25- Funding changes, what do we do now?

Yes, I know I have written about this before. I don’t care. It is too important. Every day research that has been in the works for I can’t even tell you, research that has already been paid for, is shriveling in the petri dishes.

Research is expensive. Proper, well structured research is expensive. You have to pay for the researcher, you have to pay for the research assistant, you have to pay any adjunct helpers who are conducting the research, you have to pay for the computer you use to write up the reports, you have to pay for the electricity that run a lot of this, you have to pay for the IRB, you have to pay for the data analysis, you have to pay for the lab time, sometimes you even have to pay to get it published (those are the predatory publishers, don’t give in to them), and if you are offering an incentive to garner participation, you have to pay each participant the incentive.

It gets expensive. Capital red letter expensive.

Oh, not only do you sometime have to pay to publish, you have to pay to present at conferences. With all of those attendant costs as well. At AORN there were several international hospitals and countries and research presented. Each of them had to pay for the conference fee, the flight, the hotel, and the food while they were in Boston. Or Orlando, or Chicago, wherever the conference is held.

Many of these are covered in grant indirect costs. These indirect costs are not well understood and is more than a line item in the grant. Not being understood, like at all, means that people overact when they see the line item.

The hammer has fallen. Nascent grants are not being approved. Existing grants are being yanked, even as the research is underway. That is what I meant when I wrote that research is shriveling in the petri dishes.

Why?

This is a very good question. Because the researchers are daring to research something that isn’t white or male. It is being stripped because of the specter of DEI.

Another not well understood concept that is being used as a bludgeoning tool.

DEI doesn’t mean what they think it means. Inigo Montoya snuck in the chat.

This, of course, has started panic at the research universities. Especially the ones who don’t have billions of dollars in endowments. But even if you have that kind of money doesn’t mean it is just sitting around in coffers, or under a dragon like Smaug.

It has been a long time since the students (hello, that’s me and my cohort), had any guidance in the matter. Probably because those doing the reaping are being mum on the matter.

No DEI is all they know how to chant. Again, it doesn’t mean what they think it means.

Yesterday we had a rare in person day on campus where the second and third years who were interested, were given a ground level “this has happened and this is how we envision going forward” talk.

We had a group discussion about how to find and secure funding. Ideas about other funding sources were floated. It was a good conversation. Remember, all of us are nascent nurse researchers.

I know I left feeling a little more hopeful about this crappy situation we find ourselves in. I hope others did too.

I offered my notes to the rest of the cohort that were not there and I hope to have the notes to them tomorrow. I just want to reflect on it some more.

I wore my “Baking is Science” tee shirt with a baking cat on it. On my husband’s recommendation that I leave the political shirts at home. I think a stronger worded tee would have been better. There is always the August in person day.

Best Kept Secrets of the OR #25- Conference edition

I am an introvert who is also quite shy. That is a double whammy when it comes to being engaging in large groups. Especially people I don’t know. Even people I probably will never see again in my life.

That being said conferences are particularly hard. It is best that I am rested. Not well rested, this is a hotel that I am most likely staying in with its vagaries in bed comfort and light levels. The hotel that I just stayed in had a night light in the bathroom with no door to the bedroom. Low levels of light all the nights. Which isn’t exactly conducive to sleeping.

The operating room encompasses so much space in nursing. Goodness knows that the department encompasses a pretty big majority of the operating revenue. Goodness knows that running an OR is a very very very very costless enterprise. Never mind the human capital, the outlay for supplies and equipment is immense.

That being said, conferences are important. Not only to meet the people who are like minded and that you have loads in common with, but also to share experiences across the board.

Did I have fun at the conference? Sure. For a value of fun.

Was the conference exhausting? You bet. I suffered a fall at work just over two weeks ago and my left lower leg, knee to toes, is such pretty colors and shades of purple. The hotel was half a mile from the convention center and I walked it every day. Well, I limped it.

Except the morning it was raining too hard to contemplate it. This was also the day I was to do a poster presentation of my pilot study that I completed last year. The one about the pre-Wheels out behaviors of the operating room. So I had makeup on.

Every night I peeled off the compression socks and elevated my foot/leg. But the pain was worth it for the opportunity to present my own research and talk with the chapter that I belong to in the organization.

