Nursing life w/ brittany hansen

This episode of the Overcome and Become podcast features a guest, Brittany Hansen, who is not only the host's mother but also a nurse. They discuss Brittany's experience working in the emergency department of a small hospital in a town with a diverse population. Brittany talks about the variety of patients she sees and the different roles she takes on, such as being part of the difficult IV team and trauma team. She also mentions her involvement in community projects and her passion for working with children. Overall, she emphasizes the benefits of working in a small hospital and how it has made her a well-rounded nurse. Hello, this is your host, Allie Hanson. Welcome or welcome back to the Overcome and Become podcast. Let's get motivated. Do you have something to say? Every time. Because I just started recording, Kimo. Please, please tell the Overcome and Become family what you have to say. Okay, maybe let's keep it down a bit because we've got a podcast to record, bro. Yeah, you. Hello, everyone. Welcome or welcome back to the Overcome and Become podcast. I'm super excited to be here because, as you've seen by the title, we do have a guest this week. I want to apologize for a couple things. One, we missed last week. I had a little situation of my adapting cord from my microphone to my computer falling behind this drawer, which you might be like, Allie, why don't you just take your hand back there? Why don't you just take the drawer out? Well, you see, the drawer was, like, screwed in, and also I kept trying to get my hand in there, and my hand is too fat to fit back in there. So I had to really do some digging. I finally got it out, so we're getting a podcast up this week. And I also want to apologize. Me and my guests are both a little congested, so if we sound a little congested, that is why. But if you didn't know, it is Nurses Appreciation Week. So the podcast I am doing this week, of course, is going to involve a nurse, and not only a nurse but a very, very special nurse to me. I don't want to get too ahead of myself because I want her to kind of introduce herself. But without further ado, I am so excited to welcome on Brittany Hansen. Hello. Thanks for having me back on the podcast. I am so excited to have you on. For those of you who don't know, Brittany Hansen is my mom, and she is also a nurse. So this works out perfect for me in my favor, but we have a lot of new listeners. So I want you to introduce yourself. Tell me a little bit about your life, a little bit about your backstory, kind of who you are, so the new people can get a little insight onto the incredible woman that you are. Yeah, it's been a while since I've been on the podcast. I know, it sure has. Several months, actually. So like she said, my name is Brittany Hansen. I am married with a wonderful family, have lots of wonderful children. I have been a nurse for, gosh, almost nine years now. I graduated nursing school actually nine years ago this month, which is really crazy to think about. Most of my time has been spent as an emergency department nurse. I do a lot with our pediatric program at our hospital. I've done some case managing, and I like to say I dabble in OB. I mostly go down there just to play with the babies. All right, well, that's awesome. Now we can end the episode because she answered half my questions. I'm just kidding. No, but I'm super excited. So like she said, she has been a nurse for quite a while. Now it's going to be nine years this year, which is absolutely incredible. That's a really long time to be a nurse. But I want to know a little bit more about where you work because you mentioned some specific areas. You mentioned that you mostly work in the emergency department. So what has that been like? And please explain to everyone what the emergency department is because a lot of people don't understand fully what that is. Yeah, so I started my career as a nurse in a hospital, and I worked actually for the same hospital the entire time. It's a critical access hospital, so we're pretty unique in our area. We're landlocked by the Navajo Reservation and by Lake Powell, and we also get close to 5 million tourists a year. It's a small town, but we get lots and lots of visitors. I think the year before COVID, we discharged something like 46 different countries from our emergency department. So we get patients literally from all over the world. So the really cool thing about my hospital is that it is small, and that provides me the opportunity to do lots of things that I normally wouldn't get to do at a big hospital. So we don't have a difficult IB team. We are the difficult IB team. We don't have a co-team. We are the co-team. We don't have a trauma team. We're the trauma team. We're a rep response team. We really get to do a lot of things. I take care of patients all the way from teeny tiny newborns. If there's a bad newborn, then we go right down to OB from the emergency department, and I'll slip in an IV or do whatever I need to to help down there, all the way up to 101-year-old patients. So I love the variety that it provides in my life. Absolutely, and it kind of sounds like, I mean, obviously you just said that you love the variety, but is that really where you love to be, like, really being hands-on with so many different things? Or this, okay, we're going to kind of have this be a two-part question. Or would you rather work in a big hospital where you're kind of a part of one thing and you do the same thing every shift, and you don't really get to be out of your comfort zone and get to really be able to be skilled in a lot of different areas? And able to practice those frequently? You know, I really like working where I work and working in the hospital that I work in, and it provides me a lot of opportunities. You know, if I worked in a bigger hospital, I would probably choose the NICU or pediatric oncology. Those are just two things very near and dear to my heart. I've had