Episode 14 : Nurse Economics 101:

SCTS_Shawna Butler.mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

SCTS_Shawna Butler.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Intro/Outro:
Welcome to the Smart Care Team Spotlight presented by care.ai, the smart care facility, platform company, and leader in AI and ambient intelligence for healthcare. Join Molly McCarthy, former CNO of Microsoft, as she interviews the brightest minds in healthcare about the transformational promise of AI and ambient intelligence for care teams.

Molly McCarthy:
Too often, technology makes caregivers' lives harder, not easier. It's time for smart technology to empower care with a more human touch. Today, I am thrilled to have Shawna Butler, a trendspotter, rapport builder, health tech catalyst, and friend on the Smart Care Team Spotlight, a nurse economist, and builder of the global entrepreneur's movement. Shawna aims to better position nurses in our health innovation agendas as discovery engines, solution designers, and scale agents. Several years ago, she initiated a global conversation highlighting the rarity of nurses in boardrooms, product design, innovation teams, policy development, tech conferences, and health media. She's on a mission to change that. As host of the See You Now podcast, Shawna highlights the innovative and human-centered solutions driven by nurses addressing today's most challenging healthcare problems. She's also the managing director of the Next Med Health Conference, working with the pioneers in the thick of integrating robotics, 3D printing, drones, AI, blended reality, voice recognition, digital humans, big data, and sensors into our health solutions and lifestyles to ultimately improve health access, experience, and outcomes. And I know it could go on and tell you more about Shawna, but I just want to go ahead and welcome Shawna. It's great to have you here today.

Shawna Butler:
It's so fun. And I loved your emphasis on drones because you know how much I love drones.

Molly McCarthy:
I know. I was going to make...

Shawna Butler:
I heard that in your voice. And I'm like, she knows me.

Molly McCarthy:
I know that Shawna, uh, has been talking to me about drones for many years. And speaking of many years, Shawna and I met several years ago at a HIMS conference, I believe.

Shawna Butler:
I think that saying that we met, I think that you need to give a little bit more color on that background, which is I stalked you from the standpoint of, oh my gosh, there's another nurse like me. There's so few of them. So yes, we did meet, but it was a result of, um, whatever, what every intelligent person would do when they find somebody who's got great information, you stalk them, and you say, we are going to be friends.

Molly McCarthy:
And that's really what we've done. We've partnered together, we've co-presented on numerous panels, including the first all-nurse panel at South by Southwest. I believe it was in 2017, maybe 2018, obviously pre-covid.

Shawna Butler:
Pre-COVID, in that other era. In that other era, yes.

Molly McCarthy:
And Shawna, you're a trailblazer and I'm so excited for you to share your experience and wisdom with everyone today. And so, in the spirit of reflection, do you mind sharing with our listeners a little bit more about your journey as a nurse economist and what you're doing today to continue to boost the voice of nurses in tech?

Shawna Butler:
Yeah. So, I think where most nurses start is deep in the thick of taking care of people in the clinical settings. That was true for me. I think you and I are about the same stage where I entered the healthcare workforce and my career at a time where there was also another global pandemic. It was HIV, and we were learning so much about this disease that was ravaging a segment of our population that we didn't understand. And so I started my clinical career at a point, at an inflection point with our emerging diseases, with our social and business changes. Healthcare was moving from being a more of a charitable organization and moving into business model, the for-profit model. We had breakthroughs in our discoveries in uses of technologies. And then also, like I said, just socially changing the idea of patient-centered care, putting the patient at the center. These were all really new ideas. And so that was when I started my clinical work. And at that moment in time, I feel so fortunate, really, to have started my career when I did, because there were so many changes. And I think people coming in now, well, you don't have a lot of the historical context of why we do what we do or what were the influences shaping it. I think it's really overwhelming. And so at that moment in time again, I feel really grateful to have entered and also to have been in Washington, D.C., in the midst of so many different care environments.