I made sure that my carry-on was mostly empty. Because conferences give out a lot of swag. By that I mean that conferences give away paperwork and pamphlets about their products. There is also a certain amount of toys and soft things that are given out. I don’t collect a lot of the pens that these companies give out but I pick up a few to give away to my coworkers.

The majority of what I bring back is education that I learned. I get to impart to my coworkers the latest and the greatest of nursing knowledge.

I also collected many colleges so that I can curate a binder for shared governance and to share it with, again, my coworkers.

The thing about conferences is that you are at the mercy of the weather in the host city. We were in Boston and it rained every danged day except for the day we arrived. That day was beautiful and showed off the city well.

School Me Saturday 3/29/25-Suddenly, all at once

Spring Break is over. I hope you had fun because now is when the real work begins.

But, Kate, I’ve been working hard all semester, in all of my classes with readings and lectures and papers and quizzes and tests.

Oh my.

I know. Trust me, I know. But think of Spring Break as the 7th inning stretch.

Yes, I know that I am mixing my metaphors here. Or I will be very shortly.

The end of the semester is barreling down upon us. Which means the projects that most classes have been working toward for weeks will be due soon.

This makes students panic. Knowing that there is a large amount of work to be done and a suddenly, all at once, finite amount of time to cram the work into.

Don’t panic.

Of the several universal truths from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, the most important is DON’T PANIC.

You see if you had read the book, you’d be at least smiling now..

Another universal or, in this case galaxial truth, cheating is not the answer. Just ask Zaphod Beeblebox, the hapless leader and President of the Galaxy. Because 2 heads are not better than 1.

The biggest takeaway from the book is that it is not the answer that matters. Anyone can give you an answer, especially since AI has entered the chat. Anyone and anything can give you AN answer.

It is knowing that the answer is not the right answer is where the true learning begins.

Deep Thought spent several millennia thinking on the meaning of life. Their answer was 42. And it did not expound on what is the meaning of 42. To be clear, the meaning of life and the semester is not to get a 42. By any measure that is a failing grade.

True learning is not knowing the answer to the random question but WHERE and HOW to find the answer. Because that will survive the memory reset that so many students do at the end of the semester.

That is what the professors want you to know.

FFS Friday 3/2/25- Fra-gee-lay

If you grew up at any point past the 1980s you are familiar with this pronunciation.

In A Christmas Story, the dad, AKA Old Man Parker, is unboxing a prize that he had won filling out punny word puzzles from the newspaper. The clues all resolved around a play on words around a lady’s knee. The prize, as we all know, is a woman’s leg, in fishnet stocking and garter, with a gold satin lamp shade.

This is the big prize that he has won.

Some prize. He was expecting a bowling alley to be the prize and get the leg lamp instead.

Anyone else feel bait and switched by the events after January 20th?

Like a bomb has gone off in our administration and we are shaking apart at the seams. And the gleeful spoiled brats are shaking the tree to see what will fall out?

We know they are uncaring about the chaos they have wrought. As long as they get their tax break it will be worth it. No matter that those of us will get less than nothing.

Beats a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, we will console ourselves.

As a society we are on edge, unable to concentrate? Near tears at most times? Unsure which executive order will be the one that will bring us to our knees. Or fully rend the fabric of society, leaving the worker bees to pick up the pieces and bear the entire weight of the now changed world while the lords are in their counting house, counting out their money.

Yeah, that is by design. And part of the entire plan that we told you was the plan but so many of you believed it when they denied it. How is that working for you now?

As a society we are feeling fragile. At least some of us are. The ones with empathy. Is that word even allowed anymore? It is one of the No-No words for research or public institutions because it hurts a white man’s feelings of superiority.

Worse yet are the ones who are gleefully watching the destruction, the fires that they set dancing in their eyes, unaware that the conflagration that they have started will consume everything, including themselves. It’ll be worth it to them, owning the libs.

It begs the question, what kind of fragile?

Fragile like a man’s ego?

Paper thin, will punch down at anyone or anything that displeases the ego?

Or…

Fragile like a bomb.

Thick outer shell, maybe filled with pieces that are intended to hurt whatever has triggered it.

Yeah, we’re all feeling a little fragile these days.

We must chose; fragile like a man’s ego or fragile like a bomb?

FFS Friday 3/21/25 Futile

The famous quote from Star Trek the Next Generation, AKA the Star Trek I grew up watching, is “Resistance is Futile”. Specifically from the movie First Contact.