three NICU babies, and obviously I've had a daughter with cancer. So those two things, I don't get to do those types of things. So those things would be really, really cool to maybe do one day. But I really love being able to do lots of things. I'm also involved in, I actually have 13 side jobs at the hospital. I love doing community projects. I do a lot of things for our community. A lot of things, I sit on the Substance Abuse Task Force representing the hospital for the city. I am the chairman of the Community Wellness Collaboration, which is a collaboration between the other main medical organizations in PAGE. And we do a lot of preventative work for our schools. And I love that side of nursing too, just really being able to give education and talk about prevention and doing what I can. I'm very much into pediatrics. Yeah, and I think something so fun about working in a small town. So if you don't know, PAGE is a very small town. We have about a population of like 8,000, right? So not like crazy small, where we only have a couple hundred people, but still very small. So when it comes to different positions in PAGE, especially at the hospital, you're involved so much in your community. It's not just about getting people in the hospital and getting them out. You get to help your community so much. And, you know, we have a lot of schools here, which means we have a lot of youth. And like she mentioned, she loves to work with youth. So I think that works out perfect. Do you think that being able to have all of these different things and really honestly kind of having, being forced to know how to do everything, do you think it helps you to be more well-rounded as a nurse, to be kind of skilled in a lot of these different areas? Oh, absolutely, yeah. I think, you know, just take IVs, for example. If you're in a big hospital and you have a difficult, or a tough IV patient, there's difficult IV teams that come in, or you call in a surgeon to come in and put a PICC line in, or ultrasound. We are the ones that do that. You know, our emergency department nurses, excuse me, if there's a med surg patient that needs an IV or, like I said, a newborn that was just born that's maybe not doing well that needs an IV, that's typically the ER that comes and does that. So that's pretty cool. Another really cool thing that I love is you, in our emergency department, we have two nurses on at a time. So you really, you take all the critical patients, you take all the trauma patients, you just take everything, anything that walks in the door, you really have to be able to be prepared for. We see STEMIs, you know, really bad heart attacks or strokes. We see such a variety of things that we don't have a stroke team and we don't have a trauma team. We are the team. So that really helps us as nurses and in our hospital to be very well-rounded. Right, I think it definitely rounds you guys a lot more because I've had a lot of experiences at this hospital. I've been there many, many times. And it really is awesome to see that, like, people can just jump in wherever they're needed. You know, it's not like you're absolutely right. It's not like, oh, let me call my team for this. It's like, I'll do this. So I think that's awesome. But before we keep going on these questions, I want to go way back to, you know, when you really decided to be a nurse. Like, when did that inspiration hit you? Because it's a hard career. Nursing school is hard. Like, it takes a lot of work. You know, people aren't always the nicest to you. We just went on a walk and talked about this. But I want to know, like, where did this inspiration for nursing come from? So interestingly, when I was young, I remember in elementary school, they would ask me, what do you want to be when you grow up? And my answer was always a baby nurse. I wanted to be a baby nurse. I have always had a love for kids and children, especially babies. I babysat a ton as a child. So I just always thought that would be so cool to be a baby nurse. But really what spurred me on, I actually went to medical assisting school right after I graduated because I wanted to kind of see, like, do I like the medical field? What is that going to look like for me? But really what cemented my desire and my passion for being a nurse is having three NICU babies. So all three of my babies that I gave birth to all spent time in the NICU. And that was one of the toughest things that I've ever done is having to leave your infant baby. You've got all these hormones, this crazy time of life, and you have to leave your baby at night. And it's the nurses that care for those babies. It's really the nurses. We talked a little bit about this actually on our walk through. The nurses are the ones that are there 24-7. They're at bedside. They're the ones really, you know, caring for you. And there's a whole team. I mean, it's not just nurses. There's a huge team of people that are involved in caring for patients, radiology and respiratory therapists and doctors, CNAs. There's so many wonderful, wonderful people. But really in the NICU, leaving my babies in the hands of these nurses, I really had to really trust. And I just thought, you know what? A good nurse can make all the difference to somebody's hospital stay. You're talking about somebody on their worst day. When you're staying in the hospital, when you're in the emergency department, when you're in ICU, when you're in NICU, that's people pretty low points. So I just thought, you know what? Good nurses can make all the difference. And I really wanted to be that nurse. I really wanted to make a difference and have that compassion and try to make a difference for patients. Right. So kind of going off of that, sorry if I cut you off. When you decided to take this path, was it important to you to be a good nurse? Because a lot of people will pick careers because it's reliable. Like a nursing position, really almost anywhere you live, you could probably find a job. It's relatively