Kimberly Long 0:00

I am feeling so fortunate today to have Dr. Elena McAdams with us. She is the Chief Executive Officer of the College and University Healthcare Education Consortium and an experienced and seasoned nurse executive and emergency room nurse. So, Dr. McAdams, welcome. Thank you. I'm glad to be here. Wonderful. So I have a few questions outlined, and I'm just anxious to get your input on those. Tell us a little bit about your journey in healthcare, and then at the end of that, let us know whether or not it's aligned where you are now is aligned with where you thought you might be.

Elaina McAdams 0:39

Yeah, I love to share that. My actual healthcare journey started off as a CNA. I was a CNA. When I was in nursing school, I was a CNA. I was a tech in a local hospital in rural South Carolina. I went to Clemson undergrad. And when I graduated, I realized I really wanted to be an ER trauma nurse. So my background is ER trauma. I did that for a couple of years. And just like any new grad, you get about a year under your belt and you want to start traveling. So I moved into that world. So I traveled, I moved down to Atlanta and took an assignment at Grady in their Burns Center. And that's where I fell in love with Burns. Loved it, was there for about 10 years, and that's where I began my leadership journey. Of course, you know, when you're in those roles, you go from charge nurse to manager to director. My initial trajectory, I thought, was I was heading towards being a chief nursing officer. That's exactly where I wanted to go. I think that's where most of my colleagues, that's kind of, you know, the pie in the sky of where you want to be. But what I realized as I moved into different roles over my career, the more I realized a chief nurse, that's a hard job. It is not for the weak, a tremendous amount of responsibility without a lot of influence. And so, you know, you're taking on all this responsibility, but to be able to invoke true change, it really gave me perspective into is this really where I want to go or where can I go and where can my position have the most impact? So I had the opportunity to join a startup that was a tech enabled staffing company. And I was able to move in out of the healthcare world in the Q care to private equity, venture capital, an entirely different world than most nurses have ever been exposed to. And I was given the ability by the leadership team there to go out and talk to government officials, to CEOs, to investors, you name it, and expose me to a world that I didn't know existed. And so, all that being said, when you see a company, you work with a company that grows from being a five employee organization to over 1,100 employees and growing to a billion dollars over the course of three years, that's a different perspective that typically you don't have a chance to see. So I went back to school, as you know, to get my doctorate. My work was on reskilling, upskilling, and future of work. And that's where I really saw the challenges I'm dealing with now and transitioning to the CEO role over a tech company, which is COHEC and solving problems at scale in a way that most people don't even know is available to them.

Kimberly Long 2:51

The fact that you chose to venture away from traditional things, I think that is absolutely wonderful. So recognizing that there's a lot of things that we encounter as a profession of nursing and even in the area of leadership, is there time where you had to just pause and take a pulse check?

Elaina McAdams 3:14

Let me just say being an entrepreneur is not for the week. I would say since I was about 15 years old, I held a job with a regular paycheck, W-2. And when you step out of that world, especially as a nurse where you have a regular job, a regular check every two weeks, to being an entrepreneur where your income is predicated on whether or not people buy your product, that is a huge leap that can be very uncomfortable for most people, not just and let alone nurses who can pretty much always keep a job. So I would say on paper, it didn't make a lot of sense. You know, I was in a senior leadership role, I was doing very well. But I had to ask myself, am I optimizing my life for comfort or for impact? And I think that's a pulse check we all as leaders have to kind of think about at what level do we want to give up comfort to really make significant change. So the pulse check for me was realizing that if I stayed, I continue operating within a broken system. And so when I left, and if I left, I had a chance to help fix it. And that clarity made it a non-negotiable and it allows me to sleep at night. I'm a little stressed from time to time, I will say. I'm not gonna lie about that, but I do feel a lot more fulfilled that I can actually make system-wide. That's wonderful.

Kimberly Long 4:20

How about, you know, a lot of times we find ourselves sort of losing purpose in our work because of all of the other static and noise we have to deal with. How would you advise an incoming executive or nurse innovator or entrepreneur on how to find and maintain that passion that comes from connecting with your purpose? I would say start by identifying the problem that keeps showing up.

Elaina McAdams 4:44

Every day when we walk into work, I mean our life or whatever, there are these whirlwinds that happen, things that happen every day, where there's bills to pay, payroll, disciplinary actions, and things like that. But when you think about when you go to work every day, what is showing up? What is something that no one has solved that is just like a pain in your side? And purpose isn't found in titles, it's found in ownership. So a lot of times people think, oh, I have to be the CNO to fix this, or I have to be the chief CEO or COO. And many times it's really about finding the solutions that are coming with complaints, offering up options to solve it. So if you can connect your role to measurable impact on patient outcomes, systems, purpose flows, whatever it is, for me is increasing clinical capacity at scale. I don't know any clinical executive from nursing to physicians or whatever that doesn't have issues and challenges around workforce capacity and getting more highly trained clinicians into the workforce. But for others, it may look different. So it should always be tied to something bigger than the title itself.

Kimberly Long 5:41

Tell us about a major time when you had to really pause and take a pulse check on what was going on with you as far as your career was concerned.

Elaina McAdams 5:51

Yeah, that's a fantastic question. So leaving a stable executive role to build COHEC was that moment. And on paper, it just didn't make a lot of sense. My entire career, I've been an employee, W-2, getting paid every couple of weeks. And of recent, you know, of course, I was in a pretty high-paying role. But I had to ask myself, was I optimizing for comfort or was I optimizing my career for impact? And the post check was just realizing that if I stayed, I continue operating within a broken system. And when you continue to work within a broken system, it can be extremely frustrating and you get a little complacent. So if I left, I realized I had the chance to help fix that. And the clarity made that risk non-negotiable for me.

Kimberly Long 6:27

Oh, I love that. And then if you had to give your younger self career advice, what would that be and why?

Elaina McAdams 6:36

I would say don't wait for permission to leave. I feel like I always kind of stepped into leadership roles, either intentionally or non-intentionally. If I saw a problem, I saw an issue, I would just insert myself and try to address it the best way I could, giving with the tools that I had. I spent too much time early on believing that experience had to precede influence. And what you're finding now, especially with this younger generation, they are very educated. They have a tremendous amount of influence. Some of them even have millions of followers. So in reality, leadership is about seeing clearly and acting decisively. I would also say that whether it's a program, a team, a company, um, ownership accelerates growth in a way nothing else does. And that goes for any facet of an organization or a process or program.

Kimberly Long 7:21

That is phenomenal. Dr. Mick Adams, thank you so much for taking time this morning to spend with us.