Episode 1: Bridging the Gap — the Patient/Nurse Relationship

This transcript was generated automatically. Its accuracy may vary.

Cara Lunsford

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Hello, welcome to the Nurse Start podcast, giving nurses validation resources and hope. One episode at a time. So today on Nurse Dot podcast.

Ted Meyer

The patient is sitting there going, I just had this major procedure. That's probably the major event of their life. And there's such a disparity of how you guys view it to how the patients view it. And it's part of your job to not become indifferent to it, even though, you know, it's something that's relatively routine nowadays to the person.

It's not a routine day.

Cara Lunsford

Joining us today, Ted Meier, artist in residence at USC, Keck School of Medicine and longtime patient advocate TED shares with us his experiences of living with a very rare and incurable disease, the relationships he has built with his care team along the way, and how it has led him to create his program Art and met a collaborative catalyst for change in health care designed to improve the experiences of patients, med students and health care providers.

I'm your host, Kara Lunsford, registered nurse and VP of community at Nurse dot com oh, hi. How are you?

Ted Meyer

I'm good. Nice to see you.

Cara Lunsford

Nice to see you, too. So we're really excited to be able to, like, kick off this next season. And you're the first interview that I have done. So I just wanted to say in the very beginning, because nobody knows who you are to admire that I am just so incredibly excited to have you on this podcast with me.

We have been talking about doing a podcast, you and I, for.

Ted Meyer

Ever years.

Cara Lunsford

Years.

Ted Meyer

Before there were podcasts, I think.

Cara Lunsford

Yeah, yeah. When we were talking about bridging the gap, the nurse patient relationship there was not a better person to talk to then you.

Ted Meyer

Ted Meier Well, I am proud and glad to be here. You kept me alive long enough to do a podcast with me.

Cara Lunsford

That's the really the only reason I kept you alive, Ted, is because I was like, there's there's promise here. There's promise for a good podcast.

Ted Meyer

That's right.

Cara Lunsford

Well, okay, so you have a really interesting story just in terms of being a patient. You've been in the system a long time since a child.

Ted Meyer

Since I was five years old.

Cara Lunsford

Since you were five years old. Which means that really you were not diagnosed until you were five, right? No.

Ted Meyer

Well, I hear you were symptoms. So I have a disease which is a lysosomal storage disorder, and there's different types. There's there's one type that shows up right when you're born, there's neurological problems. My mine was more enlarged spleen, liver bone problems, and. And they didn't really show up to us five or six. So you don't get with that type.

You don't get diagnosed until symptoms show up. But that was I'm 65, so that was six the 60 years ago.

Cara Lunsford

So I imagine 60 years ago, coming in with these symptoms, did they they immediately knew what you had or how long did that take?

Ted Meyer

No, no. In fact, my brother has the same thing. It's a genetic illness. And he was diagnosed with something incorrect first and then I was diagnosed at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. And there was an intern from Poland who had seen this illness in Poland. At the time, there were only about 200 known cases in the world.

And it's a genetic illness that Ashkenazi Jews had because we were ghettoized and and things like that. So it's it's very prevalent in the Ashkenazi Jewish community, but it is not solely in the Jewish community.

Cara Lunsford

Got it. And so some of your just so the listeners know, like some of your symptoms were white.

Ted Meyer

Bone parts, severe bone pain, bone infarctions, enlarged spleen. I had my spleen out when I was that was the first major thing. I had a I, I looked like a starving child from those photos used to see in Africa. My, my stomach was really sticking out because my spleen was very enlarged. Then once that happened, what happens is always sort of cells collect in the spleen, and then once you take the spleen out, they go into the long bones.

And then I started having problems in the long bones and bone infarctions and pain. And so I would be in the hospital 3 to 4 times a year, mostly just to put me to sleep through the bone crisis so I didn't have to deal with the pain. There was no treatment then and then and I h came up with the treatment when I was 42, so I had to wait 36 years from my first bone crisis until an age came up with the treatment.

Cara Lunsford

There's so many things going through my head because I'm thinking about as a nurse, we would have, you know, and we actually did an episode about this frequent fliers, right? So we would have these frequent fliers that would come into the hospital. And in my area, specifically the frequent fliers were usually the sickle cell patients who would come in with sickle cell crisis.

Right. And and very, very interestingly enough, kind of very similar to like the pain crisis that you're kind of experiencing. That's kind of like what sickle cell patients would come in with this like pain crisis. Right. We would have to give them a lot of pain medications. And even though we knew legitimately they were having pain, I think that there was still this big stereotype around pain seeking meds and stuff like that.