reliable. So when you did decide to take this career path, what did that good nurse look like to you? Because obviously, you know, you have a passion for so much more than just going to work day-to-day. So what does the quote-unquote good nurse look like to you? I always say every patient every time deserves compassion and respect. I don't care if you've been in my emergency department 16 times that week because you have a substance abuse problem. I'm going to respect you and I'm going to care for you and I'm going to give you compassion. It doesn't really matter to me what your ailment is. I just think that you can really, really show compassion when you have these people traveling through. We get a ton of tourists, like I said before, that are scared. They don't speak our language or there's a serious injury and we're having to transfer them to a bigger hospital. We're having to find them out. So there's a lot that goes into that. And I think that just truly having that empathy, having that compassion makes a world of difference. It's not about just am I giving the right meds? Am I, you know, taking their vital signs? Am I recognizing that they're declining? Whatever the situation is, I think it's so much more about that courtesy and respect and that compassion. Just sitting down at their level, you know, placing a hand on their arm and just saying, I'm really sorry that this happened to you. I'm really sorry that, you know, you were out on the lake and having so much fun and you broke your arm or you broke your leg or whatever it is. I think it goes far beyond the skill, being able to slip in an IV or give a good shot or whatever those things are. It goes far beyond that. I 100% agree with you. And I truly believe that, like, experiences can shape a lot of people. So if you don't mind sharing, I want to know a good experience and I want to know a bad experience that you think has really been able to grow and shape you as a nurse because, obviously, you know, you're a totally different nurse now than you were at day one. And that comes with time. That comes with experiences. That comes with learning new skills. But, like, what are some experiences that you've had that have really stood out to you that you feel like have really been able to change who you are as a nurse? Well, a couple that I can think of right off the top of my head. When I was orienting, I was precepting, I was orienting with this amazing, amazing nurse, Jody Williams, who still does flight nursing today. Just this rock star nurse. We had a pediatric patient come in and they coded and they died. And it was really, really difficult. I didn't really know how to feel, what was appropriate at the time. I was a brand, brand new baby nurse. And I came out of the room and she pulled me aside and she was crying. And she said, you know, I just want you to know it's okay to cry. Like, these things are so hard. And it's okay. Like, you don't have to try to hold it in and bottle it in. And she said, step away, go into the break room, cry for a few minutes, and get back to work. And I just thought, oh, what? I was so grateful for that permission that I had because I was struggling so bad to, like, keep control of my emotions. So I was really, really grateful for that experience that she just, she kind of gave me permission to say, it's okay. Like, you're human. You're going to feel these things. And it's okay to feel that. It's okay to have that empathy and that, you know, sympathy for these poor parents. And that was a really great experience at the very beginning of my career. Yeah, yeah, they definitely, I needed that validation because I thought, oh, I'm the professional. You know, I'm a nurse. I've got to keep it together. Yeah. Another experience is when you were going through treatment. We were having a really, really difficult time with one of your chemotherapies. It was really, really painful. And it got to the point where you were fighting us and just screaming, and you're supposed to be helping me, not hurting me. It was a situation. It was a situation. Let me tell you, it was a bad situation. It was so hard. But this nurse, Miss Christine. Shout out to Christine. Shout out to Christine. She's amazing. She put together kind of this whole plan, and she wrote this whole letter to you and said, you know, I know that this is hard. And I know that this caused you pain. Let's come up with a plan that's going to work. And we came up with a song that we were going to play the next time that you were going to have this certain chemotherapy. We were going to bring your best friend. We had a whole plan together. And she really just went above and beyond and went out of her way. And that kind of like made me realize, like, I can go above and beyond. Like, I don't have to stay in the box of just doing my job. Like, I can go above and beyond. So since that time, I've been able to really try to think outside the box for my patients and for what I'm doing for them and try to make some of these times special. You know, just a couple months ago, I had a patient that turned one in the hospital. And we put together this whole present and sign. And we got a birthday cake. And she was on precautions, so we couldn't. Did they present that at the Plain Tree Conference, too? Yeah. Yeah. It was super cute. We just have to remember that we're human, you know, that we're not just a number or a patient, that we need to treat every single one of these as individuals and what their individual needs are. Absolutely. Kind of a thought I actually have off of that. So I'm obviously still in high school. And I'm reading a book right now. If you've never read it, it's called The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. And it's a World War II book. So this is kind of taking a totally different turn. But you made me think of something. And we had to write a letter. So if you don't know, during World War II, these Jews were put into concentration camps. And they