Karen O'Donnell

Introduction:

Welcome to the Let’s Get Personal podcast with your host, Chris Abella. Joining us today is Karen O’Donnell, the visionary founder of Caring Nurses Staffing Agency in New Hampshire.

Chris:

Alright, well, I’m so happy to be joined by Karen O’Donnell of the Caring Nurses Staffing Agency. This is a area that’s close to my heart, not only because here at debell Law we do a lot of all types of areas involving the medical field, but because two of my aunts were nurses, my niece is in nursing school, we have a lot of friends and family, a lot of clients, quite frankly, that are in the nursing industry. So it’s definitely something that I’m very excited to delve into with you. So I just want to start by saying welcome. Thanks for coming.

Karen:

Thank you for having me.

Chris:

And really just to give people a roadmap of where I want to go with this. I would love to get to know your background, how you got into nursing, how that evolved into a business, and kind of where you see the future of nursing going. So if you don’t mind, maybe just give us a little bit of your background and how you got into nursing. Sure.

Karen:

Yeah. So I always knew that I wanted to be in healthcare in some aspect or another. So I was thinking maybe occupational therapy, maybe physical therapy. But I had a grandmother who was a nurse. She was an LPN, and she steered me in the direction of nursing. So I went to nursing school in New Hampshire and at the time that I graduated, there were so many nurses out there and you had to have experience before you could go into a hospital setting. So for the first year and a half of my career, I had to work at a rehab center in Boston, got some great experience, but then I was able to then get a job in a hospital and my goal was to always be an oncology nurse. So I was able to get an oncology nurse job working night shift in New Hampshire, and I then had an opportunity to become an emergency room nurse.

And at that point I really had no inkling that I wanted to do that, but it was an opportunity that a friend of mine had introduced me to. So I jumped and became the best decision of my life. I am an ER nurse through and through and still am. So I think most nurses kind of share this experience that I do that every few years kind of feel like you want to change what you’re doing, either the setting or the nursing or just change something. So I always had that feel that I wanted to do something else and I kind of thought I wanted to start my own business. So I did a few different businesses. First off, I was kind of the Uber Eats model that I was going to do grocery shopping for the elderly. And I did that. It was not a great business model, it was very limited income type thing.

But throughout the years I had different businesses that I had started, never really panned out. And finally I was like, you know what? I love nursing and I’m going to continue doing nursing. This was just a side gig and I’m like, why don’t I try to do a business in nursing? So I started on that journey to find out if there were businesses for nursing. Couple of businesses that I was going down was legal nurse consultant. That was an independent nurse job. But I happened upon a little resource that said how to start a staffing agency, and I was like, that is my strength nursing, so why not try to do that? So as an emergency room nurse, I treated it like that. I started getting my resources trying to figure out how to do a business model. I have no formal business degree, and I just started on my journey to find out how to do it. And that was 12 years ago.

Chris:

That’s amazing. And 12 years in business is amazing. And I think when you think about, because a lot of people never, they have these ideas and never act on them. So I think it’s an interesting thing to dive in a little bit, maybe scratch the surface about how do you make that leap of, because so many people at home watching ’em probably think, wow, I’d love to start my own business. I’d love to work for myself, which has its pros and cons as I’m sure, but how do you get the courage? So many people get, I think blocked off by the fact of worrying about what they don’t know. So it prevents them from getting into it rather than getting in there and learning as you go. And that’s how a lot of people start off, but how do you get to that point where you really pull the trigger on that? And how scary was that?

Karen:

I think because I had had many different ideas of businesses that I had failed before or maybe not put a hundred percent of my effort into it for the different businesses that I had tried, and it was like dabbling in the business model. How did I get the courage to do it? I just felt that I needed to do something else and I wanted to have independence. I wanted to have some freedom for my scheduling and to be able to still work as a nurse, but then also have something else that would make me feel fulfilled, I guess.

So not sure how I just took the step to jump into it, but I feel like those past, if you want to call them failures, they triggered me to then really go into something that I was more passionate about, which is nursing. So from that perspective, I created this business with the thought that I’m going to be a nurse first and a business person second. So as a triage nurse, you get to find out exactly what’s going on with somebody by asking the right questions. So you just go down the path and you find out where your resources are, and there are a lot of resources of how to start a business, how to do a business model, how to make a mission statement that comes in handy, but also to have the passion to be able to know what you want to do. It just is how your path is created.

Chris:

Yeah, well, I can tell by reading what’s out there on you on the internet, learning a little bit about you, that the passion’s there, you care a lot about the nurses and want to make sure that they’re taken care of and that everyone’s mindful about what they’re going through and their mental health. And I think that really shows and comes through, and obviously that’s a big reason why you’ve been successful. So when you make that decision, so obviously is it connections with hospitals, is that the first step with creating that need or how does that work?

