Ep 28: How to Navigate Being a Nurse and a Mental Health Service User with Jane Fisher

Posted October 24, 2023

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Show Notes —

In this episode, we talk about the world of mental health nursing with Jane Fisher, a lecturer in the field and a service user herself.

Jane shares her experiences and insights on self-disclosure, the complex identities nurses with mental health challenges navigate, and the power of authenticity in nursing practice.

She emphasizes the importance of developing advanced interpersonal skills and fostering a human-to-human connection in mental health nursing.

This episode unravels how Jane’s journey as a nurse, lecturer, mental health service user, and psychiatric survivor has shaped her unique perspective on the field.

KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS EPISODE

Jane discusses her role as a mental health nurse lecturer and her commitment to supporting students who have their own mental health challenges.

The prevalence of students entering mental health nursing programs with pre-existing mental health conditions.
The challenges of transitioning from being a nurse to becoming a mental health service user and the power imbalances that come with it.
The impact of stigma on mental health professionals who have their own mental health challenges.

Jane shares her journey of embracing her multiple identities, including being a wounded healer, an empowered professional, a nurse, and a psychiatric survivor.

The importance of authenticity and acceptance in the mental health nursing profession.
How self-disclosure can be a valuable tool when used for the benefit of service users and students.
The need for tailored support and supervision for nurses with their own lived experience of mental illness.

Jane’s perspective on the gaps in mental health nurse education and the essential interpersonal skills required for the profession.

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Today’s Guest:

Jane Fisher, a mental health nurse lecturer and service user, brings her wealth of experience to the field. Her journey through mental health challenges has ignited a passion for authenticity and support within the profession. Jane dedicates her time to guiding pre-registration nursing students, helping them navigate their path as mental health nurses. She emphasizes that personal experiences with mental health issues should not deter individuals from pursuing a career in the field. Her unique perspective on identity, self-disclosure, and the multifaceted roles of mental health professionals enriches the education of her students.

Jane’s commitment to mental health nursing extends to advocating for a more authentic and inclusive approach to mental health care, benefiting both patients and colleagues.

Connect with Jane Fisher here:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/jane_fisher2

Read Jane’s Articles Here:

Find our wellbeing services at our website: www.nursewellbeingmission.com

Instagram: @_nursewellbeingmission

Twitter: @NurseWellbeing

📌 Join our free Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/nurse…

Transcript —

[00:00:00] Nathan Illman:

Welcome back to Nurse Wellbeing Mission podcast, everybody. So a question that I had always asked myself when I was doing my clinical psychology training was, when is it appropriate to reflect on or share your own experiences of mental ill health with colleagues and with service users or patients or clients?

So the question of self-disclosure and when that might be helpful. Well, of course, many nurses experience mental ill health as well. It’s very common in the current climate following COVID and with all of the workforce issues that are present. And particularly in mental health nursing, many people arrive in the profession having had their own experiences of mental ill health or their own challenges.

Because there is something about having had those experiences that often draws people to want to help other people, myself included, even though I’m not a nurse. I’m still someone who works in health care who was brought to the field of mental health partially because of my own experiences of mental health myself and with my family.

Well in today’s episode of the podcast I have a really insightful and thought-provoking conversation with Jane Fisher. Jane is a lecturer in mental health nursing and she’s also a service user. She’s someone who has experienced her own severe mental ill health and she has accessed mental health services a number of times as a result of this.

And Jane recently wrote a… really incredible article discussed some of the issues that she has faced with respect to navigating her own identity with respect to being a service user or patient or being a nurse, and which parts of herself she felt comfortable or safe to disclose in different contexts with different people.

So in this episode we talk about Jane’s experience and she gives some guidance or some areas for us to consider. around how we treat people, how we treat service users, how we treat nurses who come into the profession with their own mental ill health, and some ideas on ways in which we can conceptualize the positive aspects of that.