Shawna Butler:
I actually worked in a lot of different places while I was in DC, some at a university hospital, some at a community hospital, some in clinical and clinic settings, outpatient. But what I saw was a lot of questions about how can we do this work when we move closer, when we move further upstream and closer to where people live, work, learn, play, pray, and die. And that really sent me on this journey. Influenced by a very well-known economist, former fed chairman Paul Volcker, I had the good fortune to know him and to work with him, but he was the one that really opened this idea of, we have so many people in policy and in management who understand business and economics, but we don't have many clinicians who do, and we have clinicians who are brilliant, but they really don't understand the economic impact. And so it was really his encouragement to go and do something that was pioneering novel and honestly discouraged to go study the business models and the economics of health, wellness, disease, disability, and death. And what are the economics? But then also what are the business models? How do we actually get better value, get economic and clinical value out of the healthcare resources dollars, human talent that we're going to put into this.

Shawna Butler:
And we know we're putting a lot of both of those. And in this country, unfortunately, we're not getting the very best value. I think one of the things, you know, as an economist in that journey, one of the things that's really top of mind for me right now is we hear a lot about care deserts, maternal care deserts, food deserts, hear about the maternal mortality crisis. But as a country, I think one of the things that we need to start understanding better is the American mortality crisis. As a country, we are living sicker, we are not living as longer as our peer nations, and we are investing. I shouldn't say investing. We're spending a lot more money. So my role as a nurse economist, what I've been doing my entire career, is looking at and helping people to understand not only the clinical value that nurses drive, but the economic value. And there are lots and lots of ways that we don't see that because nurses have been considered cost centers. So I will pause there. But but it really starts with being somebody who's been very clinically involved, very focused on what we do with our technologies, our facilities, our processes, our professionals, our breakthroughs. Great science, but how do we actually bring those together and get good health value out of all of these things that we have?

Molly McCarthy:
Yeah, some really good points. I think I too have a similar background, and that I went back to business school early on in my career. And so you talked about the business model, which is so important, especially as we look at what we're spending on health care and not really achieving the outcomes as a country that we should be achieving from the amount we spend. But you noted the health, wellness, disability, disease, and death, and I think that is an important piece because we don't want to just look at the disease, quite frankly, we want to look at...

Shawna Butler:
Which is what we did.

Molly McCarthy:
Right.

Shawna Butler:
Which is pretty much every time we say healthcare, we if we were to use the word sick care, we would be far more accurate than when we say healthcare.

Molly McCarthy:
So also in the spirit of reflection, just sharing with our listeners, as you think about the role of information technology or just technology in general, how has it historically played in the lives of nurses? What's worked well, and perhaps where have we fallen short?

Shawna Butler:
As I was thinking about this question in preparing for our discussion, I first of all, I wanted to start out on a positive note. And so having been a nurse for so many years, I wanted I think back to, first of all, medication management. It's it's something that really stands out. And looking back, our use of technology to verify and record medication orders, we think about handwriting and how many ways that could be that could go wrong, the verification of those medication orders, assisting in identifying incompatibilities or drug interactions, or medication allergies, delivering the physical product to the right place. I think of the numbers of times where people get transported from one unit to the other, and you're running around trying to track down those medications. So the technologies that have really helped us to manage inventory, diversion, drug interactions, I think that's something that stands out. Another place that stands out is how we manage lab work, our specimen collection, the the instructions that come along with, here's exactly what you need to collect. Here's the type of container that it needs to be in. And then just silly technologies like I remember having to run down to the lab, but then we put in the tube systems. And so we had technologies that really helped to better manage what we were doing with lab.

Shawna Butler:
And you think about getting lab reports back, how was a phone call? But now it's it shows up, you get a notification, there's an alert. So I think that's something that really stands out coordination of care. And there's a lot of talk about that. And there's a lot of work to be done. But also in terms of if you think about tracking your patient census and matching your staffing and the devices and timing surgeries and all of the different types of studies that people are going to be doing, we've had massive improvement in using technology and data and prediction and alert systems and scheduling to really help us digitization of information. This is something that I learned from you. I remember so many times you would say, do not confuse digitization with transformation, but in this digitization, what it has allowed us to do is dramatically shift how we share information across our sites, clinical care locations, our care partners, providing access of that health information to people that we care for, their families, the people who care about them. So our ability to document, to share, to search, to sort, we can use text, we can use sounds, we can use images. It's really pretty incredible where that's been helpful. Now at the same time, there are some places where we've really blown it.