Karen:

It’s all about relationships and networking. My first contract and I started this super old school, I literally had brochures made, and when I tell people that they laugh and it’s like, okay,

Chris:

I laugh only I have done the same thing.

Karen:

Yeah, it seems antiquated. But I sent out the mailers and I got a phone call a couple days later from a CNO of one of the local hospitals, and I went and met with her and come to find out we went to the same nursing school and we created that bond and 12 years later, they are still a contract of mine. And it really is more about relationships in my world so that people know if they’re going to be hiring us for staffing, the people that are going to come there as staff are going to be representative of our company. So it’s like me cloned everywhere. I’ve been a nurse for over 30 years. So I want people who are very passionate about nursing, who are going to be a good representation. And these people just have found me in many different ways. I’ve worked in a lot of different hospitals in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, so I have a very big network of people.

And when somebody comes to me and says, I want to for your company, if I have not worked with them, I know somebody who’s worked with them. So it’s a team that has been organically growing and they’re people that I would want taking care of me as well as my family members. So that is how I approach how I bring my team in, as well as how I get contracts. So the contracts that we currently have, if they’re going to be a very difficult place for my nurses to work, I don’t want to contract with them. And there are places out there that are super short staffed. I mean, that’s the whole crux of my business is to provide that extra staffing. But if the current staff that are working there are going to be creating a negative environment for my people, I don’t want my people going there. My team is there to help them. So if they’re going to be getting the worst assignment or they’re not going to be getting breaks or they’re going to be struggling for their mental health, then we won’t go there. So it’s really a connection of both the right facility, the right people, and we all just work

Chris:

Together. Oh, that sounds amazing. So just getting back into the business structure, so do you place people, are they in there or are they per diem where they’re picking up gaps in that facility’s staffing needs or

Karen:

When we started, it was part-time per diem, like second careers, second jobs for the nurses. But covid changed that quite a bit. We were doing part-time, but then because of the high demand and the need for more full-time travel type contracts, we were able to then have other opportunities for our nurses. So more nurses came to me and started wanting a 13 week full-time contract. And I have some nurses that have been on contracts after contracts, after contracts with the same hospital, and sometimes it goes on for years. It’s Covid definitely changed the dynamic of staffing

Chris:

In our office. We’ve definitely seen a massive shift or impact that the hospitals have had on whether it’s just the level of care because of the staffing needs or just their ability to respond to different requests we’ve made. And I’ve certainly noticed from our end that staffing’s been a major issue. How have you balanced, I think you kind of got into it a little bit earlier about the mental health and how do you really shield against putting them in that tough situation? Or do you just pull ’em out once?

Karen:

Yeah, if there is a situation that we, from my team perspective, from the contract perspective, if we decide that it’s not a good fit either personality wise or just skills wise, then the contract just ends. So we can easily do that, but it really, we try to all work together so that we create a good situation, but sometimes it just doesn’t work out. So it’s different for each individual person in each contract. But from a nursing perspective, I didn’t really understand this until I actually started doing this, but when you are a staff nurse at a hospital, you are involved in the politics and everything day to day of the hospital. When you are a travel nurse or doing a contract, it’s a more freeing experience in that you can basically just go in, do your job, do it well, you are the helper, you are an extra resource, and you don’t have to be involved in the day-to-day, sometimes negativity of places and you just go home and then you feel good about your job. So it is very freeing. It makes you feel more independent and in control of what you’re doing. And I think that’s why that was one of the reasons many people at the beginning of Covid just decided, okay, if I’m going to be in these tough situations, I’d rather make more money, be in charge of my own scheduling

And do that. So the beginning of covid, there was a huge shift in nurses that just started traveling, and it’s really hard to kind of reel that back in for hospitals who have sometimes 80 to 90% of their staff are travelers.

Chris:

Wow.

Karen:

Yeah, it’s

Chris:

Changed. What do you think it was before covid? Was it significantly different?

Karen:

Yeah, it was less than 50%

Chris:

Because I think not just nursing, but probably the employment world overall, people value flexibility and being in more control of their schedule. And whether it’s working from home or traveling, they want own that a little bit more. And I think the model you’re providing allows people to do that more than they probably ever have. And I don’t see that going anywhere.

Karen:

Yeah, it’s a little different. My model of agency, because it’s local people. The bigger companies that are nationwide, everybody knows their names. You can get a nurse from California coming to New Hampshire, and there is a huge part of what we need in healthcare to have that model. But from my perspective, I’m a small local company, so it’s literally a nurse that lives in New Hampshire who’s going to be working in New Hampshire or very close to where they are, and it’s just an extra resource. So the smaller hospitals are the ones that I have been more contracting with versus the larger ones because I have a smaller team and it works out better because the smaller hospitals, they need more resources, but they can’t afford the bigger companies, so they go with more kind of a local talent type thing.