And also some of the negative or challenging aspects of that. In this conversation, Jane also talks about her own use of self-disclosure with the work she does with her students and how that can be a helpful exercise. But also just a few things you might want to consider when you use self-disclosure and how you do it.

So let’s dive into this conversation with Jane Fisher.

Yeah, I mean, I put in those questions, it’s something I was really interested to know. a little bit more about, is just your role, like what, what are you most interested in at the moment with your teaching and other responsibilities and kind of what, what gets you motivated at the moment? Gets me motivated.

[00:03:20] Jane Fisher:

That’s a good question, but I’m a mental health nurse lecturer. Um, so spend a lot of time with pre-registration nursing students, which I absolutely love. Um, I think that’s one of the best parts of my job is supporting students on their own journeys to becoming a mental health nurse. As I live with my own personal experience of mental illness.

Again, I’m really passionate about trying to remove some of that stigma, particularly attached to mental health nurses, mental health professionals who have their own personal lived experience of mental illness. And I like to encourage students who may also have their own mental health challenges that it doesn’t necessarily need to stop them becoming an amazing mental health nurse.

So I’m definitely passionate about that and yeah.

[00:04:15] Nathan Illman:

What’s your experience of, of those pre reg mental health nurses in terms of, I mean, obviously you don’t know everything about everyone who you’re supporting or teaching or educating. But could you share a little bit about your experience about the perhaps prevalence that you’ve seen or what you know from the literature, maybe about students coming on to that program in general and having their pre existing mental health?

[00:04:41] Jane Fisher:

I think we’re definitely seeing it a lot more now that students are motivated to become a mental health nurse because of their own personal experience of being under services, living with a mental illness. And that’s a real special motivation that people have, they need to be supported with that.

It’s challenging being a mental health professional with a mental illness. It’s incredibly challenging to spend three years learning about mental health. challenges and mental health nursing when you can relate that to some of your own experiences. And that can be, you know, I find that a challenge sometimes as well.

So that can be quite a challenge for students. I think identity is challenging as well. I’ve had over the last kind of seven, eight years, I’ve been on a real journey in terms of. my identity as a both a mental health nurse, but also a mental health service user. Um, and there’s been, you know, lots of many challenges along the way, and it’s been a real difficult and uncomfortable journey at times.

So I’d like to think that I can, you know, help others with that identity, um, those identity challenges. I was a community mental health nurse on maternity leave, and then I developed quite severe perinatal mental health challenges. Pretty much went from a, um, a nurse on maternity leave to a mental health patient, uh, virtually overnight.

So that was quite traumatic. Uh, it was quite a dramatic change. Um, quite traumatic, like I said. But the start of a real complex journey with many, many complex layers, um, to it. I think those, you know, those ideas of nurse and patient, you know, traditionally, uh, were quite, quite different, quite binary, quite opposites, uh, especially in the kind of aftermath of the, you know, the medical model being so, uh, so dominant in mental health, mental health services.

Nurses are viewed as the experts, perhaps viewed as, you know, beyond distress, beyond illness. And then we have mental health service users who have a mental illness and need our support. And then, you know, there’s often a them and us mentality, if you’re familiar with that term. So that’s, you know, the nurses are separate.

And then we have our mental health service users. So a transition from being a nurse to then becoming a service user, it can be quite a radical role reversal, which can be challenging when I access services as a mental health service user. Less so now but still to a certain degree. I do feel relatively powerless, you know, I comply, for want of a better word, with treatments and appointments and medications, sometimes out of fear.

We don’t want to be labelled as non-compliant, don’t want to be labelled as a difficult patient. You know, there’s definitely that power imbalance between nurses and service users. Reflecting back on my practice when I was a nurse, I didn’t realise the true kind of impact of that power imbalance. I probably quite naively You know, thought I was, you know, did my best to, you know, empower my service users and listen to them and take their views into account, you know, realizing that, you know, even with that good nursing care, that power imbalance is really apparent.