What kind of like medications were you getting early on? So you said they were pretty much like sedating you down.

Ted Meyer

Yeah, well, it's interesting because when I was when I was young, they didn't have it seems so simple now, but we they didn't have the morphine drip when I was a kid. So every 4 hours they would come in and give me a shot of morphine or some really powerful painkiller. And I would sit there. I always say that I was like a six year old drug addict because I would be looking at the clock and going, It's been three and a half hours.

My pain is coming back. Where's my shot? And and I would I would just wait for them to come in and I would try to get them to give me the shot early. And and then they would give me a shot. And it was this incredible, incredible rush of just relaxation and stopping the pain and being able to go to sleep again for a while.

And it's it's one of the reasons I've never done any drugs because I was I just so craved that rush of that painkiller that I've been afraid to go near drugs my entire life because I wasn't sure if I started self-medicating, if I would have the resistance to stay away from it.

Cara Lunsford

Wow. That's a that's a real self-aware genius right there, because I think that there's a lot of people that do become addicts or they have this incredible dependency on these medications, especially when they get it for like long periods of time. And then knowing that in life, if they're going through some sort of pain and that may not be physical pain, that may be emotional pain, that might be, you know, something else that makes them think I know how to make this pain go away.

I know that if I just did, if I just got some morphine, if I just got like, I could really, like, take myself out for a minute and not have to experience this pain I'm having.

Ted Meyer

Yeah. And. And later on, there were times when they would, you know, the whole opioid thing. I would be on OxyContin or something for two or three weeks. And then when they had to pull me off the pain medication, so I would go through sort of a mild withdrawal that was in my teenage years and into my twenties when I was still having bone crises.

So I yeah, I just stayed away. I've seen the the downside of it.

Cara Lunsford

So all of this kind of leads me into wanting to ask you, did you feel like your nurses had a lot of compassion for where you were, or did you feel like sometimes you were dealing with nurses that were like, Oh, he's just addicted to pain meds? Oh, he just wants more pain meds. What was that experience for you in terms of like trusting the nurses that were caring for you?

Ted Meyer

Well, I think it depends on which time of my life. So when I when I was growing up, I lived outside New York City, and the nurses, they were Jamaican. They were a lot of Irish came over because the economy in Ireland was bad. And the the PDA at the pediatrics floor, it was like a United Nations. They were people because it was New York.

There were people from all over the world and they were really, really compassionate. It wasn't as as corporate as it is now. Plus, I was, I will say, a particularly cute kid with dimples. And it was they got to know me because I was there so often. So I really felt like I was raised by this gaggle of incredible women of all races and accents in New York City.

Now, as an adult, once I moved to California, it was different. You know, first of all, once you're out of the pediatrics ward, it's it's a whole different thing, too. But I, I always felt the nurses had my best interest, but there wasn't that sort of compassion and mothering, you know, which you wouldn't expect as an adult. And and it just seemed different, like here at Cedars or some of the hospitals I've been in here the like at night, the nurses, they really stick to themselves.

They don't they don't talk to you. They don't It just seems different now. And I think that has to do with insurance and probably what people are allowed to do and say to you and all. But I feel I feel very lucky. I have that group of nurses when I was a kid.

Cara Lunsford

I love that we're able to explore kind of what nursing was like 50 years ago or 60 years ago, because oftentimes I talk to nurses who are like, I've been a nurse for 45 years. When I was a nurse 45 years ago, there was two sides to it, right in some way. It was very oppressive, I guess, because it was like you're the the doctor's handmaiden.

You are, you know, an assistant to the doctor. You are not even allowed to take blood pressures. It was very, very controlled, cold. And I, you know, venture to say very patriarchal in nature. And so the nurses were actually able to do the kind of work that they wanted to do, even though it was pretty oppressive and not very respectful in a lot of ways, they were able to go in and like be with the patient and actually talk to them and hold space with them and be very mothering like to what you said, like, you know, really kind of bring in that compassion and that love and care.

And then over time, as nurses have, you know, probably advocated for wanting to do more and wanting to have more responsibility and saying, hey, you know, I I've learned how to do a lot of things in nursing school and you really don't let me do any of the things that I've learned in nursing school. And so we've gotten more responsibility over time, which is great because nurses are wicked smart and totally capable of doing so much more than just being, you know, an assistant to the doctor.