Chris:

Right. No, that makes a lot of sense. Are you looking for nurses at this point? Are they just finding you as, how do those relationships coalesce between?

Karen:

It’s a little bit of both. There are times when people will reach out to me and say, Hey, I have a friend who’s a PACU nurse and she lives here. Do you have anything available? I come at it from both perspectives. There are times when a facility will reach out to me and say, do you have any nurses? And I consider it kind of a healthcare matchmaking type situation. Sometimes the stars align and sometimes they don’t. So if they don’t, then I’ll keep somebody kind of on the back burner in case an opportunity does happen. So it just kind of organically happens from both

Chris:

Perspectives. I love the healthcare matchmaking. That’s just this great way to sum it up. Do your nurses go into all different, are they only in the hospitals? Do they go out into the fields? Are they going to people’s homes? Are they doing end of life care? Is it all over the place or?

Karen:

The majority of our staffing is hospitals.

Chris:

Hospitals.

Karen:

We do have home care capability for private pay type situations. That is less of a model of what our actual business is. It’s really the hospitals that are much more in need at this point.

Chris:

Right.

Karen:

Yeah.

Chris:

One of the things that I loved hearing from you at the beginning was that you also still do a little bit yourself because you like to stay sharp, and I think that keeps you really connected to what your nurses’ needs are and the hospital’s needs are. So it’s nice that you still like to,

Karen:

I’ve been around long enough to know that I feel the best managers are the ones that can still do the job and not everybody just attend the staff meetings or does the management part of it, but when you can still get in there and start IVs and be a nurse, that is my ultimate goal to continue as long as I can because I don’t want to lose my skills.

Chris:

So how have you seen, so you’ve been, I think you said 30 years you’ve been doing this, which is amazing. So you’ve obviously seen this industry change tremendously, not just with covid. Where do you see it? I mean, how has it changed for the better and worse, and where do you see it going in the next 10 years?

Karen:

So when I first started nursing, it was a nonprofit type healthcare model, and throughout the years it has changed to a profit business and I guess it had to, so the hospitals that are more on the for-profit mentality, it’s a little bit harder sometimes to work because you have to worry about how many band-aids you’re giving out versus actually taking care of the patients. So that I think has been one of the biggest changes going from that model. I think it had to happen because hospitals need to make a profit and that, but it’s really from a nursing perspective, it’s kind of hard sometimes to go from that model up to now. But there are a lot of rooms that we can improve on. AI is coming and is here. I think that, I kind of joke a couple of years ago when they first started introducing the idea of AI coming into healthcare, nursing medicine, that people are worried about that.

And I said to myself, you know what? When I’m in a nursing home as a patient, I hope that the robots are going to take care of me because at least there’s going to be somebody to give meds because there’re going to be no nurses. We’re so short staffed, and that’s just a chronic problem that has been going on with healthcare At the very beginning when I was talking about when I first became a nurse and there were so many nurses, that’s not a thing anymore. It’s really an industry where a lot of people are trying to get into nursing, but there are twofold problems. There’s the not having enough nurse educators, so they have to cap it. How many nurses can actually go through school? And then sometimes the graduation rate is lower, but then also people who are leaving nursing because it’s a hard job. It really is. So a couple years ago I heard that 33% of new nurses within the first two years get out of nursing because it’s just not what they expected or it’s a difficult job sometimes. So from not being able to get enough nurses into nursing school and then graduate, and then the people that are leaving, it’s a chronic problem.

Chris:

And that obviously was exposed during covid because people were overworked. I mean, I have a lot of clients that are nurses. I always used to hear from my clients that I’ve helped over the years that they’ve loved it because it allows them so much flexibility through their life cycle where you might be starting a family and want to do a couple 12 hour shifts, but not work five, six days a week. Or if you want, sometimes you want to be in the ER in the hospital, or sometimes you want to be a traveling nurse. And it’s amazing the different things you can do as a nurse with your career. But at the same point, I think I’ve heard the same thing that you’re hearing obviously a lot closer, but I’m hearing it just from people that I know that have worked in the industry about how so much of the stress of the industry has fallen on them. Because I mean, listen, we’ve all been in hospitals. We see how they run the hospitals. Not to say that doctors don’t have a massive role in it, but the day-to-day in and out, 90% of the care you’re getting is given by nurses.

And I hate to hear it because I just went in for a procedure in the Boston, and nurses make the experience and they make you feel comfortable. It’s a scary time in people’s lives typically. And they’re social workers, they’re medical providers, they’re therapists, they’re all that in one, and you really can’t, they don’t operate without good nurses. And it’s sad to hear that there is an outflow of that. And where do you think that, do you think that ends? Do you think there’s more of a push in these colleges to get people into that field? Or how does that get rectified?