I think there’s also issues around, you know, kind of, um, challenging those, that nurse-patient, um, divide. You know, we know that the title of a registered mental health nurse doesn’t make us immune, um, to mental health, uh, challenges. But when we have one of our colleagues who has a severe and enduring mental illness, the idea is, it, it’s challenged.

[00:08:38] Nathan Illman:

And how have you found that experience with colleagues? Jane, in terms of perceptions, because it’s, this has happened over the past seven years, you’ve talked about your journey. Have you noticed differences in how you feel you’re perceived by colleagues and any of those relationships over that time?

[00:05:05] Jane Fisher:

I’d like to think that the stigma is getting less. I really would like to think that I think when I first went back to work after becoming unwell, uh, I definitely experienced, um, some stigma or maybe not stigma, but maybe just shock that perhaps I was, you know, taught openly talking, um, that I’d been unwell whilst I’d whilst I’d been off work. I’d like to think that that’s improved.

Um, and I do think that has got better, or maybe I’ve got more confident in, in talking about my own experiences where I’m, you know, less bothered by other people’s perceptions. But I definitely think, you know, there is still stigma attached to a mental health nurse needing to be under mental health services, um, or having a mental health condition.

If that answers that question.

[00:09:46] Nathan Illman:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, there’s, there’s something about putting people on a bit of a pedestal, isn’t there, with in healthcare, you know, you do all this training to become this identity. Obviously, I come from a Background as a psychologist and I had this similar kind of experience where you’re at university and you’re everyone is trying to be something and you’re, it’s like you’re becoming something.

And even though on the one hand, you are learning about and trying to empower people with mental health and destigmatize things in some sense, you’re. Armoring up and, and it doesn’t feel okay to actually acknowledge how you’re really feeling or what’s going on for you, because you’re meant to be the, there’s this expert role that you mentioned, right?

[00:10:33] Jane Fisher:

Yeah, yeah. And that’s a challenge because, you know, if you feel that you can’t merge those two identities as, you know, nurse and service user, then It creates that internal conflict, uh, because you never feel like you can truly be yourself, um, or, or be authentic. Um, you know, so when I’ve, sometimes when I’ve accessed services, I’ve been reluctant to disclose the fact that I’m a mental health nurse, you know, and, and I’ve received, um, some reactions along the lines of, oh, well, you know, better than me, or, Oh, well, I don’t need to tell you, you know, X, Y, and Z.

That was very difficult, um, for me personally. Um, because I just wanted, wanted to be, I didn’t wanna be treated like a nurse. I just wanna be treated like a mental health, um, service user. Uh, for a long time I didn’t have any insight into my illness and the fact that I wasn’t, well, you know, I couldn’t have felt further away from the nurse that I was, you know, six months ago.

Uh, you know, I was in a completely, completely different state. That was quite difficult, you know, whereas I was kind of expected to be able to, you know, almost treat myself or, you know, be my own community, um, mental health nurse. Um, and I was in, you know, absolutely zero position to be able to do that. So, and that’s another challenge, uh, is when.

Mental health nurses are providing care to other mental health nurses, they might feel intimidated, they might feel someone said to me, Oh, kind of no pressure on me then to do this assessment. Like I was, you know, analyzing their assessment skills of me. When at the time I was, you know, incredibly low in mood and really paranoid, and so I’d absolutely zero capacity to be thinking about their, their assessment skills.

And so there is a risk that basics are missed, there’s a risk that Um, if you are treating another mental health professional, uh, there’s a risk that you assume that, okay, they, they, they know what’s going on. They’re going to tell me if things get worse. Uh, you know, they know how to keep themselves safe.

They know the importance of medication. Um, and a lot of those basics can be, uh, can be missed, um, and have quite, you know, quite, um, tragic outcomes, uh, sometimes as well. That’s another issue as well for, you know, mental health nurses who are treating other nurses. But like I was saying about that, you know, the identity, if I was going to mental health services, feeling like I wanted to hide the fact that I was a nurse, then again, I can’t be authentic.

