See You Now Podcast

Within minutes, the now-iconic images and video footage of critical care nurse Sandra Lindsay receiving a COVID-19 jab administered by fellow nurse Michelle Chester, DNP began circulating in media outlets around the globe and along with it a high-profile opportunity to reach others, inspire them, and build their vaccine confidence.

Vaccines and vaccination—they’ve become one of the hottest topics of public discourse. Indeed, the Oxford Languages 2021 Word of the Year is Vax. As their pun-filled news release notes, "more than any other word, 'vax' has injected itself into the bloodstream of the English language in 2021.” With regulatory approval of a COVID vaccine for kids ages 5-11, COVID boosters for adults 65 and older and those at a higher risk for COVID, and the World Health Organization recommending widespread use of a long-awaited malaria vaccine for children, there is much vaccine progress and science to celebrate and understand.

In this episode, we dive deep into the science of vaccines with Christine Grady, MSN, PhD; Ernest Grant, PhD, RN, FAAN; Jaquelin P Dudley, PhD; and Lori Boyle, MSN, AGPCNP. Together we discuss the ethics and details of clinical trials and vaccine distribution, and the role that nurses specifically play in developing vaccine confidence and innovating to rapidly and safely achieve mass COVID-19 vaccination.

Flattening the curve. Testing and contact tracing. Social distancing. Not only have these practices become part of our daily routines, but they are also the primary tools of the public health emergency response to COVID-19. In this episode, we meet Kathleen Blaney, MPH, RN, Director of Disease Control Emergency Preparedness at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Kathleen recounts the story of building the NYC Test & Trace Corps, a public health initiative to fight the threat of COVID-19 and one of the largest contact tracing endeavors in modern history, which in a matter of weeks trained and onboarded over 3,000 new contact tracers—remotely. She shares how the highly personal nature of contact tracing can strengthen science literacy and vaccine confidence, reduce health disparities, and even help build trust in both public institutions and each other amid the pandemic and beyond.

COVID-19 has changed the way we do almost everything—not just in healthcare settings, but in settings of all kinds. With reactivation and recovery being keywords in everyone's inboxes, now more than ever, we need designers steeped in public health to help us reimagine a safe and healthy return to social life in a pandemic environment. In this episode, nurse and service designer Brittany Merkle, MFA, RN, shares how she, alongside a multidisciplinary team, were able to create a game plan and playbook for returning to school, work, and play safely.

Every day nurses face difficult decisions and ethical dilemmas. They know how to deal with suffering, are accustomed to participating in life and death decisions, and advocating for human rights. COVID-19 presented circumstances that no one was prepared for including weighing personal risk against an obligation to render care. In this episode, Liz Stokes, JD, MA, RN, Director of the American Nurses Association Center for Ethics and Human Rights provides insight into the ethical and moral dimensions of the COVID-19 pandemic.

COVID-19 has disproportionately impacted Black people and people of color in the United States. The pandemic placed a magnifying glass on existing disparities and their underlying causes. And when we look closer into these disparities, we find that youth experiencing homelessness and mental health issues are some of the most adversely affected by the COVID-19 public health measures and Shelter-in-Place orders. In this episode, we hear from psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner and researcher, Dawn Bounds, PhD, MPHNP-BC whose research covers juvenile justice and homeless youth. Dawn reflects on the complex challenges these populations face amidst overlapping pandemics.

With shelter-in-place orders in effect across the country, people are spending prolonged periods of time inside their homes but what happens when home isn’t safe? In this episode of SEE YOU NOW, we speak with nurse scientist Camille Burnett about how nurses are in a unique position in their communities to screen, access, intervene, and meet people where they are—particularly responding to intimate partner violence. Even in the middle of a pandemic nurses and neighbors are looking out for one another and finding ways to make sure people are physically and emotionally protected.

During this pandemic, communities across the globe have experienced extraordinary social solidarity with the prevailing sentiment of ‘we are in this together’. While we’ve come together for mutual support and understanding in small and extraordinary ways, there are a few who believe the necessary public health measures are too lengthy and too broad. And in some parts of the US, they’ve taken to the streets to protest mandatory shelter-in-place orders that have closed non-essential parts of our economies. The loudest voices in the midst of these debates and protests were the nurses who stood silently in solidarity for their patients who could not join the conversation. In Arizona, nurses Jade Juriansz, Jasmin Bhatti, and Brittany Schilling participated in a counter protest to provide facts about what is happening with COVID-19 on the frontlines. Although silent, these nurses’ presence and motivation resounded around the world. In this episode we get to hear the motivations of this courageous group who made a commitment to educate the public and share the facts, and the health risks—a true example of 'meeting people where they are'.

Why is it then that nurses are often not screened or provided with mental health support in their workspaces? Nurse scientist Judy Davidson DNP, RN, FCCM, FAAN works to reinforce the mental health needs of nurses while bringing awareness to nurse suicides. She creates programs that provide simple and accessible tools for health systems to adopt throughout their networks to ensure that nurses can stay strong, be supported, and get help when needed.