Welcome to Episode #64 of Habitual Excellence, presented by Value Capture.
Joining us today as our guest is Theresa Brown, PhD, BSN, RN. She is a nurse and writer who lives in Pittsburgh. Her third book — Healing: When a Nurse Becomes a Patient —is available now. It explores her diagnosis of and treatment for breast cancer in the context of her own nursing work. Her book, The Shift: One Nurse, Twelve Hours, Four Patients’ Lives, was a New York Times Bestseller.
Theresa’s BSN is from the University of Pittsburgh, and during what she calls her past life she received a PhD in English from the University of Chicago.
Today’s episode is the first part of a two-part series with Theresa. Come back in two weeks for the next part in Episode #65.
In today’s episode, Theresa talks about the need to improve healthcare for the sake of patients and for caregivers. How did Theresa’s view of healthcare change when she became a breast cancer patient?
Host Mark Graban also asks Theresa questions and discusses topics including:
- Is there sometimes an “empathy gap” in healthcare?
- Making things easy for patients is not currently a goal of healthcare?
- It sounds like nobody was coordinating (or explaining) your overall cancer situation? Why did you feel “left in the dark?”
- Did caregivers know you were a nurse? Were you reated differently?
- “This job would be easier if there weren’t such a narrow divide between being the canary in the coal mine and Chicken Little” — is there an empathy gap toward nurses and other caregivers?