Karen:

There’s definitely a fair amount of recruiting that different nursing facilities are doing. There’s going from the education part of it there, the LPN programs are getting back to a little bit more of a need. So for a while it was all about being a registered nurse, being a bachelor prepared registered nurse, but the fact that it’s limited in terms of being able to bring as many people in LPN programs are coming back again, so two years versus four years, and to be able to use the people who start off their nursing career in those type of roles and then graduate to RN if they want to, there’s still a need there. But for a few years, they were being pushed out of the nursing world because they wanted only RNs. So that is coming back now as well as more nursing assistant programs. So there’s a fair amount of kind of disbursement of different duties.

Now, nurse practitioner programs are becoming much more popular. Again, physician assistant, they’re not nurses, but more people to get into healthcare the better because our jobs are changing. There are ais that are coming about that are going to be doing more kind of the mundane nursing duties that we don’t have time for anymore because we have to document everything because we’re right at the bedside. So I think embracing AI as well as the different kinds of programs that are out there in healthcare, I think that really is important. And I think that knowing that it’s a very flexible job. You were saying if you go into emergency nursing and then you get sick of that, you want to change, you can go into ICU, you can go into education, you can go into so many different realms of nursing that if you need to have the flexibility to do something else, you can. So the thing about AI that I know is that you’ll never, ever not have nurses, never. You can have a robot that’s going to come give you your meds, but you’re not going to not have somebody who would be able to hold your hand,

Who would be able to start an IV to be able to give you the emotional support. And there are so many aspects of nursing that, like you were saying, the social work, the case management that we do just on a day-to-day basis, that can’t be outsourced,

Chris:

You can’t replace. It’s funny you say that because we’ve integrated a lot of AI in our business, and initially a lot of staff was resistant to it, and I said, you’re not going to be replaced by ai, but you’re going to be replaced by somebody that embraces ai. Because to your point, it’s going to allow, hopefully, I would imagine your industry, that it’s going to free up the nurses to maybe spend more time on care. And I have a dear friend that she spends so much time after her workday doing paperwork. It’s almost another day. And certainly in the legal field, we know how important it is to document that stuff. But if there are ways to lessen the load of that administrative side on nurses, I’m sure everyone would be grateful for that.

But so obviously AI is being introduced, but I agree with you wholeheartedly. I mean, there’s certain jobs, and I have three kids coming into the business world and trying to figure out careers, and I think there’s all this talk about what is AI going to replace? And I don’t see how they could ever come after nursing because it’s the human element that you’re never going to get for anywhere else. And that’s the most important part of, I mean, from an outsider, it’s the compassion, the love, the empathy, the care that you get that you’re not going to be able to get anywhere else. So I’d say you’re AI proof, I would think. But you brought up a good point. It’s funny when I was preparing for this, and I’ve experienced the fact that there are so many variations of nurses with the LPNs, the RNs, the physician’s assistant, and are you placing only RNs or is that expanding, or do you see that changing

Karen:

At this point? We place nursing assistants, LPNs, RNs have actually also expanded into respiratory therapists. So it really is whoever I can find and what the need is, there is a higher model of providers, nurse practitioners, physicians assistants, locum type doctors. That is a different agency model that I haven’t delved into just because it’s all about credentialing and a little bit more in depth type things that I would rather just stick with the nurses. But phlebotomists, other skilled technicians like that, we can definitely, if I can find them and find the need, then yep, we can absolutely help with staffing for that too.

Chris:

Wow, that’s a broad spectrum, and I only see it growing for you to the extent that I know you love keeping it personal and having that personal touch on it, but that seems like that’s an area that’s going to continue to grow and evolve.

Karen:

Yeah, I don’t want to get away from that whole perspective again. I want to take care of my team as well as taking care of my patients. So the model of big agencies, I’ve worked with many nurses who even before I started my own agency, they were doing travel. And even throughout the time that I have been working with my agency that travel nursing is, it’s all about the relationships, like we were saying. But the bigger companies, they have a different model. They just want to place people by the thousands. And when you are dealing with people, when you’re dealing with nurses, I feel like it should be that personal approach. So nurses I’ve worked with, they will approach a company, see an assignment, they’ll have to deal with 10 recruiters, and then the next week, only five of the recruiters are there and they’re not looking out for the nurse’s best interest, they’re looking out for the business best interest.

So it’s all about more quantity versus quality. And in my line of work, just again, being a nurse first, I don’t want to do that. I know, I know that there are other models out there saying that you can order a nurse, and I think that there is a place for that because bigger hospitals, they need a hundred nurses today. They don’t just need a couple of nurses, but when I hire somebody or when I contract with a place, they know that the people that are going to be coming are potentially going to be there for longer than just their assignment because they’re really good, really good practitioners. So I always want to keep that.

