The Conversing Nurse podcast
Are you a nurse curious about the experiences of other nurses? For 36 years, I have only known the Peds/NICU realm but I am intrigued by the roles of nurse researchers, educators, and entrepreneurs. Through conversations with nurses from various specialties, I aim to bring you valuable insights into their lives. At the end of each episode we play the five-minute snippet, just five minutes of fun as we peek into the 'off-duty' lives of my guests! Listen as we explore the nursing profession, one conversation at a time.
Episodes
Philip Layog is known as the "Work From Home RN" on Instagram, where he helps fellow nurses transition from hospital roles to remote positions. But first, he had to help himself.
Philip started his nursing career in Med-Surg, moved to CVICU, then PACU, but once he started his family, he decided to explore remote nursing opportunities. With a decade of experience, he eventually landed his first remote job.
...
**Hey, before we jump into today's episode, I want to give you a quick heads-up. This conversation includes a personal story about an attempted suicide and some mental health struggles.
If that's something that feels heavy or triggering for you right now, it's completely ok to skip this episode or come back to it another time. Take care of yourself first.
If you're listening and finding that this b...
My guest this week, Irnise Williams, has been a nurse for 16 years. Starting with her eye on medical school, she opted for nursing school, fell in love, and never looked back. Because if you’re looking back, you can’t look forward, and forward was the direction Irnise wanted to go.
She could have advanced her degree by becoming a Nurse practitioner or a CRNA, two popular paths over a decade ago. Instead, she a...
Today’s episode is Nicole Cromwell 2.0—and trust me, a lot has happened in the last three years.
What started as a creative outlet has grown into something much bigger. In fact, Nicole’s life as an artist might just be giving her full-time nursing career a run for its money.
Since we last talked in episode 46, she hasn’t just been creating beautiful art—she’s been building pathways for others to reconnect with their ...
If you're my age and can remember over 50 years ago, you might recall those lazy Saturday mornings spent watching Schoolhouse Rock. There was a clever cartoon skit called, “I’m Just A Bill” where we’d learn how a bill becomes law. This three-minute video was responsible for teaching an entire generation of kids about Civics.
Enter Gilanie De Castro, also known as Citizen Nurse on social media, who through h...
Today, we’re talking about something that most nurses have felt — but few organizations are willing to name honestly.
Burnout.
But what if burnout isn’t about resilience?
What if it isn’t about self-care?
What if it’s actually an ethical issue?
My guest today is Aimee Ellis, nurse executive and author of Flatline Ethics. Aimee argues that when nurses are chronically overwhelmed, morally distressed, and unsuppor...
I've often said on this podcast that many nurses choose this profession for reasons that aren't noble or lofty. Alisha Sandidge-Renteria changed that for me. As a teenager, she witnessed the economic disparity in healthcare after seeing her mother, who was fighting cancer, be forced to choose a cheaper, experimental, and less effective regimen which ultimately ended her life. Since then, Alisha has embodi...
If nursing is consistently ranked as the most trusted profession in America…
Why do so many nurses feel unheard inside their own workplaces?
That question has been on my mind.
On this podcast:
We talk about burnout.
We talk about staffing.
We talk about leadership.
But underneath all of it is something deeper — culture.
And culture is hard to change.
Not because nurses don’t care.
Not because leaders do...
Enjoy this short! Sit back and laugh with me and my girl, Jessica, as we have a bit of fun in the closet!
Jessica's Instagram https://www.instagram.com/dream.2.b.free/
ICYMI: Conversing with a Flight Nurse: Jennifer Caposella: https://www.buzzsprout.com/Conversing with a Flight Nurse: Jennifer Caposella
Contact The Conversing Nurse podcast
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theconve...
Heather Vails, MSN Ed. RNC-NIC, is definitely in my badass nurse category. She has lived with the rare genetic disorder Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, or EDS, for decades. She has not only lived, she’s thrived. After a long career as a NICU nurse, she recently left the bedside, a place she loved dearly to venture into teaching our new generation of nurses as a Professor of Pediatrics. Listen as she educates us about this r...
Today’s guest has one of those careers that doesn’t follow a straight line—and that’s exactly what makes it powerful.
Julie Smith’s professional path looks a bit like a zig-zag, but every turn adds depth. She began in communications, pivoted into emergency nursing, focused on safety net populations and disaster relief, moved into education, and now serves as a clinical product leader at InterSystems. There, she helps...
I really enjoyed talking with Kirby Williams, a Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner. She gave us the deets on where a PMHNP can work, the training required, the subspecialties, as well as the heaviness of the job, and how she cares for her own mental health. Her students are lucky to have her as a mentor and her patients, as their provider. In the 5-minute snippet, I absolutely love her advice for babies: ...
This week, my guest is Tracy Hicks, a doctorally-prepared and dual-certified family and psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner. She also holds an MBA, which is particularly useful in her role as a CEO.
Tracy is the founder of C-Trilogy Comprehensive Clinical Care and C-Trilogy Outreach, a certified community behavioral health clinic that provides mental health services, substance use support, primary care, and ...
**CAUTION** This episode discussed suicide, suicidal ideation, drug dependency. PROCEED WITH CAUTION.
This is a chronology of my serious health scare in 2025 and my subsequent dependency on Xanax.
During this time I suffered suicidal ideation. I was aware of the resources available to me and I didn't reach out. Please don't make the same mistake and suffer needlessly.
Here are some trusted mental health reso...
If you've been listening to the podcast for a while you’ve heard me say that we would be discussing bullying and, I’m happy to report that after over 65 episodes, I'm finally doing that. And I'm not only talking about it, I'm talking to the expert about it.
My guest, Dr. Phyllis Quinlan, a Ph.D.-prepared nurse, literally wrote the book on Bullying and Chronic Incivility in Nursing. With a ...
Tiffany Gibson is a radical nurse leader who has been featured in Oprah Daily and Ebony magazines and proudly shares her two cents on social media and through her podcast. So when she manifested her goal on LinkedIn to book twelve speaking engagements this year, I jumped at the opportunity to invite her to be my guest because her wisdom for nurses cannot go unheard.
Tiffany is an emotional intelligence consulta...
Dr. Bonny Kehm is the Founding Dean and Assistant Provost of the College of Nursing and Health Sciences at Columbia Southern University. She’s an accomplished nurse educator, researcher, and leader whose work has had a substantial influence at both the state and national levels.
Appointed to the Missouri State Board of Nursing back in 2017, Dr. Kehm went on to serve as board president and contributed to vital initiat...
My guest this week is Yasmin Sharifi, an operating room nurse with many decades of experience. She’s here to give us a glimpse into, as she says, “what really goes on behind that red line.”
Yasmin didn’t initially set out to be an OR nurse. She started her career in med-surg but quickly encountered burnout due to a nursing shortage and inadequate patient-to-nurse ratios, often sharing 35 patients with another nurse. ...
Today’s guest is someone who brings compassion, intellect, and a genuine love for medicine to everything he does.
Dr. Mahmoud Ibraheem is a Pulmonary and Critical Care physician whose medical journey has taken him from Bahrain to New York, Florida, and Texas. Those experiences shaped who he is as a physician.
Beyond medicine, Dr. Ibraheem is passionate about mental health, music, and making medicine more human. He’s...
Meet Lia Xiong-Ratley, a Family Nurse Practitioner, women’s health advocate, and rescuer of the underdogs, literally.
Lia has worn many hats over the years, from pediatric ICU to cardiothoracic surgery, but after becoming a family nurse practitioner, she has found her place at Planned Parenthood.
If you think the only services offered through Planned Parenthood are contraception and abortion, you're not alone; Li...
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