Check out the timestamps below to help you navigate through the many topics we discussed.
On This Episode:
We focus quite a bit on specific people or issues in nursing, but it’s always great to take a few steps back and take a high-level view of the profession. Today we’re excited to welcome someone who has been incredibly influential and has used that position to give back through service and endowment. Becky Patton, DNP, RN, CNOR, FAAN joins the show to give us a thorough assessment of the state of nursing today and address some of the industry’s key questions and challenges.
For those that don’t know Becky, she was a two-term president of the American Nurses Association from 2006-2010 and served during the time when healthcare reform was being discussed with President Obama. She was also previously named one of the top 100 people in healthcare. Now she holds the Inaugural and first in the nation, Endowed Perioperative Nursing Chair, Lucy Jo Atkinson Professorship at Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing, Case Western Reserve University.
She continues to give back to the nursing profession through sales of her textbook, Nurses Making Policy from Bedside to Boardroom, which received the American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year Award in 2020 and 2023. Ms. Patton has endowed 100% of editor’s royalties to create a scholarship for a nurse internship at the White House. As you can see, she’s been a leader in our field for many years and we’re excited to get her perspective on everything in this episode.
Here are some of the things you’ll learn on this show:
- The work she’s done in nursing through service, policy, endowment, and working with past Presidents. [2:28]
- The issues she feels are most important right now. [8:29]
- Why she feels relationships and shift times are why so many nurses are leaving the profession early in their careers. [12:07]
- Can we change the current model for nursing? [20:39]
- Her thoughts on the fraudulent nursing degrees that have been in the news. [27:10]
- Incorporating policy into the coursework for nursing students. [38:06]
- Her favorite memory from serving as ANA president. [45:25]
Check out the interview at the top of the page and use the timestamps to help you navigate through the many topics we discussed.
I would always fly home from D.C. depressed, thinking to myself, ‘Where the heck are the nurses? Why am I the only nurse at these policy tables?’ So my textbook that I wrote was intended to be a how-to-do. We have to teach nurses policy.
–Sara Rodriguez, Wisconsin Lieutenant Governor