Shawna Butler:
And when I think about how many instances where we're still using fax machines, for heaven's sake, that we don't share information across the many places where people receive care, we don't have a personal health record. And in that personal health record, it would be a system and a repository where your dental, your vision, your medical, your hearing, your immunization lab, pharmacy, organ, donor status, all that medical information should be in a central place so that it gives us a comprehensive picture of your health status and then also your upcoming needs. When we share that information to the people that are who we share it with, our clinical partners, our community partners, our human services partners, our patients and their families, we actually don't give reports other than more other than the results. So there's no actionable insights or coaching like cheering people on and telling them, okay, so here are the next steps. And I think the other part where we've really fallen short is we have not been nearly as intentional as we should be about using technology to address access, accessibility, and equity issues. What our technology can do for people with low vision, deafness, cognitive and language differences. I should say sometimes language disabilities, mobility barriers, it's mind-blowing.

Shawna Butler:
And here we are in this very tech-rich, data-driven, increasingly digital front door to our health and sick care. And we are not aggressive enough in assuring that the people who actually need and use our healthcare services the most, that we're designing our services and our products for the people who do need them the most, and that we can actually make the biggest difference in their health experiences and their care outcomes. I think part of that is as we think and looking forward, how are we going to make sure that so that it's safer, that we have more care and care that human in the loop and humanized care is that nurses absolutely have to be on the ground floor of all this. And when I think about where we've fallen short, it's because we haven't had nurses embedded in the teams that are doing the problem discovery, designing and deploying our solutions and our policies around them and the guardrails. I think nurses need to be product owners. I think they need, just as we're like, on the forefront of emerging diseases of public health threats, nurses need to be on the forefront of our emerging technologies and their uses, and I think we're all going to be a lot safer and healthier when we do.

Molly McCarthy:
Yeah, and that you just answered the second part of my question. So thank you. But just to recap for everybody, just I love how you started with the positives. And I have to tell you, when I work clinically, I love the pneumatic tube system, I really did.

Shawna Butler:
I Know it's it's magic, right?

Molly McCarthy:
It was magic. And I know I was just thinking about technologies that come from other industries, and I wasn't just wondering. This needs to be fact-checked, but if that came from the banking industry, you know.

Shawna Butler:
Yeah.

Molly McCarthy:
So just it's just interesting how it's evolved and how we've taken tech from other industries and made it work for healthcare. I could not agree with you more in terms of when we look across the care continuum, just the access to information. I'm going to be selfish and say from the patient perspective, from my own perspective, like being able to share data, the interoperability, you said, the evil F-word facts.

Shawna Butler:
What the facts.

Molly McCarthy:
That's just very scary. Anyway, so I think obviously we do have a lot of ground to grow, but to your point that nurses really need to be involved at so many different levels in the design, in the development, not just the deployment, although that's critical as well to really make it a win for everyone involved the patient, the caregiver, the vendor.

Shawna Butler:
And yet one place that I really encourage, those are all really essential. But their later steps and where I think nurses make the most difference is in problem discovery. I cannot. You and I both know this. The number of times technology companies will come to me and say, oh, I got this really cool technology, what can we use it for? And I refer to that as the problem of technology in search of a problem to solve. And so my phrase is, why don't you just go spend time with whatever community, whatever market, whatever problem, whether it's oncology, maternal health, whatever, go spend time with those people who are in the thick of that care. And the first group of people are the experts in the problem. We often call them patients. But if you spend time with people who are living this, and then the greatest amplifiers of those problems, which frequently are nurses because we spend so much time with them, if you start with them on problem discovery, I think that is something that's really overlooked, because what we do is we rush right away into, oh, we can use this technology to do X, Y, and Z, and then we spend a lot of time and money on problems that are not the most significant problems.