The Borg Queen says it.

The Borg are the race who are tearing through the galaxy/universe in search of unique beings/species that it can add to its collective. Any species or being that is not or who is not assimilated is destroyed.

The Borg Queen famously responds when challenged that “We are the Borg. You will be assimilated, your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own; your culture will adapt to serve us. Resistance is futile.”

That’s a bit on the nose, Star Trek Next Generation.

Jean Luc Picard and the rest of the Next Generation starship do not take kindly to this message or this directive. They resist.

And prevail.

I love looking to older sci-fi to explain modern events.

Resistance is futile is the message that is being broadcast during these days of shock and awe. If they drown us in bad messaging, we can be overwhelmed and while we are distracted the bad actors (you know who they are) can sneak around and do very real damage to our country.

Fuck that shit.

It is vital that these state and country ending actions be witnessed and called out for the vile plots that they are.

It is when they want us to look away that we have to refocus our attention. I realize that I am writing this from a position of privilege. Mostly because I am discounted because I am a woman. Or, to use the Ferengi slur “FE-male”.

Yes, still a Star Trek reference, but from Deep Space Nine referencing the Ferengi. The alien race whose entire world view can be split into two camps. 1) women are not to be trusted and must be kept naked and down trodden,and 2) the pursuit of profit is above everything. Even if you have to lie and steal and cheat. But that is an F for another Friday.

Resist this abomination of a regime. Ignore the ones who tell you resistance is Futile. They don’t know anything and are banking on your sleep walking to our destruction.

Make sure you are reading and listening to trusted sources. But always question and have a second source on news that seems like rage bait.

Do not engage with bots online.

Do not engage with scam accounts online. These may not be the same.

Do not freely give your attention and your likes away. This is their currency.

Currently I am tripling down on my pocketbook protesting. Is there a more impactful phrasing than that? I mean that I am spending as little as possible and from a carefully curated list of establishments.

I am not responding to people I know don’t have my best interests in mind and have voted accordingly.

Would it be easier to just go with the flow and let them do whatever they want?

Yes.

But, again, fuck that shit.

Post-it Sunday 3/9/25- 29 ways

The post-it reads “29 ways to make it to the hospital”.

This is, of course, in the reference to the Marc Cohn song 29 Ways to Make it to My Baby’s Door. Yes, the same Marc Cohn who sang Walking in Memphis. Both songs are from his debut album in 1991.

Marc Cohn was the first bar concert I ever saw. I want to say it was in 1996 and in a small bar in the college town near where I grew up. Between 1993-1996

In the song, the protagonist lists off the ways he can make it to his baby’s door. Near the end of the song he sings that if she needs him real bad, he can find two or three more.

I know that people already think that I have an unnatural attachment to the hospital. I don’t, I swear. I do have an unnatural attachment to work, though I am trying my best to overcome it.

But I was thinking of mass casualty events when I wrote this post-it. Probably after one of the hospital shootings we’ve had nationally for a lot of years. Or being the second runner up to Oklahoma City when I was at Creighton. If that is even true, we talked about it in clinical just after it happened.

However, if the hospital needed me in a hurry, and they have, I could get to it, at night, in less than 5 minutes. This depends on hitting the lights right and no traffic.

However, I thought about it and counted the many ways I know how to get to the hospital during the day. I counted at least 10. And I only live 3 miles from the hospital.

Those are the 10 that I have found. There is probably more.

It just depends on how badly they need me.

And the traffic lights.

Tuesday Top of Mind 3/4/2025- The real tragedy of modern times is being afraid of the light

The proper quote, attributed to Plato, can be summarized by “The real tragedy of life is when people are afraid of the light.”

The PhD student in me knows that this is a reference to Allegory of the Cave. Also by Plato.

In the cave the only perspective is that of what is projected on the walls. What you see projected on the walls is entirely left up to your own experiences.

For example, if a republican was attracted to a drag queen they would question their manliness and therefore be afraid of drag queens exposing their secrets. But they can’t be afraid of something so silly, so they hate it. Worse, they teach others to hate the shadows on the wall of the drag queen as well.

Oh. This argument got a bit away from me. I don’t mean to point fingers, but if the pattern on the wall fits…

The Allegory of the Cave is also about truth. It is a warning not to take the easy path and believe everything your eyes tell you.