And there’s that internal, um, struggle, that internal, you know, battle. What do I say? What do I not say? Are they going to find out I’m a nurse? It’s just ridiculous. Um, so you never feel like you can truly be, um, be yourself if those different identities are so seismically, um, different. I’ve also kind of, you know, reflected on and wrote around kind of the concept of, you know, different identities that nurses with mental illness can adopt.

So we’ve got the nurse and the patient, those kind of really archetypal concepts. But then also there’s concepts of a wounded healer or an impaired. Um, professional. Uh, so the wounded healer comes from kind of Greek mythology. Um, and again, it’s that archetypal idea, um, of kind of healing and power, uh, that comes from, you know, you know, struggles and, you know, personal, um, brokenness, woundedness.

And then that’s used, um, as a positive to kind of, um, transform that pain, um, and to heal others. But again, that concept is nice in some ways, but still quite limited. Um, again, there’s that judgment to be made of when is somebody well enough to be able to use the struggles to, you know, to help, um, to help other people.

And again, there’s that stigma in the workplace, uh, which again just compounds that secrecy, uh, shame and that self-stigma. And then there’s the option of the impaired professional, uh, which is probably even worse, you know, as a impaired professional, um, a nurse with their own personal experience of mental illness is almost seen as a, as a liability.

Or a risk to patients or someone that’s going to go off sick or someone that’s going to be, um, unreliable, um, or someone who’s maybe negatively drawing on their own experiences. And that’s having an adverse effect, um, on, on therapeutic relationships with, Um.

You know, so I think that’s impaired professional, it is, you know, that, that’s my identity that, you know, but we don’t want the wounded healer where, where this, you know, magical kind of healing abilities, um, that kind of romanticizes our own struggles and our own pain. You know, there’s nothing idyllic and romanticized about living with severe and enduring mental illness.

So that kind of nurse-patient, wounded healer, impaired professional, you know, they’re all, you know, really challenging identities, um, to, to navigate.

[00:15:59] Nathan Illman:

Yeah, I, I’d heard the term wounded healer before, uh, I actually, I actually hadn’t heard the, the impaired professional one. And it’s interesting, I kind of considered.

The appropriateness of that for myself, you know, and challenges that I’ve been through and as you were just describing in one sense, that felt like it resonated with me, you know, okay, I’ve had my own challenges and I help other people. But as you were kind of alluding to that, I’ve sort of considered for myself, like how helpful it is to, to just like embody that as.

I am the wounded healer. Like there are some, some aspects of it, which I don’t think are particularly helpful.

[00:16:37] Jane Fisher:

Yeah. Yeah. And again, it’s, it’s romanticized and you know, there’s nothing idyllic about suffering from mental illness. It couldn’t be further, you know, from, uh, from the reality of it. I think as well as, you know.

Having my own mental illness or, you know, other mental health nurses, you’ve got previous experience, personal experience. It doesn’t make you a better nurse than somebody without that experience. It makes you a different nurse. But we’re all different people and we all bring our own different, you know, backgrounds, personalities, you know, histories, experiences to, you know, to who we are, um, as people.

You know, it’s definitely not a prerequisite for being a nurse that you’ve lived with your own mental health challenges. You know, I, I, I do believe it doesn’t make somebody a better nurse, uh, just makes them a different, um, a different nurse. I think that’s, that’s important.

[00:17:36] Nathan Illman:

Yeah, there’s no perfect set of characteristics or previous experience that makes, well there just is no perfect nurse, is there?

There’s no perfect nurse, there’s no perfect human being, and it’s, um, yeah, like you said, diversity of experience makes everyone different and everyone brings something, their own strengths and, um, things to the table, don’t they? Yeah,

[00:17:57] Jane Fisher:

Yeah, and then There’s, shall I go on to more identity challenges? Yeah, yeah, I’d love to hear more.