Shawna Butler:
And so if you were to ask people, if you go into folks like with maternal health and you say, what are all the major problems here, you would be surprised to learn transportation. I can't get to my appointments. Okay. So what problem are you actually trying to solve? I was talking with a couple of surgical departments, and they, you know, I was asking like, what is your really big challenge? And part of it was scheduling, the number of cancellations. And part of those cancellations were people didn't have an appropriate ride picking them up. So here they've got everything set up. And so it's oftentimes not the problem. We may look at it and say no-shows patients who are no-shows. You got to dig deeper. What is that actual problem. And it's not until you start talking to the people who are closest to the problem to really work hard on problem discovery and problem definition. Okay, now we got that then, and we make friends with that problem. That's when it starts to be your design and your deployment, because otherwise you're designing for a problem, either that doesn't exist or it's really low-level or not that common.

Molly McCarthy:
Well, I'm going to add another D, and then it's going to be discovery design.

Shawna Butler:
Development.

Molly McCarthy:
Deployment and deployment. So I'm going to alter my soapbox now. So thank you.

Shawna Butler:
Add another. Yeah another step onto it.

Molly McCarthy:
Yeah. So critical just as a follow-up to that. And I didn't necessarily mention this in your introduction, but I know you've worked around the globe in Europe and New Zealand, and just interested in how you see the intersection of artificial intelligence, ambient intelligence, and the way that we can enhance the role of nurses directly at the bedside. And I'm just curious if you have any examples that you can share from both your work in the US and then perhaps abroad.

Shawna Butler:
When somebody mentions global, one of the things that I think it just really. Begs that question is talking about our workforce. And whether you look at reports delivered by Deloitte, McKinsey, Bain, the American Center for Progress, the International Council of Nursing, they all say the same thing we have there. We're working with these trends of an aging population who's living longer with greater number of complexities and diseases. We have an aging healthcare workforce, and that aging workforce is entitled to retire, and they are retiring, and they're taking with them all of their clinical expertise, wisdom, institutional knowledge, patience, and confidence. There's a lot that's going out with them. And then the remaining workforce is there. You will hear consistently. It does not matter what country that you go into. It is, they are asked to do more with less. They're feeling exhausted and distressed and under-protected and underinvested in with, I think that's one of the things that's quite interesting that going abroad, you look at this and you think, oh, maybe some country is doing a better job. And interestingly enough, every single place you go, they are encountering the same set of trends and the same set of experiences. And so when we read about these vacancies, low staffing rates, high turnover rates, current and projected shortages, I am reminded of what Corey Feist, what he says.

Shawna Butler:
So he's the CEO of the Dr. Lorna Breen Health Care Foundation, and he characterizes it really well. He says we don't have a workforce shortage. We have a workforce doing the wrong things. And by that, what he means is so much of the administrative, logistic care, coordination, things that can be automated, things that remove the repetitiveness, things that are quite honestly soul-sucking and error-prone. We should not be having people, in particular, our clinicians, spending their high-value time on those low-value tasks. And I'm also reminded of another safety guru, Peter Pronovost, and his clinical partner Rochelle Hereford, who's a chief nursing executive at University Health's University Hospitals in Ohio. I'll say Ohio because I'm not sure for sure. But anyway, one of the things that they looked at was they started working with frontline nurses and nurse managers and just asked them, out of all of the things that you guys are doing, what are the things that you're doing that have high burden and low value? And when they started listing them out, they found 60%, 6-0% of their time is spent doing things that really is not worth the effort that goes into it. And these are actually policies that are internal policies. So I and that is something that gets replicated around the globe.

Shawna Butler:
So it's interesting that I can't find for you one place in particular that's wow, they're doing a really good job of using their resources really well. So what I think that this says to any place is, how do we use technology to remove the friction to make sure that our clinicians are doing the things that actually keep people safe, improve their health, and help them to feel seen, respected, and cared for. And a lot of times when we have these discussions about care, we use the word we talk very cleanly and generically about health outcomes. We do. We want really good health outcomes. We don't always get them, but every single time we should be able to have a good experience. What happens when you get a really good surgical outcome or delivery or whatever? But it was hell going through it. That shouldn't be the case. I really think that we need to think about not only the experience that our patients and our communities and their families are getting, but if we make sure that the experiences of all of the people who are part of the care team that technology removes friction from them removes additional unnecessary work, we're all going to be a whole lot happier and happier people deliver better care. And I think also that we're not there's some loose ties.