Or believe what the voice on the television or podcast tells you.

Critical thinking is a must, especially in these times when the wrong voices and the wrong actions are vying for our attention and our belief.

In simpler terms and the phrase I remember hearing or reading as a child, that what you hate is something that frightened you as a child. Instead of another person just trying to live their life, they are hated as other.

Well, going back to the cave, who decides the other.

And, more importantly, why do we listen and sometimes blindly follow the hatred that is spoon fed to us in increasing amounts? Perhaps in the hopes that we will drown in filth and be reborn hating the things that caused us to be drowned. Instead of real fear of those who drowned us.

To make light of it, perhaps they were frightened by a drag queen as a child.

As Master Yoda says, “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”

Don’t walk the dark path.

And don’t believe what other people are telling you about the shadows on the wall.

They may get something out of frightening you.

Tuesday Top of Mind 1/21/25- Limbering up the “NO, I don’t think so” muscle

Warning: this might be a VERY SWEARY and a VERY CAPS-LOCK post. Or not. Behave accordingly.

Somewhere not very far from where I am, about 390 miles give or take, is a man who has never heard the word no and not reacted like a spoiled, entitled brat.

To parody the meme, “Someone has never been told no and sent to bed without supper and it shows.”

Has anyone ever told this man no and slapped his hand while he was reaching for something that wasn’t his?

Strike that. I am sure that plenty of people have. He has the guilty verdicts to show for it.

Has this man ever had to face the consequences of his own actions? I would hazard a guess at that. And that guess would be no.

It helps to know that the crap that is going on in Washington D.C. amounts to nothing more than a tantrum.

A tantrum from a spoiled brat.

I just feel sorry for the people who will be hurt/killed/smeared out of existence by his very presence where he is. For the people who will lose their healthcare coverage, or their right to exist as they want to. The group that I am afraid will suffer the most are the women. I am lumping in ALL women, be they born female or not.

We are facing a very dark and dangerous future.

Because we as a nation told this spoiled man-child no.

How dare we?

And then we went and fought the pandemic that he mismanaged.

Inflation sucked, yes, but it sucked WAY harder in other countries who didn’t enjoy our “soft” landing.

Greed is the rot and the root of all the challenges that everyday Americans have lived with over the last four years. Corporate greed, individual greed, billionaire greed. Billionaires who are not content to have all the toys in the sandbox but instead demand the sand as well. Normies like you and me can play in the dirt. Until they want that too because we are surviving without them and that IS NOT in their business plan.

Today I am just going to breathe. I am not going to react, I am not going to rend my clothes or pull my hair, or do something rash.

What I am going to do is breathe and document. Just like a nurse in an emergency should.

I know I’ve written about my first ACLS teacher, the beginning of my first ACLS class, and her counseling us that the first thing to do in a code is to take our own pulse. This is to check in with ourselves and remind us that there is a patient who is dying in front of us, and we have to do something about it.

This is our code, Democracy and the America that I love is dying in front of us.

Take your pulse, check in with yourself, and get ready to resist.

Because he has been told no once, time for him to hear it a whole bunch of times. From every corner of the country. Together we can drown out the sycophants and cultists that, until now, have been shouting louder.

Bullies try to silence those who stand up to them. Have you ever considered why? If our voices didn’t have power, they wouldn’t try so hard to silence us.

As I tell my coworkers, if they are afraid to speak up call me and I will. I will absolutely yell back at the men in power, real or imagined. Tell me if you want me to be louder because you can’t. I don’t even need a reason to raise my voice.

See if I don’t.

I know how to use the word no and I am not afraid to use it.

Grieve if we must. I certainly understand the impulse but we also have to be ready to counter moves by the administration. Bought as it was.

Dispatches from the Evening Shift Disclaimer Sunday 1/11/25

I usually do this on the first day of the year so I am a little tardy this year.

Happy New Year!

Let’s get down to business.

Every year I write this disclaimer. And add to it. And tweak it. And if I knew how to pin it to the blog start page, I would.

I began writing the yearly disclaimer to be able to point to my posts and say, see nothing to give away the patient here. You know, HIPAA. In case the corporation, that I work for and discuss my blog openly in meetings etc., tries to tell me I cannot write this. Not that they have, but I can believe they would.