That’s not enough, there’s a few more Um, so again, and this is, you know, this is only my experience of one particular, um, incident, um, but also that, that stigma, um, about being a mental health nurse with a mental illness, you know, that’s not always limited to the staff room or the staff office. So I’ve had experiences where I felt stigmatized by other service users.

And again, this was just my own, you know, experience. And I think it was that same internal battle, a kind of peer support, you know, dropping, um, type, type setting. And again, it was that battle. Do I tell these other service users that I am also, um, a nurse, um, or also a lecturer? And some points when I, uh, when I have, I’ve also then experienced, um, some, a shift, um, some stigma, um, as well, you know, which, I can understand to a certain degree, but mental health professionals, you know, we also struggle to fully embrace the service user or the, you know, the mental health patient, um, identity, you know, how can I be as a nurse with a mental illness?

How can I be fully accepted by psychiatric survivor movement? You know, when I’ve spent the 20 years being part of the problem, for want of a better word. Um, you know, can I truly be a psychiatric survivor, as a lot of people call themselves, when I educate the workforce, you know, that are almost, you know, compounding this issue.

And, you know, a part of that problem with why people identify as a psychiatric survivor. Um, you know, so again, that, those identity challenges, you know, are there, you know, within those settings as well.

[00:20:02] Nathan Illman:

Can I ask a question about that, Jane? Yeah. It sounds like, you know, you’re asking that, that question, can I be part of the psychiatric survivor?

I mean, what is your current thinking or feeling around that? Does it, Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you. It almost sounds like a rhetorical question, but I don’t know, it’s, where are you sitting with that at the moment?

[00:20:21] Jane Fisher:

I think I’ve, it’s definitely a journey and I’m not there by any means, but for me it’s about Authenticity and kind of attempting the best way I can to embrace, you know, all these different aspects of me, you know, which, you know, could be said for, you know, for anybody really, you know, and trying to.

You know, embrace that authenticity, uh, you know, I am a mental health nurse. I am a mental health lecturer. Uh, I’m incredibly proud of being a mental health nurse. I tried to do a different job, uh, for a time, but I couldn’t do it. I’m, I’m just, I’m a nurse through and through, uh, so went back, um, to nursing, you know, so I am a nurse and I’m proud of being a mental health nurse.

You know, I am a mental health lecturer, um, and I love my job, um, and I want to educate. And empower students to be the best possible mental health nurses that they can be within a very difficult and broken system, and they can, you know, have to have an amazing impact on people’s lives. And I am a mental health service user.

I live, you know, with a severe and enduring mental illness. You know, I remain under mental health services. Um, and I’m also a psychiatric survivor, um, because I’ve had really different experience, really difficult experiences of care. You know, I know firsthand how broken the system is, and how, you know, desperately hard, you know, individual nurses are, you know, working within that system, you know, I support my students who are.

Particularly my apprenticeship students who are in the workforce and in incredibly, um, stressful and difficult, uh, mental health, um, services. You know, so I, I know how difficult it is for the nurses, but I also know how difficult it is as a service user. You know, there’s elements of the wounded healer.

There’s elements of, you know, a psychiatric, um, survivor. And for me, it’s about if I try and. hide one of those aspects of me, then there’s a lot of internal unsettledness, for want of a, for want of a better word. And if you can’t be fully authentic, and then you know that creates shame, and it creates fear, and it creates secrecy.

When there’s those distinct separate identities where we think we have to pick one, then everything in between is removed and that hides the real us. Um, on, on the authentic, um, us and the authentic me as a nurse lecturer, um, and a mental health patient. Um, you know, and I try my best to embrace, you know, all aspects, um, you know, of that because ultimately, you know, none of those things define me.

I am me with all of those things and many, many other things. Um, you know, and, and I, I’m enough, you know, as, as me with. all those different aspects to me.

[00:23:27] Nathan Illman:

It’s really interesting the link between that need for authenticity and, I guess, need for acceptance. You know, it sounds like there’s a real tension there with, I mean, we all have that need for acceptance, don’t we?