Shawna Butler:
I think they're getting a little bit stronger right now, but we talk about safety in our care environments and how patients have become more aggressive. I think that their frustration is showing up and being taken out on the people who are right in front of them. What might happen? How might it look if everybody had better information? They were informed and status update. I think so much about how much I fly and I get a notice. It's time for you to check-in. Are you checking these types of bags? Do you know which gate that you need to be at? Oh, we've changed the gate. Oh, there's an update, but I'm kept continually apprised. And so precious time spent understanding the logistics is delivered to right where it needs to be in the amount of time, in the right time. What would happen if we were able to do that within our healthcare experiences? I really do think that by making sure that we move friction it's actually going to lead to a much safer environment on many levels. I think it would address rage.

Molly McCarthy:
Yeah...

Shawna Butler:
I haven't heard a lot of people say this, so I might be out there being that pioneer with this novel idea, but I do think that there's that's why a lot of this is happening.

Molly McCarthy:
Yeah. And you make so many great points, couple that I just want to hit home again. Workforce doing the wrong things, not a workforce shortage that every time I see someplace nursing shortage or shortage, that word I'm like, that's a misnomer.

Shawna Butler:
I think. Yeah, as you say, it's not only a misnomer, but the shortage is a shortage of employers who are offering work conditions and career opportunities that are worth the risk.

Molly McCarthy:
Right.

Shawna Butler:
And the compensation. So you take a look at our healthcare professionals, every single one of them, whether it's lab, pharmacy, nursing, medicine, social work, these are your smartest problem solvers who care deeply about a lot of things. They can go and take those skills anywhere, right? And I really do think that the way this gets phrased is that it actually, because we're not naming the problem correctly, again, we don't have the right solutions in place. Not to say there aren't shortages, and I'll name them very specifically. We do not have enough mental healthcare professionals anywhere on this planet. Technology, gosh, we need that to move further upstream. So we're not taking care of mental disease. We're not taking we can use that because there is a true shortage of that. We do not have enough people who can perform the level of complexity of the surgeries that are there. And to run these very sophisticated, robotically and technology-driven systems, we need a lot more help IT and data folks, but we need them to be part of and nurses, all of our clinicians. We need to be embedded in teams together. So are there shortages? Yes, they're honest true. But what the headlines would suggest is that we don't have enough nurses. We've never had more nurses. And so what we need to do is we need to talk about it in terms of nursing care, the hours. And so if you're in a place where it's not staffed with the amount of care and the level of expertise and the specialty, those those are the way we need to be talking about the problem, correct. More accurately so that we actually have better solutions.

Molly McCarthy:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think just to tie into my next question because we've been talking about high-value time on low-value tasks, a little bit more about, I think you mentioned in a little bit ago about nurses tracking down medications or equipment, etc. and that's just—high burden, low-value, as you said.

Shawna Butler:
And you know when I say that, it hurts my heart because we have some of the most educated, c,apable folks who are thinking through very complex disease states and managing nurses are saving lives every single day because of the dynamic nature of somebody's disease or illness. Multiple morbidities, and I shouldn't say morbidity, multiple disease states and medications that are really, if not used properly, are dangerous. So when you think about managing somebody's chemotherapy, managing blood products, devices that are internal but still have an external access, there's just so many things that nurses have to pay attention to, that w,hen I think about nurses spending time tracking down, making phone calls to arrange transportation to get somebody home, that's where technology can absolutely help us so that we can do the things that it really requires human insight, intelligence and anticipation, that intuition, those set of skills that you've spent so long honing and bringing people around that that person who needs very complex care. Yeah. The thing that we're running around trying to find a cable list. Yeah, insane.