I believe in protecting patients’ and staff’s privacy.

I do not include details that make it clear or easy to figure out which patient or staff member I am talking about. If I am talking about any.

I do not use names. And if I do, they are changed.

I change ages. I change gender.

I change details such as which limb is fractured. I change details such as which surgery is performed.

And the cases that I do talk about obliquely are changed in how time is perceived as well. The cases/people/staff may not be the same at the time of the surgery.

I definitely change aspects of time. By that I mean there is no relationship between the moment I write the post and the actual events that prompted it.

Some of the stories aren’t even mine, but even they are changed so as to be unrecognizable.

That being said, I change a lot.

So that, if you knew where I worked, you could not figure out who I was writing about or when.

I discuss issues that impact healthcare broadly.

And, after the events of the two past years, issues that impact women’s health. There has been a LOT to unpack here.

And covid. Can’t get away from covid. XEC is the newest variant and it is currently causing over 50% of the cases. People continue to die; not that we know it because they stopped keeping track years ago. And there is a new game in town, or should I write games. The bird flu that has made the jump to infecting and killing humans, and the human metapneumovirus which isn’t new but is making noise in China.

I do swear sometimes. But mainly to make an emphatic point.

I write themed days. Post-it Sundays which are from notes to myself, usually on a Post-it or a gown card. Monday I take off. Tuesday Top of Mind is the most political day of the week where I write what is weighing heavily on my brain. Wednesdays had been a free day that I wrote exclusively about OR things. This has morphed into the Best Kept Secrets of the OR where I divulge the secrets of the OR. Cookie Thursday is a Thing is where I write about the cookies I make for the department. This is a long-running morale project in the OR of homemade cookies or candies are brought in around 1400. This started as an evening shift things and remains so. FFS Fridays is the newest day that I write about things that begin with F, F, or S. This is the day that has the most swearing and I started it as a reaction to the 2024 general election. Buckle up, it’s gonna get weird. On Saturdays, I write about being an adult learner.

Phew.

I may miss a day here or there because 6 days is a LOT, even if the blog posts are shortish.

This month marks 10 years of Cookie Thursday is a Thing! I had no intention of baking cookies for so long, but it gives me a handy bookmark for my week. I also theme the months and this month’s theme is Favorites. Along with the departmental favorites, I also tell a story about CTIAT.

School Me Saturday 12/21/24-adjusting expectations

This was a HIGH bar for me to clear.

My expectation was that I could move heaven and earth to graduate with a PhD in 3 years. Eminently doable, I smugly thought to myself as I signed up. Doing the program in 3 years means that I will graduate before I turn 50!

I’m not sure why that arbitrary number was important. After all, I will turn 50 with or without a PhD.

Also of importance was the fact that I wanted to clear the triple hurdle and get my third degree in 10 years. No matter that the world was on fire in 2020 and 2021. And I was a working hospital-based operating room nurse the entire time.

Who was I competing against?

Myself. That’s who I was competing against.

Because this will not set the nursing world on fire.

Oh, and yeah, 2024 was a horrible year health-wise for me. Horrible. Your forties are like a gift. This is heavy sarcasm.

Sometime in the past months, I came to the realization that the thesis will not be finished and defended by the graduate in May deadline of March 20th. There just isn’t enough time to do all the tasks.

Everything takes longer in academia. And I mean EVERYTHING. Through a series of pitfalls, and, yes the personal physical challenges, and the university challenges, it has taken me 6 months to start my pilot project and 2 months to complete it and finish the class. This process should have taken me 6 weeks to start the pilot project and 2 months to complete it and finish the class.

Okay. I’ve written before that age is just a number and time means nothing. Why was I so worried about the PhD being completed by a deadline I made up in my own head? I will finish this degree in my own time. I should just enjoy this dedicated writing time.

The take-home lesson is that plans may change. Some people might look at a change as the opportunity to drop the idea completely. They would not be wrong in doing so.

Their path is their own.

Your path is your own.

Paths may change. I know that my personal path has taken a few right turns and a couple of u-turns. And that is okay.

Whether you stay on the path or decide that it is not the path you want, the important thing is to keep learning. Being an adult learner is hard but remember the reasons you started on the path and the reasons to keep on the path. Even as it changes underfoot.

You might surprise yourself.

I hope you do.