But I guess it does manifest in different roles in different spheres of our life, doesn’t it? There’s a general need for acceptance, but perhaps, you know, as a parent, you might have a need for acceptance or as a mental health nurse you get a need for acceptance or as a service user a need for acceptance and you’re being put in these different situations where there’s that conflict where to be authentic might jeopardize the acceptance.

[00:24:05] Jane Fisher:

Yeah. Yeah. And we all want to be accepted as well, don’t we? Um, you know, that’s part of, you know, part of who we are as humans. Um, but I do think. When we, if we’re looking for evidence that we don’t belong, and that we’re not accepted, then we’ll probably always find, find it as well, you know, and I think, yeah, like you say it’s, it’s about that, you know, personal acceptance and being prepared, you know, I’m, I’m, you know, more than prepared now to stand, you know, in that what feels like a huge gap between where nurse ends and where patient begins, you know, but it’s, you know, it’s that kind of, Self acceptance, um, you know, to embrace, you know, all aspects of ourselves as, as one, you know, complete, uh, complete person, but it is hard to, you know, to do that and stand in that, you know, that, that gap, which is another reason why I do, you know, speak, um, about my own personal experiences.

So I’ve got encourage other people to stand, to stand with me, you know, in that kind of authenticity. And kind of, you know, embracing, you know, who, who we are as people.

[00:25:16] Nathan Illman:

I really enjoy your, you know, the way you talk about self disclosure and its use. And, um, it was great reading your article that actually pointed me in the direction of another framework around self disclosure, which I hadn’t come across, which I think is.

Brendan Dunlop’s work, but yeah, taking a look at that and that looks really helpful. I’m not expecting you to, to talk about that paper. It’s not your own research, but could you just share a little bit about your own tips and experience on how you use that self disclosure with students and maybe like some things that people maybe want to consider or even avoid when they’re, when they’re attempting. Self-disclosure for sort of therapeutic benefit is people.

[00:26:02] Jane Fisher:

Yeah. Um, I think it’s important to point out that when I talk about my own personal experiences, that I’m doing that within a relatively safe environment of university, um, and everything that comes with that. It’s the nurses that are in that band five role, um, you know, them navigating, um, disclosure.

You know, is far more complex, um, you know, and difficult than, you know, me and my relatively safe environment, um, of disclosure, but it should always be for the service users benefit, or the students benefit. rather than, you know, the person’s benefit. So if I’m bringing in aspects of my own experience in teaching, then it’s always because that’s relevant to whatever we’re talking about at that time.

And I feel like it’s going to be relevant for the, for the students, um, for the students learning, um, and their wellbeing. My personal experience of mental illness impacts who I am as a nurse and a lecturer, um, and it would do that whether I ever spoke publicly about it or not. Um, so I think it’s important, you know, that students and nurses, you know, there’s no pressure to talk to anybody about it if you don’t want to, you know, or there’s no, you know, there’s no pressure to talk to service users about it if you don’t want to, or staff if you don’t want to, or just a couple of staff or whatever’s comfortable.

And because That personal experience, you know, will impact someone’s practice, you know, whether they publicly talk about it or not. I think that’s really important, you know, for students and nurses to kind of reflect on, you know, and think that you know what they’ve been through. It’s still going to be doing some good and it’s still going to be impacting who they are as a nurse, whether they ever tell and talk publicly about it, if they do it should be in the benefit of the service user or the member of the staff or, or, or the student.

But it does take a lot of kind of emotional intelligence. And, you know, and. A bit of trial and error along the way. Um, you know, I think support and supervision is, is really, um, vital for nurses with their own lived experience, um, and a safe place where they can talk about how their practice is impacting on themselves, um, or anything that’s, you know, reminding them of themselves or, you know, anything like that.

You know, they really need a safe place to be able to, um, to be able to explore that. I don’t think nurses with their own lived experience or students need more support than another nurse, but I think they definitely need a different type, a different type of support, which I think definitely needs a lot of work in practice.