were not treated like humans whatsoever. They were given these jumpsuits with a number on them. And then all of the soldiers had basically essentially clipboards of these numbers. And these people were referred to as numbers. So we had to write a letter on why, you know, we thought what was going on in these concentration camps wasn't okay. And I was talking about this on how sometimes when, you know, for example, in these concentration camps, like they were looked at as numbers. Sometimes when people walk into a hospital, they're looked at as a patient almost. You know, they're no longer looked at as a person. And to me, coming from a lot of patient experience, that's what really stands out to me, is when I'm looked at as so much more than a patient. You know, I am still a person when I walk through those doors. I have feelings. I have emotions. Like I still have a life that I have to live. I have a life that's going on. And nurses do too. You know, doctors and nurses and any health care profession, they all have feelings. They all have a life. So it's important to look at them as so much more than that. And absolutely, like that's what really stands out to me. And obviously, you know, the health care world is not all sunshine and rainbows. Oftentimes it's, you know, really hard working in there. So have you had a bad experience that has almost pushed you to like want to work harder and to want to be better? So fortunately, I don't have a lot of negative experiences. But I do remember one time, again, when you were going through treatment, this was a time that you were seeing multiple different specialists. And you were having this really severe hip pain. It was really bilateral iliac crest pain. That probably means nothing to most of you. But kind of on the front of her hip. So after she had just finished all of her chemotherapy and finished treatment, she had all this stuff in her ankle and she had bone marrow edema. She had this MRI and she had bone marrow edema. And one of the concerns from chemotherapy is that you can get avascular necrosis. It just means that kind of the blood supply to bones can die. So we were actually really concerned about that. And they sent us to this orthopedic surgeon. And mind you, this was in Phoenix, four and a half hours one way from us. And special appointment, go down there, get triaged, get put in the room. The orthopedic surgeon walks in. And he was not in there for more than, no joke, 90 seconds. Very, very dismissive. Didn't listen. Didn't care to know about her history. Didn't care to know. Just so dismissive. And I was just so baffled by that. Because we've really had such great experiences with the pediatric world and the pediatric team. Fortunately. 99% of them are just phenomenal. They go out of your way. They're really, really great. Like Allie's pediatrician here in town is just phenomenal. Like really listens and really knows the history and all the things that we've been through. And I just walked away from that thinking, I would never treat a patient like that. I could never be so dismissive of their concerns. And that's something that, again, we sometimes forget. People come in and maybe they are a frequent flyer or an ED, high utilizer is the technical term for them. And so we get kind of dismissive. Like, oh, they're here again. Like, what could they possibly want? But we need to remember to take a step back and really listen to their concerns and listen to what's bringing them in. Right. And I think, once again, that goes back to looking at people as more than a number. Looking at people as more than a patient is, instead of trying to get them in and out, how are you really going to be able to help them? And I think that's super important. So kind of to end us off on a higher note, so there's this thing. It's called a Daisy Award, and it's a big deal. So can you explain to us, first of all, what a Daisy Award is? Because I don't know all the details to it, and they need to know. And then she is a Daisy Award winner, whatever it's called. So I also need to hear about this. So the Daisy Award is an international foundation now. I believe the patient's name was Patrick. So when he was having a very, very difficult time going through treatment, I can't remember exactly what his disease was. It wasn't cancer. But he was fairly young, I think in his 30s. And he spent a lot of time in the hospital. And his family set up this whole foundation because they felt like these nurses went above and beyond to care for their son. And they really wanted to do something special. So this Daisy Award now has grown exponentially. It's nationwide. Actually, it's international now. And you can nominate a nurse at lots of hospitals. I know lots of hospitals in Arizona, Utah, that's kind of where we're familiar with hospitals, participate in the Daisy Award. But you can patients, employees, you know, coworkers. Cut that out. That's staying in now that you just said that. Anyway, coworkers, whomever can nominate a nurse for a Daisy Award. And you get a carved statue from Zimbabwe. Every statue is unique. Pretty cool that they carved those. I can't remember what the tree is. It's a beautiful statue. Is it a willow tree, right? I don't think it's a willow tree. I thought it was. Okay, keep talking. Anyway, I don't know what it's made out of. But, yeah, so we do the Daisy Award ceremony. We do it twice a year at our hospital. We also include with that the Ambassador Award. That's a non-nursing award because, like I said, there's so many more people that go into running a hospital and caring for patients, whether that is the front desk, the schedulers, the person who does your test X-ray or comes and gives you your nebulizer treatment or whoever that is. There's so many more people. So we do the Ambassador Award as well. And then we do contributions to nursing, so contributions to society, contributions to leadership, things like that. So that's kind of the Daisy. That's awesome. Yeah. And