Molly McCarthy:
To that point. Can you expand a little bit more on what your vision for smart care team in an acute care setting? And I can't stress this enough, but in my opinion, why nurses are so important and actually leading that transformation to what we do need to be doing high value. Tasks and solve problem-solving that result in better outcomes, etc., and let go of or let AI or ambient technology or room sensors take care.

Shawna Butler:
Of things that are, yeah, so much better at managing vast amounts of data and inputs to give us insights. You know that concept of like my vision for smart care teams. So one of the the words that I like to use a lot, I hear the word digital. And it's at this point we don't talk about digital banking; we just talk about it as banking. So I think a better word in particularly to pair onto smart care teams is to think about connected care. And so the smart and connected care what that to me, my vision and my hope, my wish for that is that it's guided by evidence and data that produces actionable insights that it can run passively in ambient sensing, just the things that we do, you think about when we put on smartwatches, and it's giving us a heart rate. It's telling us what the weather conditions are outside. It tells us about how much our sleep is when you've got all those things running, running passively in the background, and then making a recommendation. Today's a really good day. If you've got asthma or whatever, to take a couple of puffs of your inhaler or make sure that you're traveling with this, take an umbrella. It's just so it runs passively in the background so that it can be predictive and anticipatory.

Shawna Butler:
The other part in that vision is that it removes friction and it automates repetitive process processes. And by doing so, what it does is it makes the work less error prone and way more interesting. And that's what we got in. That's why we want to help people, because people come in with, you can't make this stuff up. They come in with a unique set of circumstances. And so that's where the human intelligence really needs to be deployed. But if I have all of this collective wisdom and data, and that is now combined into an insight that helps me to consider, here are recommendations and a game plan for you to actually have better health, or to manage your chronic condition or your disability better. That's a really important part of what a smart, connected team would be. Is that it upskills everyone and it upskills starting with the individual being able to be the CEO of my health, being invested in it, being on top of it, feeling like I've got really good information to go in and ask questions or to make a plan, or to make a decision that works with my set of values, my preferences, my tolerance, my trust levels, all of those things. So I think one of the great examples that I think about where that vision for connected care is, how do we use these technologies so that they support our point of thought and point of decision and moving everybody so that we are all improving our scope of practice, and that includes people.

Shawna Butler:
I think one of the most recent examples, I used to use pregnancy tests as an example, but I think because we've all lived through point-of-care testing and diagnostics with Covid testing. So now that we have this platform and we've socialized this, and people have gotten a lot more comfortable with it, what are all the other things that we can start testing so that we use this smart, connected care to move further and further upstream? And I think we spend a lot of time we talk about the workforce, and there's this whole focus on how do we make sure that we take care of the supply side. We've got enough people, I think would be a whole lot smarter if we worked on the demand side, like, how do we help people to be healthier and able to manage a lot more of their care so that the times when they are coming into these hospitalized acute care facility based settings, they're coming in as healthy as they possibly can be, with as much information and as much trust for us to then deliver the care, that's why you need to be there. That's really my vision. I think we've got tons of data, we have tons of technology. What technology does is it changes who does what, when, and where. And like I said, I use the Covid test for for that example. But over the last couple of years, one of the things that I've really helped people to understand is that it's technology and policy that changes who does what, when, and where. Technology creates what's possible, policy says what's permissible and what's paid for. So that's the other thing that I spend a lot of time thinking about as we're integrating these technologies. That, and why nurses have to be a part of them, is we really are the guardrails for safety. And one of the reasons we can be and should be is because we are so incredibly trusted. We're asking people to share their data. We're asking people to come into their homes virtually or physically. Who better than to design these processes and bring these technologies and build the health literacy? Then, nurses who really come at this with a whole person's systems-based approach,

Molly McCarthy:
I'm convinced. Thank you so much. So many nuggets in that response. I love the fact that you mentioned smart and connected care. I also can really appreciate how you pulled the patient into part as part of the team, because we cannot forget that regardless of the care setting, that's critical. And then really looking at ways to utilize tech. And I'll just throw in policy there to remove friction from the system. And I want to ask you one last question. As we close out our discussion today, and I know that we could go on for hours; however, I want to have our listeners hear from you a piece of advice or wisdom. Basically, if you think about our listeners, they're CNIOs, CNOs' health systems, bedside nurses' care teams. And as a digital health nurse, leader, and innovator, what's your parting piece of advice to our listeners today at this time in healthcare?