Chris:

That really makes a lot of mind sense to me because you have, sometimes you think about the pandemic and hopefully we don’t go through another massive health issue like that, but that’s going to ramp up need immensely, and people are just looking to fill gaps and you’re coming at it in much more of a local hospital, community focused, community facing, how do we get people that care, people that are also representing that hospital, they know what your company represents and they want those like-minded people representing their industry. You’re not going to get that when you’re doing a hundred people at a time. But I could see to your point, how there’s a need at certain times for that, but there’s very much a need for what you are providing, and that’s something that those bigger companies probably can’t provide at the level you have because you simply, you just can’t have the Walmart version and you have more of the boutique personal side of it, which Walmart can’t do the same way. Looking back, if you were to talk to your 16-year-old self or 16-year-old person looking to go into the nursing field, what would be your advice?

Karen:

My advice would be that it’s an incredibly rewarding career and to never lose sight of the fact that you’re doing this for a reason, that you want to take care of somebody, that you are a natural caregiver. And if that is your number one priority to say, okay, I want to go into a career that I know that I will probably be in until I retire versus get bored. But if that is your number one answer is, do I want to help people? Do I want to take care of people? Then this is the career for you. So looking back, I had that thought and I knew that I was empathetic and really had that nurturing type feel. So it was a natural progression for me. I had no idea that I would go into business or be at this end. But I think that it is incredibly rewarding to take care of people and to be able to help them through a time of need. And especially in the emergency department, that’s their worst crisis ever. To not lose sight of the fact that we’re taking care of people and that we’re not just taking care of widgets. You are there for their time of need and that if you can help that person is incredibly rewarding and it just keeps you going. And if you have somebody who loses sight of that, they probably shouldn’t be taking care of you.

Chris:

Makes sense. And yeah, because you do, I’m sure as you’re in the industry for periods of time, you need to find ways to maybe pivot and reignite that fire that you had, and maybe it’s switching within the industry. And as people grow, it’s nice that in that industry maybe you can start off caring for babies and then you’re, can you move that fluidly within those areas?

Karen:

You can,

Yeah. I mean, you’re not be proficient at it on day one if you started off doing something else. So you learn different skills in whatever specialty you’re going to, but that’s the beauty of it, that if you do get to the point where you have lost the empathy or burnt out and it happens to everybody, then you can pivot and switch to something else that will spark your interest again. And going from being an expert at one field and then changing and being the newly orienting to another field that is also very rewarding so that you can learn a new skill, but reignite that passion that you once had.

Chris:

I think that’s important for everything we do in life anyway, that you need to constantly find new challenges anytime you’re getting too comfortable. It’s nice to challenge yourself, learn some new skill sets and broaden the spectrum of experience that you’re having. I know with lawyers, there’s burnout, there’s people that turn to alcohol and other things. Are there mechanisms in place? I know there are in the law to help people that are getting burnt out, that are stressed, that are struggling at a stage in the career? What resources are available to nurses?

Karen:

Well, I think it’s a constant struggle for nurses because we’re good at taking care of everybody else. We don’t really think about ourselves

Most often. So to have the thought of that self-care and to get a massage as often as possible to do yoga, to meditate, there are many different things that we can do. We very often will just have support groups where we will get together with our friends and just have the type of comradery that it takes to be involved in a traumatizing situation sometimes that you just need to talk about with somebody who knows exactly what you’ve gone through. So that I think is huge in terms of how we decompress, is that we just literally need to have a healthcare confessional. We need to talk sometimes by going out to breakfast to having those relationships of people who do the same thing day in and day out that maybe a spouse doesn’t understand because they haven’t gone through having somebody who’s just died in front of you and you have to then move on to the next patient. So I think the support network is huge, but again, we are our worst patients. We can’t very often stop and think, I’m getting overloaded. I’m getting super stressed. I’m drinking too much caffeine, I’m not getting enough sleep. So I think the constant reminders to people that you need to take care of yourself is a little bit more of what I try to do to just make sure that the mental health of these amazing healthcare workers is not at risk just because of the things that we see and do every day.

And it’s hard to continue to do because it’s easy to cancel your massage appointment because you just picked up another shift. But it’s definitely harder for people who are just regularly taking care of everybody else not to take care of themselves.

Chris:

One of the things that we haven’t touched on yet is that obviously you guys see nurses in the medical field see a lot of different things ranging from in the er. One of my college roommates was a ER doctor, still is. And the stories I used to hear of what they would experience on a day to day, anything stick out in your mind over the years of nursing?

Karen:

There are a few things. So it’s funny because from an emergency nurse perspective, it’s all about the stories and trying to not one up each other, but to know that your experience is it’s, it’s sometimes traumatizing. So when you’re seeing people in their worst situations, sometimes you just can’t help but to feel really, you have to have a professional distancing because it’s not your family that you’re taking care of. But sometimes to just be in the room with somebody who is dying, whose family members are crying, sometimes you have to cry with them and you don’t always have that professional distancing. So there have been some times when I’ve taken care of people and cried alongside them with their family.