Ted Meyer

Well, plus, it's up to the nurse, I think, to advocate for the patient, because there's a nurse there 24 hours a day and the doctors there for 10 minutes a day when they're doing their rounds. So.

Cara Lunsford

Exactly.

Ted Meyer

Luckily, I mean, I haven't been in a hospital overnight for 20 years since I had my last set of hip replacements. But I am, you know, not that I'm glad, but if I think if I had to choose what time to be in the hospital for long periods, it was probably better when I was a kid.

Cara Lunsford

And also, as you're moving through, things are changing for nurses rapidly probably so when you started getting care from nurses in the adult area, do you have stories that stand out to you of really good experiences that you had with a nurse or the opposite, like a story where you had a really bad experience with a nurse?

Ted Meyer

Not when I was sick, not about my illness, but things that happened around me. And a lot of them involved the nurses around me and none of them involved nurses when I was an adult. They all have stories. But the nurses, when I was a kid, you know, So I don't have any sort of real memories of adult adult interaction with nurses except one time.

So I had had my hip replaced. I was down at Scripps Clinic in La Hoya and my my back hurt really badly because, you know, when they do your hip, they really twist you so that they can get at your hip. And they tweaked my back and I was in the bed and I kept asking, you know, for a board or something, because when you have your hip done, they put you on that egg crate.

So it's very soft, which is good for your hip. But it was it was really painful for my back. There was no support. So about two days after I had the hip replacement, I swing out, I get out of the bed and I lower myself down to the floor because I want to be on something hard. And the nurses came by and they didn't come in the room.

They just saw my feet on the floor that I was laying down on the floor. And like a minute later there's this code blue. They come in with a crash cart. They assume that I had fainted and landed up on the floor. And I'm just sitting on the floor watching TV and they all run in and I'm like, Hey, what's up?

Like, we thought you died here.

Cara Lunsford

I mean, I, I guess that's a testament to like, when shit goes down, they're going to show up. Oh, coming up after the break.

Ted Meyer

I think there's two distinct healings. There's when the doctor says you're healed and when your body and emotions tell you you're healed.

Cara Lunsford

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Oh. Oh. As a pediatric patient, what were your experiences like when you were a kid? Because I do think it's important for the listeners and anyone in general to understand what are the things that we do or that we can do that make a huge difference in people's lives?

Ted Meyer

Well, I've always been a big believer in that with kids that if you don't really I mean, you can acknowledge that they're sick, but if you don't treat them like they're sick, they won't feel that they're sick. And I other than the pain, I didn't really mind being in the hospital because I have these people that it really became my family when I was growing up.

And and I can still picture people I can't remember their names, but the faces of nurses that were there. And then when I would come back because I was a repeat offender, you know, they would all come in and say hi, sorry, you're back, but we're happy to see you. And oh, you've grown. And so I really had this odd extended family of nurses.

And a lot of times kids just if you just in and I've worked with kids at Children's Hospital and things since then and you know, that's that's sort of the life I had. That's the life they had. And you adjust to it. If you don't treat them like they're that unusual, they won't be damaged by it in the same way.

I'm not saying there's not long term damage by having a chronic illness as a child, but if you're kind of just told that it's okay and this is your lot, and if you don't learn to hate the situation, then maybe you won't. I don't know if that makes sense.

Cara Lunsford

No, it does. It makes a lot of sense when you work with children. And I would even venture to say adults. I now adults are a little different in that I think sometimes they want to be acknowledged that they're sick, you know, but I would say that there are still things that apply, whether you're talking to pediatrics or you're talking to adults.

And one of the things that I used to utilize, I would go in at the beginning of my shift or right when I met the person and was like kind of tell me like, tell me what you what you need. You know, tell me what you what is your you know, what was your night like? What's your goal?

Are you trying to get out of here in two days? Are you trying to get out of here in three days? Are you trying to get out today? Like, are you like, Look, I need to be discharged like two day and let's talk about that. Let's talk about, like, what your goals are, what you need. Do you feel like you're, you know, you're getting treated or do you feel like you're not getting better?

You know, just asking a lot of these questions early on. Because if I can bring down that level of anxiety when I first meet the person, like if I can establish that relationship early in meeting them, that everything is really easier with that patient moving forward.

