Upcoming Grief Workshop for Caregivers

Caregiving can be laden with layers of complicated and sometimes conflicting emotions. So many losses can go unrecognized, and can leave caregivers feeling unseen. So grateful to partner with Pinelawn Memorial Park and Arboretum, and COPE Foundation, to offer this free online workshop offering caregivers a space to be heard. This workshop will give us … Continue reading Upcoming Grief Workshop for Caregivers

In Times of Overwhelm as a Nurse, Begin with One Intentional Act at a Time

One of the most difficult things about trying to be empathetic, engaged and informed with all that has been going on with both our local Los Angeles wildfire devastation as well as our country's political chaos, is the utter overwhelmedness of so many very serious issues to grapple with all at once. I think most … Continue reading In Times of Overwhelm as a Nurse, Begin with One Intentional Act at a Time

The Perils of Rushed Listening and Overeager Attempts to Fix Grief

The other day, I met up for a casual coffee with a lovely friend who is not in the healthcare realm. As it goes in catching up with friends, I was trying to give the summarized version of how life has been this past year on both a personal and professional level. I briefly alluded … Continue reading The Perils of Rushed Listening and Overeager Attempts to Fix Grief

Self Care: The Value of Solitude and Introspection

In all my 14 years of PICU nursing, I've never quite experienced the overlapping volume and intensity of suffering, moral distress amongst nurses, death, and anger from patients' families that our unit experienced this past August - October. The bike accident that snuffed out a teenage life in a moment. The newly diagnosed cancer patient … Continue reading Self Care: The Value of Solitude and Introspection

Reckless Politics and the Potential for Profound Harm in Healthcare

I have little desire to turn this space into a forum for political arguments. That said, we are barely recovered as individual healthcare workers, a healthcare system, and a country, from the pandemic and some of the political mishandlings that happened during the pandemic. Healthcare has never been easy, but we all have felt the … Continue reading Reckless Politics and the Potential for Profound Harm in Healthcare

Podcast Episode with Muted in Medicine: Professional Grief

I so loved this podcast conversation with Saba Fatima, a pediatrician I had the joy of getting to know through the Columbia University Narrative Medicine certification program. Our shared love of pediatrics, storytelling and preserving humanity in healthcare really bonded us as we dove into this conversation about professional grief, for her incredible new podcast, … Continue reading Podcast Episode with Muted in Medicine: Professional Grief

A Different Kind of Expertise for a Different Kind of Healing

The baby came to us from another hospital with multi-layered complications since her premature birth. Her dad was absent, and her mom had two and a half strikes working against her in life. The other hospital had reached its limit in what they could do for the baby, so they sent the baby to us. … Continue reading A Different Kind of Expertise for a Different Kind of Healing

Technology and the Loss of Human Connection in Healthcare – Part One

As charge nurse on a busy day in our PICU, I was the hub of traffic control. Two of our patients were stable enough to transfer out of the ICU to the medical/surgical floors. One patient in the ED had caught a bad respiratory virus and was struggling to breathe. One of our physicians went … Continue reading Technology and the Loss of Human Connection in Healthcare – Part One