When I first started at a very large trauma center, I had been working at a smaller hospital before that in the er. So coming to a bigger hospital with more opportunities and more traumas and things like that. There was one particular situation that happened that a patient came in who was just in a car accident, and we got the report from EMS that a patient was coming in and there were certain details that they were sharing, and the patient was coming in and was basically dead. And we tried to work that case so much and there were so many people in the room trying to save this person, and we could not save her. She was gone from the beginning. So it’s really hard sometimes when you have those situations that keep replaying. Certainly there are times when you have really good outcomes and you feel good about that, but there are definitely times when people don’t survive and you just have to know that we are all going to be there at some point and that it’s a finite amount of time that we’re here. So to make the most of it is great, but from a perspective of caregiver who is trying to take care of loved ones, sometimes you lose the distancing and yeah, it becomes hard sometimes.

Chris:

I can only imagine. That’s so hard to, that’s obviously a story from many years ago that you haven’t forgotten and never will forget, and that’s part of who you are now and that you probably have many like that. On a lighter note, it also sounds like in the legal world, people always ask, is it really like law and order? But on your end, it sounds like it might be like Grey’s Anatomy, one of those where you constantly see these very traumatic life-threatening things rolling in the ER on a regular basis. If you’re in a busy trauma center, does it get that busy and that stressful on a

Karen:

It can. Yeah. Yeah. There’s a constant chaos that’s going on in the er, and if you’ve worked there long enough, it becomes a routine chaos. But occasionally there’s something else that happens. The most rewarding thing about the ER is that you don’t always know what’s going on, so you’re trying to find the pieces of the puzzle, and you don’t always have all of them to complete the puzzle. So you have to be a detective and find out through diagnostics what your end result is going to be. So that is the most interesting part of it. But if you’ve been doing it for a while, a chest pain comes in, it’s going to be the same thing as another chest pain, and you just have a little bit of a routine to it, which is it’s very rewarding to be able to start off with nothing and then to figure it out as you go along so that in the end you have your diagnosis, you have your treatment, and most often you make people feel

Chris:

Better. So I can tell you still have a love for the er.

Karen:

I do. I do. And it’s just such an odd story of how I went to the er. I touched on it a little bit. I thought I wanted to be an oncology nurse forever, and I was doing it for three years, and I got to the point where I felt like everybody in the world had cancer because that was my world, and I had an opportunity to go into the emergency room with a colleague of mine, and I’m like, I don’t want to do that. That just sounds crazy. No. But then interviewed and then I’m like, okay, I guess I’ll do this now. And it opened up a whole new world that I had no idea that I actually would love

Chris:

Just from a complete lay person. Obviously I’ve been in the ER many times for both myself and my kids, but I could see that being, depending on which er you’re in, being an area that has higher turnover or something, because the stress level seems to be so high, so much more of the time than you might experience in an oncology or other areas where you’re kind of always getting an emergency. And it’s got to be difficult.

Karen:

It is. But I think that different personalities thrive in the ER and you’re drawn to it. So there are people who definitely the adrenaline rush a bit and to be involved in those high acuity patients. And I think that

Chris:

I can see from your smile, you’re wondering that’s driving it

Karen:

Some days, but there is a part to it that does kind of become routine. And I’ll tell you another story that, so for many, many years I’ve been, when I was working down at that trauma center, and it was Lahey Clinic, amazing, amazing place to work. So there were a fair amount of us who had been a group of people who were volunteering at the Boston Marathon, and I was able to kind of slide into one of the positions of the woman who was retiring. So I started volunteering. And so I started volunteering in 2012, and then the next year, 2013 was the year that the bombing happened. And so the medical tent at the end of the race is basically you take care of 3000 runners in a year and that those 3000 runners are there for muscle cramps and things like that. Usually nothing too high acuity. And it’s an amazing group of people who just go there. It’s like a mass unit. So nurses, physicians, all of these people go and volunteer every year and it’s a prestigious type thing and it’s just unbelievable. So that year it was certainly different that we’re not just taking care of people with muscle cramps.

Chris:

So you worked the year of the bombing?

Karen:

I did. I did. But from a protective mechanism, when everything started happening, people started coming into the tent and then we would stabilize them and they moved on. I had the thought that this is my worst trauma day. I’m at work again. And everybody that I worked with who was volunteering, we all went into work mode

Speaker 4:

And

Karen:

Just took care of the people that we could and then stabilized them and move them out. So I feel that the amount of time that I’d worked in the ER helped me so that I could just go to work that day and to help the people that were there who were bomb victims.