Ted Meyer

Okay, So this gets into what I do for a career now. So since nobody listening, the podcast knows what I do, I am titled an artistic patient advocate and for years I did graphic design and I got to the where I couldn't stand it anymore. And I started thinking, how can I combine the fact that I'm an artist and I love art with all this knowledge I have about being a patient in the medical world?

So I started first. I did a series about people scars. I didn't want a prints of their scars and collected their stories. And it's exactly what what you said. What what I noticed is that people a lot of people, let's say you have a heart transplant and the doctors, after six months will go, you know, you're fine. The bones in your chest are back together.

Your your scar has healed down the middle of your chest. But a lot of those people still need they want to tell their story, just like you said. They want to be acknowledged for it. Their strength going through it. They're suffering of what they went through and the stamina just to finish the whole thing. And and I think there's to distinct healing.

There's when the doctor says you're healed and when your body and emotions tell you you're healed. So that's one thing. The the other is just what you say. It's so funny you mentioned this, but I would go to these groups of people who had my illness, not as a kid because there were so few of us. They're known, but as an adult.

And a lot of times the parents are the ones that they sort of compare their kids symptoms. Like, my kid has it worse than your kid. It's not like it's Munchausen syndrome, but it's it's definitely the the kids want to be kids and go to the playroom and play and draw. But the adults are all talking about whose kid has it worse.

And I think that that happens everywhere. I think that's part of a parent being protective. They always want to make sure their kid is, you know, getting the best care. And everybody, of course, thinks their kid suffers the most. But that's not always the case. But it did seem like a a a race sometimes for the parents to outdo each other and how much their kids had suffered.

And now I do work with artists who do work about their illnesses so that they can tell their story. So it's like you said about going in when you want to, when you want to get out. What's your story? I think it's really important for people to be able to verbalize their story, what their suffering, especially in the hospital, what they're missing.

We had a we had a conversation with a pain doctor at USC because I had curated an art show about back pain and the we always pair the artist with the doctor. And I said to the doctor, Do you still use those stupid charts? I didn't say stupid, but the one with the happy face and then the sad face.

And she said, Oh, we don't use that anymore. We just ask people, what are you not able to do now because of the pain that you want to do? So it's, you know, it's a different way of talking about it now than when I was a kid. I used to get that pain chart all the time. How, you know, they would come into my room every day, how bad is your pain?

And you'd point to the face which really didn't say much. But this doctor's idea, what are you missing out on because of the pain so that we can get you back to a normal life is exactly what you were saying about your initial conversation with your patients.

Cara Lunsford

I'm so glad that you were able to just encapsulate what what I was experiencing kind of on my side, because really when I do something, I feel like, okay, let me like meet the person where they are. Let me try and understand their struggle. Let me try and see, you know, is there something I can do to help or is there not anything I can do to help?

Cara Lunsford

Because in some situations you have to have some humility, right? You have to realize that there are people that are just they're missing out on life. They don't have their friends. They're they want to be able to do activities and sports that that their friends are doing and they can't do. A lot of times, I think as nurses, we feel like we have to fix things, right?

Cara Lunsford

Like we have to fix it. And in some situations it's too. What you just said is sometimes they just need to express it. Like they just need to like say, this sucks. You know what, My life right now, I just feel like it sucks and we don't have to try and make it better and say, Well, think about it this way.

Cara Lunsford

Like it could be worse. Or, you know, I have a patient down the hall who doesn't have a leg. At least you have a leg like, you know, we don't need to do that. Like, we just need to meet the person where they are and say, you know what? You're right. This sucks.

Ted Meyer

Yeah. You have to acknowledge that. It's really just letting people, you know, in the medical schools now, it's all about they always a patient narrative. It's what is the patient going through? And that doesn't just mean the procedure, it's the healing process. It's it's all that. And everybody does it differently. Not that everybody gets the same care because our medical system is crazy.

But you also don't know, like you can have wildly divergent outcomes because when some people go home, they're going to a mobile home park with three people living in a trailer. I'm using that as a stereotypical extreme. And then some people are going to Beverly Hills and they have, you know, 24 hour care. And so nothing is even.

So you just have to meet people where they are and listen to their situation and maybe you can help maybe you can help them get a social worker. You know, it's up to you guys as nurses to get the ear of the doctor and go, Maybe this person's stay in the hospital for an extra two days because when they get home, they're not going to be able to relax, you know, or something like that.

You you get to know them when they're in the hospital. That happened with me once. The first time I had my hips replaced, it went badly. The bone broke. And this is it's funny because now you get a hip replacement, you're in and out in the day. But I stayed in 11 days the first time I had a hip replacement.

