Giving Yourself Permission, Season 2 Recap and What's Next

Mar 27

Written By Liz Rohr

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Show notes:

I’d love to invite you to take a moment to relax your jaw, relax your shoulders, and take a deep breath…

… And maybe take one or two more with me…

… Happy Spring 🙂

I hope the birds are chirping outside, a warm breeze is coming in the window, or you get to take a meal break in the sunshine today.

On this week’s episode I want to give you some permission if you feel like you need it—

To be a whole human with needs, feelings, desires, and cares. To do what feels authentically right to you.

We’re plopped into a healthcare system that is specifically NOT set up for humans to be humans, and is designed for us to operate like machines.

And it takes a LOT of courage to stay true to ourselves and what we want and need when we’re also trying to stay safe— financially, emotionally, physically.

Sometimes it’s helpful to see and hear from others doing the same so we can see what’s possible for us.

Here’s this week’s episode, sharing a bit of permission to give yourself, some highlights from this season’s podcast if you want to peruse previous topics, and upcoming plans for what’s next.

Season 2 Recap

In case you missed it, here are the episodes from season 2:

Are NP Careers Changing? Career chat with Amanda Guarniere, NP from The Resume Rx

Caretaker Fatigue: What is the Root Cause? With Catherine Wood. Practical ways to relieve our fatigue and intervene in burnout

Navigating the Drama Triangle as an NP with Brooke Nielsen. Understanding where clinic dysfunction can come from and practical ways to handle it.

Empowering Equity: Transforming Clinical Spaces with Community Care with Dr. Omolara Uwemedimo. What happens when you reach the “is this it?” stage of career, and where you can go from there (plus how to get funding to do the work you want to do in the community!)

Investing in Your Future: Financial Planning for NPs with Lauryn Williams. Key financial knowledge you need to make the career choices you’d like to make!