Chris:

Well, I mean, I think to be able to flip the switch like you did and jump right into action where people’s instinct is to run from something like that and yours is to get to work, it just speaks to this industry. I ran the marathon in 2004 and it holds a special place in my heart. We obviously all that, and just watching first responders like yourself or the medical, they were even doctors that running back into the line of fire to help people. It’s amazing. You hope that if we were all faced with something like that, that we would, and I guess you don’t know unless you try it or not, that you try it, that you experience it, which we hope we never have to. But to hear that you just click into gear, that’s just an amazing,

Karen:

It was very strange how it happened.

Chris:

It’s amazing. But that’s grateful to have people like yourself that how does society operate without heroes like yourself that do that? When I think every cell in your body is telling you to get to safety, you’re putting yourself in harm’s way to help other people. It’s amazing. But that’s quite a story.

Karen:

It was a crazy time and everybody, the majority of people who were there that day have still been going back every year. It’s like

Chris:

Hope the volunteers, you mean?

Karen:

Yeah,

Chris:

Like yourself.

Karen:

Yeah.

Chris:

Have you been back since?

Karen:

Yep, every year.

Chris:

Oh wow.

Karen:

Yep.

Chris:

That’s amazing.

Karen:

It’s a great day.

Chris:

Wow. You don’t have to get into it if you’re not comfortable, but what was that day? How long were you there? There quite a bit of time after it happened.

Karen:

So we were there for about an hour, hour and a half afterwards. So the way that the tent is set up is that right at the finish line, if somebody is struggling, if they’re passing out things like that, then they go, there are two tents. So the first tent is right at the finish line. So basically it’s kind of healthy people who just ran 26 miles and we kind of stabilize ’em and then they just walk out. So it was the two tents and basically we just stabilize and if people need to go to the hospital, then they will. So EMS is at the end of the tent. So yeah, it just basically was like throughput. People just were coming through and the amount of resources that happened that day, it was almost like a perfect storm that if something was going to happen that day, this was where it should have happened because it was Patriot’s day. All of the hospitals were very light in their operating rooms because they don’t do operations on Patriot’s Day. It was change of shift around that time. So there was double the staff at almost every hospital,

And we were within blocks of six huge trauma centers that that’s why people survived.

Chris:

So you’re hundreds of feet probably from where the bombs went off. Did you know what it was right away?

Karen:

No,

Chris:

Because not something you would think would be in your psyche of something that would happen?

Karen:

No, we heard something and everything just, our tent was full of people of runners. We heard something and then we were like, it was kind of silent. And then a few seconds later, there was another sound and it was still silent. And then we all just kind of were like, okay, we need to figure out what’s going on. And there was an announcer in our tent and he’s like, okay, just take care of your people. We’ll figure out what’s going on. And people started just coming in and EMS already has a mechanism in place of mass casualty type situations. So they clicked in within seconds and we just kind of followed what they were doing. We had people who were able to walk, so they were our patients. They walked out and we just started taking care of the next people that were coming in, and it just EMS really kind of created the scene so that we just kind of followed what they were doing. And then they just brought people to the hospitals.

Chris:

So somebody from EMS notified you that a bomb had gone off, and then you just started seeing a flood of people coming in,

Karen:

And at one point the announcer was asking people to go out to help get more people. So we started doing that, but then there was more of an influx of people coming in. So it was just basically figuring out how to triage people how to just, and we had no supplies. We had supplies to start IVs on people. We didn’t have dressings. We didn’t really have anything except blankets and the most basic things because that’s not what we used to see.

Chris:

So you just used whatever you had available

Karen:

And people took their belts off. They were creating tourniquets and just, yeah, it was a very amazing experience. Amazingly terrible. But

Chris:

It’s amazing too, the acts of kindness and love and people jumping into action that come out of those experiences that you’ve also experienced, which is the great part of humanity. That’s something I’m sure amongst all the other memories you have will probably stay around the top, I guess. Thank you for being there that day. It’s amazing that you’re still going back and it’s one of the things I love about the nursing community, but the medical community, and you hit on it earlier because it crosses borders, it crosses state lines. When you know somebody’s in the field, you probably have a sense of the type of person they are. You also have probably an immediate camaraderie with them.

And there’s not too many fields where, I don’t want to crap on another area, but an engineer from New York, just because he meets one and California is not going to have probably that same instant connection that there’s a bond I think that connects caregivers and first responders because of shared experience that quite frankly, most of the worlds, most of the world’s population doesn’t go through and have to experience. And you have an immediate respect and understanding of what they’ve sacrificed and who they are. And it’s amazing to see that people that are in that community like yourself, but that’s an amazing story.

Karen:

Well, whenever I hear that somebody is going into nursing, I just applaud them because we need more nurses, we need more caregivers. And whether or not it’s starting out as a nursing assistant and then going through the ranks or anybody in healthcare, there’s a special need that we have to take care of other people. And it’s a calling, it’s not just a career. So it is incredibly rewarding and to be able to take care of people makes you feel so good.