[00:28:55] Nathan Illman:

Kind of neatly leads on to. Probably I guess the final area that I’d love to just talk to you about is with respect to mental health nurse education, what do you see from your perspective as being some of the gaps or things that might be missing from mental health nurse curricula? And what, what would you like to see be included or, or indeed taken away from, from that education?

[00:29:21] Jane Fisher:

I think there is a risk in UK, um, nurse education, um, that there’s a, um, a move towards a more generic, um, education or a more, um, generic nurse, um, and definitely those core mental health nursing skills, um, definitely need more investment. Um, and more time, um, given to, and those being recognized by, uh, the NMC, um, as well.

There’s a risk that we’re producing nurses who are very much task focused, um, you know, but mental health nurses, they need those, you know, advanced interpersonal skills. You know, they need to have the skills and the confidence and the ability to simply be with someone in distress and sit with someone in distress and have that human-to-human connection.

Again, it was only when I became a mental health patient that I. truly realize the value, um, you know, of being with someone, um, you know, and, and just sitting there with them, um, in that distress to someone looking on, it might not seem that there’s much going on, um, you know, but there’s a lot, there’s, you know, many interpersonal, you know, skills that are, um, that are being used to enable someone to feel heard, um, to feel safe, um, to feel accepted, um, to feel hope, um, for the future. Uh, you know, these are all complex skills that, you know, mental health, uh, mental health nurses, uh, need.

[00:30:58] Nathan Illman:

Yeah, that, uh, that interpersonal element is just crucial, isn’t it?

I think it’s some of these Basics, there is complexity to the basics. If you know what I mean? Yeah. And it was really, um, really helpful to hear your perspective on, I guess what you needed in those moments when you became a service user, compassion and acceptance and being heard and understood. I imagine

[00:31:24] Jane Fisher:

Yeah, and they, the mental health nurses that did provide that, you know, etched in my memory and will be, you know, forever, but also on the flip side, you know, experiences more negative experiences of feeling kind of dismissed or silenced or not listened to or not taken seriously, you know, those moments are also kind of equally as etched in my memories, sadly.

The impact of all the mental health nurses, you know, it’s profound and I want to encourage, you know, student nurse, nurses and mental health nurses to realize that they can have that, you know, incredibly positive, powerful, um, impact. And often that’s not completed by, or that’s not achieved by, you know, doing a task, you know, filling out a, you know, an arbitrary, um, care plan. It’s achieved by that human-to-human connection, um, and that ability to kind of be with someone in distress.

[00:32:27] Nathan Illman:

Jane, I want to thank you so much for sharing what you shared with me today. And like I said to you before, it was a real pleasure reading your articles. In my show notes to this episode, we’ll put a link to those for people to read.

We didn’t really specifically mention them, did we? In this conversation, but you wrote, you wrote a fab article. I think, was it published this year? The who am I article? Yeah. So that was a great article. Jane wrote. about all this identity stuff and your lived experience and another great article which we haven’t really touched on today maybe we can come back to that another time about resilience and uh the problematic nature of trying to make nurses more resilient I’d love to talk more about that but um yeah perhaps we can have another conversation

[00:33:12] Jane Fisher:

Yeah definitely i think the paper on identity was probably one of the most therapeutic papers that I’ve um that I’ve written and i know Other nurses who have mental health challenges who have read that and have found it quite helpful.

So I would, I would encourage any, any nurse with, with their own mental health challenges, you know, maybe have a read of that and, you know, see if it’s helpful. And, um, you know, all for keeping in touch with people and not being the lone voice. Um, you know, in standing in that gap between nurse and patient, uh, you know, so anybody with, uh, their own lived experience, please feel free to, uh, to get in touch.

[00:33:55] Nathan Illman:

Thanks for that offer, Jane, we’ll, we’ll put your contact details in the show notes as well. So people can find that where to, yeah, where to track you down. Thank you so much. Thank you.