Kimberly Long 0:00

We are honored to have Dr. Jessica Laughlin, Chief Nursing Officer and Vice President at UC Irvine Medical Center. Welcome. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here. It's a pleasure to have you. I want to kind of inquire and get to know you a little bit. And I'm wondering if it's possible for you to walk us through your journey to executive level leadership. What were some of the defining moments that shaped your trajectory?

Jessica Laughlin 0:25

Thank you. I love this question. And when I talk about my nursing journey, I like to tell people that nursing is at least my third career. So when I was first out of high school, my first time through college, I was a music performance major. And I play a woodwind instrument called the Oboe, and I played in orchestras all my life until my kids were born. And when I was in my early 20s, I realized that spending eight, nine, 10 hours in a practice room and hustling for my next gig wouldn't give me the career and lifestyle that I had aspired for myself. So I tried on all kinds of different jackets in my journey to nursing. I've worked as a kindergarten teacher. I've worked in IT tech support. I was a bookkeeper for an attorney's firm. I worked in an art gallery. I tried all kinds of different things until I finally landed in nursing, which is the best thing that I have ever done. And what I really love about my pre-nursing career is that all of those experiences and exposures to different industries, to different people from different walks of life really prepared me as a bedside nurse and that I had a little bit more life experience and communication skills, perhaps, than your average bear as a new grad nurse. In that I was much more comfortable speaking to a wide cross-section of people and delivering a message due to my marketing background, for example. And so that really helped me as a bedside nurse connect with my patients and my families in the ICU during my clinical career. But then more importantly, that really helped me as I had aspiration to grow into a charge nurse, nurse manager, director, and beyond. I was really able to pull from those different life experiences and different industry exposures that made me better at what I was doing and trying to relay messages, ask people to do hard things that they didn't want to do, and to be able to create concise messages and, you know, connect people in a way that we could get things done in healthcare.

Kimberly Long 2:26

Oh, that is wonderful. It's fascinating how you can connect all the pieces together and use the things that you've learned, you know, in different areas and different modalities. So here's my next question for you. From your perspective, and this is a two-part question, what are the greatest opportunities to strengthen alignment between healthcare systems and academic institutions? And how can we work with our academic leader colleagues to better prepare nurses for the reality of today's healthcare environment?

Jessica Laughlin 2:57

Wow, what a big fat juicy question. I think the interplay between academic and practice is definitely a relationship that needs strengthening. I'm privileged to work for an organization that has an affiliated school of nursing. And so here at UCI Health, we have the ability to, for example, add our dean of the School of Nursing to our executive nurse practice monthly meetings where we engage with him and he understands where we are from a quality standpoint and from operations, human resources challenges that we have, and uh skill development challenges that we have. So we have the opportunity from a high-level leadership standpoint to be able to collaborate that way. And I appreciate that. And I also recognize that that's a unique environment that is, you know, specific to my particular organization. And not everyone has the benefit of having that. So then I think the a key, not the key, but a key to better collaboration between practice and academics is really ensuring we have practitioners who are embedded in the schools of nursing and nursing programs as faculty, as the adjunct faculty, that we have bedside clinicians who understand the environment, who are training up alongside the students and the trainees as they matriculate through their program. Nursing faculty is definitely a problem and an issue. And this might be a little bit of a side quest here, but a comment, an observation that I have. We have bedside nurses who find themselves absolutely committed and very interested in the educational aspect and training the next generation, or they have an interest in really investing in their profession in that way. However, we're limited in the ways that we can have them engage with trainees and formal programs. So if we have a full-time nurse who's at the pinnacle of their subject matter expertise and interested in engaged with students, why would we not want to foster that relationship and really enhance that? If we have a nurse who's working full-time, when are they going to be able to engage in faculty practice besides taking on a second source of income? And then we're managing fatigue, then we're managing burnout, then we're managing, you know, not being able to show up and be your best everywhere. In this commitment to invest in the next generation, we need to provide an avenue for practicing clinicians to be able to do that. Maybe that is part-time appointments, part-time bedside appointments with part-time faculty appointments, or what those collaborations may look like. But that's the innovation that will be necessary for us to be able to move the needle.

Kimberly Long 5:39

That's absolutely you're right on point with that one. How can leaders, we're going to transition over to legislation now. How can leaders effectively influence legislative and regulatory decisions that impact nursing and healthcare delivery? How can we elevate our voice?

Jessica Laughlin 5:56

How do nurses and nursing leaders elevate our voices in the sociopolitical environment that we're working in, as well as the uh highly litigious environment that we're working in? So there are several challenges for nurse leaders. Number one is finding our voice and finding the courage to advocate for a profession and for our patients in a meaningful way. There's so much information, disinformation, inputs that are happening in our society. And as the trusted profession, I do believe that it is up to nurses and nurse leaders to counteract the disinformation and misinformation that we find in our society. We are trusted. We do have a voice. And I really believe that the way that nurses and nurse leaders can infuse our influence within health policy and within the political discourse that we have in our country is to leverage the power of stories that we have as nurses. So, for example, publish in Ladies' Home Journal, in the Reader's Digest, 101 about medication safety or how to care for an aging patient from a nurse's lens. Listen to me, I'm a nurse, this is my experience, let me tell you about it. And then you can draw your conclusions based on how I share that. That can be an innovative way that we can infuse our viewpoint in a non-threatening way, not trying to come across as authorities, although we absolutely own our space and we need to claim that authority. But we have to understand the public's perception of us as trusted professionals and the dynamic with physician partners and, you know, providing advice or direction or opinion on uh health affairs and health issues in the community without getting ourselves into hot water for providing medical advice or kind of straying into those areas where we really should not. Another challenge that I find for nursing leaders, especially for myself, and that I find I'm very passionate about the issues, I am an executive within an organization and I have accountability to my organization to conduct myself and represent my organization in a certain way and have a bright white line between personal opinions and what I'm doing in my official capacity as a nurse executive. So I always must be mindful. Even when I'm engaging in personal activities, I have to be mindful that I am still a representative of my organization, of my profession. And sometimes there's a fine line there between advocacy and the preservation of the professional boundaries that I must maintain.

Kimberly Long 8:28

You know, and that is something that's so important that we get the word out about and help our colleagues and emerging nurse leaders understand that we're representing nursing all the time. If you have RM behind your name, you're representing nursing all the time. Here's one last question for you. And if you had to give advice to your younger nurse self, what would you say?

Jessica Laughlin 8:53

Wow, what advice would I give my younger self today? As a nurse, this may sound like an unusual answer, but this is dovetailed on the question you just asked me about finding a way to advocate for patients in the environment that we're that we're working through in society. My advice to my younger nurse self would be to really become well-versed in logical fallacies, to be able to recognize them, to be able to understand where one thought leads to the next, to the next, and where it doesn't. And that is so valuable in understanding or interpreting process changes that might be occurring at the bedside, understanding how policies are made and how we must follow the logical progression, how they may be able to spot misunderstandings in their patients' understanding of their medical condition, right? Become well-versed in logical fallacies and understand where those misplaced thinking can occur and to be able to address them and correct them. Communication in that way and being able to understand and interpret the environment and events that are occurring around us using that logical fallacy filter really helps to make us well informed. It helps us to be better communicators, and it helps us to be better critical thinkers.

Kimberly Long 10:12

Oh my goodness. Dr. Laughlin, it has been an absolute pleasure to spend this time with you. And I appreciate you taking the time to share your expertise and your insight with us. Thank you so much.

Jessica Laughlin 10:25

I'm delighted that we had a chance to connect. Thank you so much, Dr. Long.