Chris:

Yeah, it struck me a little bit when you said you watch somebody die and then you have to move on. And we do a lot of injury law here, and we’re dealing with horrific stories about people being injured and seeing how the struggles that the families are going through. But it’s still a step removed, a big step removed from where you guys are at, where you’re seeing the trauma firsthand, you’re seeing the trauma of the family reacting or the trauma of that patient. And I can even remember, I can’t even imagine that next level of intensity because even all of our staff have to rely on each other to talk about, because we’re similar to you guys in the sense that we are a small firm that prides ourself on the personal touch and being as close to family to that injured party as you can.

And you do internalize a lot of it more than you probably realize. And I can’t imagine being on that frontline, the way that nurses have to be day in and day out and the amazing energy that they bring every day. I’m always blown away by it. And my grandmother was a nurse also, and it’s just, it definitely runs deep in our family, but I think it’s such a special skill to be that person that’s so selfless, like you were saying, to give back and to put other people first. I mean, there’s not a lot of industries that are so altruistic and selfless like the nursing field is. So I thank you very much for everything you do. Just to wrap up, is there anything about the nursing industry, how you see it, that it’s changing, that you guys are addressing with the company or personally as a nurse or things that you’re adapting to?

Karen:

It’s constantly changing. Healthcare is constantly changing the technology, so to continue to keep updated with that is definitely important. I’m looking to, in the future, in the near future, create a support network for nurses to actually potentially start their own nursing agencies and to help to support that. So I’m creating an educational platform as well as networking type situation so that we can all work together because nursing is a very close knit community. And when businesses come at us from a business perspective, we’re a little bit leery about that. And I would rather create more companies like myself that put the nurse first versus the business first. Love that. I really am looking to create that sort of platform so that I can help support more nurses going into their own business.

Chris:

You’re extending your selflessness into the business world, which is probably not, it’s not as apparent in a lot of industries, which is amazing. And that sounds like a great idea. And I love everything that you’re doing online and the way that you care so deeply. It’s so evident. And I think that the nursing field is lucky to have you and I can’t wait to continue to watch the growth that caring Nurses is going to continue to have and helping others is just an amazing way to continue that, paying it forward. But I love your entrepreneurial spirit. I don’t know where you seem like you have an insatiable appetite to continue to do more, which is great. Where does that come from?

Karen:

I really don’t know. Is

Chris:

That a parent thing? Is that,

Karen:

I don’t know. So my mother was a social worker

And my father was a police officer. And I think that from both of their perspectives as well as my grandmother, just helping people really just lights my fire. And whether or not that’s a person that is in the line at the supermarket who is struggling to walk versus somebody that I’m taking care of in the emergency room versus somebody that I can help to have a better experience with their nursing career by having opportunities for them, it all just kind of comes full circle and just, it makes me feel good to help other people. And I think that is why I do it. I dunno

Chris:

What better way to wrap it up. I mean, I could talk about this all day, but I love, I wish I could continue to grab some of your energy and throw it into my business as well, because it’s just that selfless, caring, constant need to help others is just, we need more of that in every industry.

Karen:

Well, you do. You already take care of people in your career and I think that you have a bit of nursing in you.

Chris:

Yeah, no, I think there’s something to that. I think a lot of the staff probably feel that same way, but it’s just think about our daily interactions with so many businesses and where that could be a game changer. Where to your point, you’re leading as a nurse who knows the nurse’s needs leading with the empathy where if you had certain industries that you just changed that business model and led with that, you probably could take over a whole area because there’s so many businesses or bottom care about just continuing to grow at the expense of how many band-aids, but everything’s bottom line and it’s not cutting corners and reducing cost. And I think the personal touch has gotten lost so much in the corporatization of every area. When you and I grew up, or at least I can speak for myself, there was a local hardware store, local pharmacy. Nowadays everything’s a big corporate entity and there you can’t just walk into the local pharmacist and know them the same way or walk into the local hardware store and say, Hey, the door’s falling off. What do you need? You got to hope somebody is in the right aisle

In a massive, so I think we’ve lost that over my lifetime. Not all industries, certainly not yours and not what you’re trying to do, but I think your energy and your approach to business would greatly serve so many others out there.

Karen:

Well, I can be the nurse for the business world. I’d love that.

Chris:

Well, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you. Having me. You enlightened a lot of people about what’s going on in the nursing field, and I’m happy that we got to spend some time with you.

Karen:

I appreciate it. Thank you, Chris.

Speaker 4:

Awesome as

Chris:

Always. Thanks for joining. Let’s get personal. If you know someone who might like this episode, please share it with them and review us on iTunes as it really helps us to get the word out. And don’t forget to like and subscribe to, let’s Get Personal with Chris debell on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever fine podcast are downloaded.