Liz Rohr (they/she) | Real World NP (00:02.254) Hey there, we are going to be taking a season break on the podcast and the YouTube channel. But there are a couple of things that I wanted to share. One is just a little bit of self-disclosure, which hopefully also gives you permission. And then the other thing is I wanted to touch on some of the episodes that we've covered. But actually, let's cover the episodes first. So I have really felt called to share more about what real life is like. being a nurse practitioner, I talk a lot about the different pillars of practice. And there's the clinical knowledge we need to know, the pieces of navigating the health care system in the real world, nuts and bolts of billing and coding and things like that. And then there's this role transition leadership piece that I think is really quite sneaky and creeps up on us. And so this past season, I wanted to talk more about that leadership role transition personal development side that For me, I've discovered a lot through starting the company and continuing to run the company. And I just feel like there's so much opportunity to introduce that more for nurse practitioners, for clinicians, because, yeah, it's just, it's so interesting how many overlaps there are. So yeah, so just talking about this season, we started with Amanda Garnieri, where we talked about, you know, our NP career is changing. where we had a conversation about like where NPs are at, what's different now, what's the same, what are the questions that are coming up in terms of NP careers related to the fact that we've been through this COVID pandemic and life has really changed in healthcare. And I felt like the feedback I got was that there was a lot of validating experiences for people. So definitely check out that podcast if you're sort of having those questions about your career path or career fulfillment and things like that. Actually, I'm just going to jump all out of order, the ones that are all connected. So in terms of the career fulfillment piece, we also talked with Lauren Williams, who is a financial advisor, which is very outside of what we've typically covered on the podcast and the YouTube channel. But the point there was like, it's like, money, boring, whatever. But it actually is quite relevant to that question of career fulfillment and what is it like in the real world, because so often people are feeling stuck in the jobs that they don't want because they feel financially tied to them. Liz Rohr (they/she) | Real World NP (02:20.46) And so the more agency and literacy that we have over our money and our choices helps us to make more empowered decisions. So if you haven't listened to that episode, really is kind of like us. I found it very empowering. And that type of information has been really helpful for me in my kind of career path and journey. I also talked with Dr. Omelara. So she is a physician. And one of the core concepts, what we talked about in that episode, was I've had the experience of being in primary care where my main job is to see patients and it's like, that's what pays the bills, right? Like it's doing patient visits and submitting to billing. And there are other projects that I've wanted to work on and my colleagues have been through the same thing. And the question always comes back to you, well, how are we going to pay for that? So we talked about how, what are some creative ways to be able to fund the great work that we want to do in healthcare and in, in, you know, the community. outside of simply seeing patients every single day. Because I know that's real struggle for nurse practitioners. Again, finding career fulfillment is thinking about those pieces of like, just feel trapped. I don't feel like I have agency to make this choice. So that was a really beautiful conversation. We also talked about some personal development type of stuff where we talked about burnout and caregiver fatigue. Those are really real phenomena, and it might not be happening for you. You might be in this job where you're like, I love my job. Great boundaries, great work-life balance, great pay, amazing. Or you could be on the side of taking FMLA because you're not well enough to work because of the stress or anxiety or depression. Wherever you are on that spectrum, I just also want to pause here and acknowledge you for the great work that you do. And I hope you get the support that you need. just like, see you that this is not an easy career path and it's not an easy job. And I just want to, if you, especially if you're the person on FMLA, for example, or like thinking about it or anywhere on that spectrum, just like honoring yourself is just so important. But yeah, so we had kind of two different conversations related to that personal piece. One was about caretaker fatigue and what are some of those root causes. And it wasn't just about like the theory part. It was really practical with Kat Wood. Liz Rohr (they/she) | Real World NP (04:44.11) talking about like, are the very, very concrete steps that we can take to make a difference in this area, right? Because I feel like there's so many presentations about burnout and compassion fatigue and all this stuff. And it's like, well, what's really going to change the, like move the needle, change the dial, that kind of thing. I also talked with Brooke Nielsen and she is a therapist and a coach. And she was talking about a concept called the drama triangle, which is so fascinating. So please listen to that one or watch that one if you haven't, because it's this really sneaky interpersonal dynamic that can happen among interpersonal relationships or even in the workplace dynamic. And I shared a little bit of my embarrassing missteps that I took as a nurse practitioner in my first job as an NP. And it was a pattern. It's a pattern that I see all the time when it has to do with people coming in and over-functioning and doing more than kind of what they're supposed to. But it creates, yeah, it's hard to describe, but I've gotten so much amazing feedback about that episode. Really, that concept just blew my mind, even if you just Google drama triangle and what that means, and not listen to the episode. But yeah, so yeah, for the self-disclosing and permission-giving part, and I... When I started this, doing these episodes for the YouTube channel and the podcast, I was like, I'm just going to make these. And I had no plans for, you know, breaks or pauses or just even consideration of like, how sustainable is this in terms of my energy levels and what I need and versus the vision that I had and the things that I want to create. And so the self-disclosure is that we're taking a little pause. A season break, very human moment is that I'm not sure when we're going to restart again. I'm anticipating a couple of weeks, but we'll see. I'd rather have a bunch of episodes ready to go before we restart, so to be continued. And I've also just like in the past year, again, hopefully this can be permission giving for you and a modeling for you that like I've done some real reckoning of like, are my, what is my actual capacity? And like, Liz Rohr (they/she) | Real World NP (07:02.284) What are the expectations I'm putting on myself that I've absorbed from somewhere else versus like, what is my true capacity? What is actually sustainable for me? What is still fulfilling the mission and the service that I want to provide? And at the same time, like being mindful of my own risk for burnout, right? So anyway, just, hopefully that is helpful for you to hear that like you, so many of the episodes that we talked about this season and I have some more guests planned. talking about those pieces of people feeling trapped and feeling like they don't have agency over the situation that they're in. And many times there are factors that are not changeable, right? Sometimes there are jobs that we're in that are quite toxic. There's limited resources. There's not enough time. But how can we find the agency? how can we be really honest with ourselves and support ourselves and connect with ourselves of what is it that I need and what am I actually capable of? And giving yourself that permission to do those things, right? And it's complicated. It's not easy. It's not a simple answer. But hopefully the episodes from this past season, whether it's, you know, the financial guidance to help you make those choices about a career change or seeing the examples from Amanda and my conversation about, how to make some moves in your career or, like, what are the underlying factors that are contributing to your burnout or your... lack of satisfaction or frustration. Hopefully some of those episodes can help in each of those places. But yeah, so for next season, season three, I don't really have a plan. And honestly, I'm feeling this very human vibe of like, you know what? I would really love to tell you I'm going to make an episode every week or every other week, starting in two weeks and have it go for three months and then take another pause. But you know what? That's just not where life is right now. And again, hopefully modeling for you. I love connecting and I love making podcast episodes and videos. And I don't know, get, we get, I don't know. Maybe I'm just feeling the post quote unquote post COVID life that things get to be different. We get to choose and honor our own selves and our own humanity so that we can show up as our best selves in the world. So anyway, but we do have some podcast guests lined up. I hesitate to share in case they don't work out, but I'm really excited about Liz Rohr (they/she) | Real World NP (09:26.638) Quite a few of them I'm going to connecting with hopefully, okay, hopefully I'm going to be connecting with an urgent care specialist so we can kind of make those connections a little bit more between primary care and urgent care and like what are the gaps in between and what do we, how do we communicate better to give patients better care? There's also somebody that is going to talk a little bit more about that like boundaries and agency piece because I know we've talked a lot about that on the podcast so far, many episodes. And it's so nuanced and it's such a learned skill. But what I love about this guest is that they are just so practical. And I think that's just one of the things that I really love to offer on the podcast and the YouTube channel and in the company as a whole is like, can we, like, it's not just about like learning about the thing. It's like how to do the thing so that it actually changes. So anyway, but if you are interested in coming on the podcast, I have quite a few people I'm reaching out to who have reached out to us. Come to the website if you're interested, realworldmp.com. And we have a work with us page. And you can request to come on the podcast if you have something that you want to share or, I don't know, maybe connect. It would be great. But I hope that you're taking really excellent care of yourself and that I will see you in a couple of weeks, most likely. And yeah, I'll talk to you soon.

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Liz Rohr