so it's made out of, well, it's a beautiful handcrafted sculpture from Zimbabwe. It's made out of serpentine. It's a mineral rock, and it's just polished up, and it brings out some deep colors. It's a lot darker of a stone, but it's very beautiful. So now that we know what the Daisy Award is, and you're a Daisy Award winner, I'm sure that's a huge honor, what was it like when you got that award and kind of, like, do you wear it with pride? Because you get this little daisy pin that you get to wear on your badge. So do you feel honored to wear that? I do. I absolutely do. I think it is a huge honor. I mean, not everybody gets to be recognized like that. And, of course, it's always great to be recognized for hard work and your care and compassion that you give to nurses. So, yeah, I was very surprised to get the award, and it was very emotional, certainly. It's a big deal. So, yeah, I was really, really honored. It's been several years now since I won that. Yeah. I can't remember what year that was. I can't remember either. It's a few years into my nursing. It's probably been five or six years since I won that award. But, yeah, and I very strongly believe that people deserve to be celebrated. People deserve to be acknowledged. Like that is something that we as a human population do not do enough. Like we kind of not brush off, but we don't really acknowledge the things that people work so hard to do. And a lot of people, you'll notice when, you know, people accomplish something or things that are going on in their life, there's so much behind-the-scenes work that you don't see. You know, with this podcast, there's a lot of behind-the-scenes work that you don't hear. With nursing, there's a lot of behind-the-scenes work that patients don't see. And so when we're able to do special things like that, when people are able to be acknowledged, even if you're someone who is very much an introvert and who doesn't really like to be celebrated, you know, for their birthday, they'd rather just have something small. Deep down on the inside, everyone loves to be acknowledged. Everyone loves to be celebrated, especially if it's something that they work so hard to do. And nursing is a hard career, and especially going through the whole COVID-19. Like I remember you coming home and just stripping down on the front porch so you wouldn't bring your scrubs inside, and then we would throw them on the wash, and I know it mentally drained a lot of you. I got the opportunity to go be a part of a Plaintree conference for the hospital here in Page, actually, and I got to interview, I don't know, like hundreds, what, hundreds-ish? 150. 150 people, and a lot of them talked about how mentally draining COVID-19 was, and that's just, you know, that was one pandemic. There's so many other things that they have to deal with and they have to see every single day. So the fact that they're able to do that is incredible. Now, I do, I just thought of one more thing that I want to share. So when was this? During basketball season in Page, we all came out of the basketball game, and my mom's a cheer coach, and I am a cheerleader, and we came out, and there were, like, ambulances and people laying on the road, and I was like, oh, no. Anyway, someone had gotten hit. I went to get my car, but I was blocked in because they had gotten hit right in front of where I was parked, and my mom, being the nurse that she is, ran over and ended up, you know, getting down on her hands and knees and helping them, and it was absolutely incredible to watch because my mom has an incredible gift of feeling for people. She's very, very good at being able to put herself in other people's shoes and be there for them through hard times, through good times. So being able to see her immediately jump in and put gloves on and get down on her hands and knees on the road and be able to help these people was something that I'd never seen before, and like I said, I've had, gosh, I'm getting emotional. I've had a lot of patient experience, even with her. Like, she's taken care of me so much, so I hope, you know, that it was incredible to watch you do that, and I hope you know that for the nurse that you are and all the other nurses out there and, you know, every nurse that I've got to encounter, the things that you guys do are absolutely extraordinary, and it's something that can't be put into words. It's something that, you know, is very under-recognized and should be recognized more, and honestly, I think Nurses Week should be every week, but I hope you know how incredible you are. I want you to leave everyone with a motivational message, hopefully, that will really be able to impact their life, you know, coming from the nurse that you are, because that's what this podcast is about, is if you could leave them with one thing, what would it be? Well, I always say that being a nurse is the second most incredible job in the world, and I actually love, secretly, I've never really voiced this, but I love that Nurses Week aligns right with Mother's Day. Mother's Day is my, you know, not Mother's Day, but being a mother is my greatest joy, my hardest job by far, but my greatest joy in my life is being a mother, and second to that is being a nurse, and some advice that I could give is just be kind. Just remember that you don't know what's going on with the person standing next to you, you know. Until you walk a minute in their shoes, you don't really know, so be kind, be patient, give people grace, have compassion, have empathy, like really try to be that person. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for being on. Thank you. This is such a fun episode. Okay, I apologize for my dog, Kimo. He's been totally fine all day. Now he's on one, of course, because every time I record, he thinks he needs to have an attitude, but anyways, I hope you all loved this episode so much. I know I did, and I cannot wait to talk to you next week for another very exciting one. Bye. Bye. Bye.