Shawna Butler:
So I'm going to give you two, one that is really practical and one that is yeah, really a mindset. But the first thing that I want every single leader to do is to make sure that they are engaging, that they have mentors themselves. And those mentors need to be somebody who's half their age, who doesn't look or live anything like them. And coming from the clinical frontlines to come in and be a part, be embedded in and to own all of the digital and the technology transformation, people will think that you're mentoring them, and that's not the case. We have a group of incredibly mission-driven, technology-savvy folks who are closest to those gaps in care and the opportunities for our technologies to help us, and they're frequently the ones who are not part of the strategic part of this, the resource design, the problem discovery. So it is a really practical piece of advice is to go engage somebody who's half your age and doesn't look or live anything like you, and have them be with you at all times. And then the mindset piece is this technology is here. It is shaping every aspect of our lives. So what I want all of our leadership in healthcare nurses in particularly, is to enthusiastically embrace this moment of transformation and not just embrace it, but to make the decision to be a pioneer and a product owner of these very smart, connected care. One thing that people we don't talk about very often and it doesn't get named, but nursing is the fastest and the first licensed to patients, families, and communities. It's 50 to 60% of your workforce. So when you think about the innovation and the technology timelines, how swiftly they are moving, this is the workforce that needs to seize these opportunities. As we are all in the infancy and all the infancy stages of how we're using the technologies to deliver the type of care and results that we want and the experiences. And so rather than, okay, as soon as it gets done, call me. That is not what our nursing leaders need to do. They want to jump on this train and they want to be the engineer. So be the pioneer, be the product owner. And just because the words large language models and computer vision and natural language processing, machine learning, all those things, they may feel very foreign. But you know what? Everything we've ever done, all of these emerging diseases and public health threats, we have a good base, a very strong base. And if we're not there, we are certainly we will get left out. And I know that we will design much, much better experiences and processes, and we will have safety at the forefront and that whole person and that inclusion in the health equity piece; that is why we can afford not to be the pioneers, the trailblazers and the leaders in all of these technologies.

Molly McCarthy:
Amen. Wonderfully said. I think. Just to recap, that concept. You mentioned the mentor. I like to think of it as a reverse mentor, perhaps going to. We even did this at some of my workplaces, but working with someone who comes from a different pair of shoes, so to speak, just with different ideas and different background. Obviously the clinical front lines in this case, I love that hearing the voice and then the mindset. I think that is really of utmost importance in general, just to be curious to ask the questions when you don't know the answer and to realize that, as you mentioned, the tech is here and the train is leaving the station, so let's get on it and be a pioneer.

Shawna Butler:
I don't want to be on it. I want to be on the engineer. I want to be on the front.

Molly McCarthy:
Can be the conductor.

Shawna Butler:
Really. When you talk about curiosity, coming in with curiosity and coming in with humility, right? That's I see it's egos oftentimes that get in the way of how we can actually do things better and more equitably. So yeah, humility is so key to all of this.

Molly McCarthy:
Thank you Shawna. Really appreciate your time today and look forward to seeing you again soon.

Shawna Butler:
Oh this is fun. Let's do it again.

Molly McCarthy:
It is fun.

Intro/Outro:
Thanks for listening to the Smart Care Team Spotlight for best practices in AI and Ambient Intelligence, and ways your organization can help lead the era of smart care teams. Visit us at virtualnursing.com. And for information on the leading smart care facility platform, visit care.ai.

Sonix is the world’s most advanced automated transcription, translation, and subtitling platform. Fast, accurate, and affordable.

Automatically convert your mp3 files to text (txt file), Microsoft Word (docx file), and SubRip Subtitle (srt file) in minutes.

Sonix has many features that you'd love including powerful integrations and APIs, transcribe multiple languages, collaboration tools, advanced search, and easily transcribe your Zoom meetings. Try Sonix for free today.