A Bedside Campfire Dialogue
Meet Renee, a home health clinical manager whose softness is her power skill
For today’s post, I had the pleasure of talking with my friend (and colleague) Renee Ayeh in the first ever A Bedside Campfire Dialogue (ABC-D). The audio for today’s post is an unedited recording of our semi-structured conversation, in which we discuss the roots of our friendship, our paths through various nursing roles, and a few opportunities to improve people’s understanding and navigation of care in the community.
A Bedside Campfire Dialogue is a conversation space around the subject of human caring, honoring the sacredness of working at the Bedside (both sides), from the comfort of a Campfire (a warm gathering place).
Disclaimer: Participants agree that this is not meant to provide any advice on legal, medical, or other matters. Though some of the information provided may sound clinical or prescriptive, all situations and people are different and as such it should not be assumed that the suggestions provided would be applicable or safe in every situation.
Episode Timing
00:00 — 9:00 Getting to know Jessie & Renee: Friends, Neighbors, Colleagues
9:00 — Personal & Professional Hats: On, Off, and Gray Areas
11:00 — Jessie’s Nursing Journey
16:00 — Renee’s Nursing Journey
23:00 — Home Health: Going In Blind
26:00 — Nursing Leadership | Servant Leadership
31:00 — Questions: How can we help people learn what we know without having to do it the hard way? Or, is there some lesson that shouldn’t have to be experienced in order to learn it?
32:00 — Counterculture and Renee’s Power Skill: A Soft Place to Land
36:00 — Chicago’s South Side: Back to Basics
40:00 — Social Work as a Band-Aid Over Gaping Gaps in Care
45:00 — Leader, Educator, and Resilience Warrior: Where Nursing School Missed the Mark
48:00 — Opportunity for Improvement: Communication Skills
56:00 — Renee’s Boundless Wish: Baseline Equity — Give’m a Boost
59:00 — The Elephant(s) in the Room: Suffering, Disabling, Dying — all outcomes are not equal
Note: This was a first for both of us, and for the sake of not leaving out anything important, I have not edited the audio for this post. Please permit a bit of roughness as I fumble my way forward :) we do have work tomorrow <3
Episode Summary
Renee Ayeh is a nurse working in home health as a clinical manager. In her leadership role, she oversees an interdisciplinary team that includes nurses, therapists (physical/occupational/speech therapists), a social worker, a home health aide, and a scheduler. The team provides short-term, intermittent home health care to patients on Chicago’s South Side, an area of rich history and significant disparities in care and socioeconomic inequities. Outside of work, Renee enjoys reading and writing poetry, the company of cats, and delicious food. I’m thankful to call Renee my friend and neighbor, and for her bravery in trying this new idea!
I rode my bike over to Renee’s to record this long overdue conversation, which was meant to take place last Spring. We discussed our paths into nursing, including the discrepancies between what we learn in school and how ill-prepared we both felt for the aspects of leadership and education that turned out to be essential in our profession. Renee is currently in grad school pursuing her Masters in Nursing Education. She shared that, like myself, she had a breath between nursing roles at a pivotal moment in her career that brought her to the realm of Home Health.
Home Health tends to be a blind spot for a lot of people who haven’t worked or received care in the home. Like many of our colleagues, we came to home health looking for a way to nurse beyond the walls of the hospital, but really didn’t know what to expect from the job or the patients we’d serve. What we both found was a job that fulfilled the deep desire within us to really care for the individual patient we were assigned, one person at a time. Other levels of care (the hospital) tend to involve caring for several patients at a time throughout one shift, leaving attention and care fragmented and disjointed. Home Health lets the clinician care for one patient at a time (you can’t be in two homes at once :).
In the recording, I mention the book “Healing: When a Nurse Becomes a Patient” by Teresa Brown, RN. I highly recommend it to folks with or without healthcare experience. In it, Brown discusses her 2nd career path into the nursing profession, her experience as a patient (the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer), and the seemingly impossible task of maintaining compassion in the American healthcare industry.
Renee and I discussed compassion and leadership, including the unique role of serving the team, their patients, and operations… while not losing yourself in the service of others (a skill I have not yet honed).
We dabbled in hard-won lessons — the ones we’ve seen, and hope to help others learn from before it’s too late.
Resilience…
At the end of the day, the word “resilience” comes to mind.
It’s a buzzword used very commonly in the healthcare lexicon. Overused but understood to be the toughness and capacity to overcome.
While I wish we didn’t have to overcome anything, it is the resilience of the nursing workforce that keeps healthcare moving forward. It is the resilience of healthcare leaders (of all disciplines) who maintain composure in a staffing crisis, supporting the care of patients who are sicker than ever… while the payers (insurance) keep dangling the carrot and waving the stick (I’m looking at you, private insurance and CMS).
It is the resilience of all healthcare workers and the patients we serve that emboldens us all to maintain our spiritual softness, our hopeful tenacity, our loving toughness.
Hopeful takeaways from Renee: We need to teach people how to ask for care. How do you know if you need it, and how to ask for it when you do? Additionally, as a society, we need to strive for Baseline Equity — understanding we aren’t all beginning from the same starting line, and some individuals and populations will need a boost to get everyone thriving together. Finally, while the world says “harden”, Renee remains steadfast in her softness. It’s her sustenance. Her Power Skill. Her softness allows her to power up so she can serve alongside her team as a loving clinical leader.
Renee has a well-polished North Star.
She has tenderly invited the collective into a conversation in healthcare, where it is truly lacking at the moment.
I’m thankful to Renee for sharing as much of herself as she did with me (and you), and I know this conversation is part of a growing, and much needed dialogue.
I invite you to share a comment below, or to please email abedsidecampfire@gmail.com if you’d like to join the conversation. See you soon!
Take good care!
Love,
Jessie (& Renee)