Season 3 Launches November 20, 2024

Season 3 of Radical Nurse Talk begins this week!

Thanks to a growing audience and encouraging feedback, we have embarked on a third season to focus on the critical relational work nurses do in serious illness and health situations. We begin this season with Canada’s Chief Nursing Officer, Dr. Leigh Chapman, an outstanding nursing advocate influencing policy at the highest level of government in Canada. In a wide-ranging conversation  Leigh describes her own active clinical practice in supervised injection sites and the critical nature of her communication with people requiring care for harm reduction and in non-traditional practice spaces. Radical work she has undertaken to transform lives. Grounded in this and previous work in diverse nursing contexts, Leigh is leading advocacy efforts at a national level to develop and sustain workspaces and conditions of practice where communication that nurses know is so critical to patients’ lives, can happen in the best way possible. Our conversation left me feeling hopeful and so committed to helping elevate her message because without the mentors and courageous voices such as hers, the essence of nursing work is threatened, risks extinction.

This possibility became more real to me when recently, I spent a day in an over-crowded, under-resourced emergency department with a family member. It dawned on me  that despite the intimate and supposedly confidential nature of nursing work, so much occurs in a public space. Even when curtains are drawn (if they exist), the relational work of nurses is made public. Voices are audible. Words and terminology that reveal much,  the tone and pace of speech can be heard and interpreted by those close-by. Questions are asked, patient and family requests for help are made. Nurses respond. What struck me most, was the suffering that nurses could not relieve because the workspace and practice conditions made it virtually impossible. I wondered what it would be like, to be that nurse, who could not assuage the pain, be it psychic or physical- or both- patient after patient, working in a system in which the nurse seems to have little control. Leigh Chapman understands this, and she is working to make radical change that will benefit all of us. 

In podcasting, listeners are key to the voices being heard. We hope that you will follow and share this podcast, make comments and suggestions, tell us how the ideas you hear are relevant or used in your practice world. Have a look on our website and see the amazing people who have offered their time, experience and expertise during an interview in the past seasons. We hope this next season will be meaningful for you. The topics are diverse, the guests passionate about their work; all are relevant to promoting nurses’ communication in serious illness and health situations in global practice contexts. Nurses’ communication in serious illness really is a radical act of care. Enjoy- and thanks for listening and sharing these episodes!