the power of song for health and healing, musician Darden Smith describes his observations and process of collaborative songwriting, in which he brings his knowledge of the craft to the stories and experiences of people from all walks of life to co-create songs that heal.