And I think after about eight days, they're like, Do you want to go home? And I was like, No, I still am exhausted. I just want to stay here. So I stayed for 11 days. But that was because the nurse knew I couldn't really get up and out of the bed and I was getting reaction from the painkillers and I was getting a rash.

And, you know, they just looked at me and went, Well, he's you know, it would be hard for him to go home. So it was the nurses that pulled that off for me.

Cara Lunsford

Yeah. That advocated. You know, sometimes we're advocating for someone to get out and sometimes we're advocating for someone to stay, you know, And there's all these people saying like, No, they got to go, they got to go. And you're like, You know what? They can't. And you know why? Because I sat down and I understand their situation. They live alone.

They have stairs at home. It would be impossible for them to maneuver around because their bed is up on a platform and it's too tall. You know, one of the things that nurses bring or have the ability to bring, especially if they take the time or have the time again, I'm going to say this is where the struggle is for nurses right now, is that we want to do these things and there's all these other things taking us away from the bedside.

Ted Meyer

You know, once people get home, if they don't have a good safety net, I you know, I want to say that you guys are really the first line of defense, especially like on the weekends when the doctors are away and there's either no doctor or there's a fill in doctor on the weekend. So, you know, you guys are the continuity.

Cara Lunsford

Yeah, I agree. And so I'll just flash forward. Like you and I, we have a great nurse patient relationship and I would just even venture to say we've just become friends. You eventually did not. You decided to go from like your I.V. infusion, which you were getting literally every two weeks, and that was Sara's. I'm. Am I remembering correctly?

Yeah. Yeah. But we did V prefer to write, like, didn't we? Do we, we did like two different medications. We've, we've switched around, but that is a really interesting infusion just for those of you who are listening and don't know, it requires a lot of vials. I think somewhere around like ten or 11 vials we used to like have out.

Ted Meyer

And we would just sit and talk about our week. Well.

Cara Lunsford

Yeah, while I was sitting there mixing medication, which just became second nature to me because I had just done it every two weeks for years. And I remember the first time I came to your place and you were actually over at the brewery, which is not a place where he didn't live, like at a place where he was drinking beer all the time.

The brewery is actually the it's an art called call it Colony. That's that's the perfect example. Yes, it's an art colony. You go there and you're like, Oh my gosh, what is this place like? Where am I? And I walk in and there's all these like, rooms, you know, doors down this hallway. I was like, What? This, like, used to be some giant warehouse.

What did it did? It used to be it.

Ted Meyer

Was a brewery. It was a it was an actual brewery.

Cara Lunsford

That that's why it's called the brewery. So. Yeah, so they had basically taken this brewery and then they made it into this artist colony, which was such an incredible experience, just like wonderful to be able to come and, and go into your space, which was like an art gallery. I mean, your space was an art gallery. You can see it behind you.

Like even in this this video that we're doing right now is all your art and and everything. You're an incredible artist. I own some of your art, but I think initially, like just right off the bat when you met me, what would you say? What was what was it impactful to you like? What do you think made us connect?

Like, you know, even just early on.

Ted Meyer

I will say that you and I both like life. So we just got along on that level. I had had a couple of nurses who work, so there were a lot of steps to get to my place because it was this old factory. And I remember one nurse coming up and she was a smoker and she could barely get up the steps and she shows up smelling like cigarets and she's wheezing.

And I was like, I did not want her back again. And then you showed up and I'm like, Oh, here's this funny. I don't know if were people seeing you, but beautiful woman who just, like, made jokes and had interesting life and was out doing things and we would talk about concerts. We went to her shows, we went to our crazy friends that we have.

So it really got to just be like seeing a friend every two weeks for me. Yeah, the the medicine was the minor part of it.

Cara Lunsford

And I think that that's the when you can make work, not feel like work, you know, I think that that was just it is that I mean I've, I've been very blessed with having pretty incredible patients over the years. Some, you know, just became lifelong friends because we just had so much in common. And to what you said, like just love life.

Ted Meyer

Yeah.

Cara Lunsford

One of the things that I always tried to do as a nurse and I think it's been pretty effective over the years just in terms of connecting with my patients quickly is really just trying to disarm them. So many times patients have had poor experiences in the past, you know, so the minute you walk in the door, they're kind of like, all right, who's this person?

Whether you're walking in the door at the hospital into their room or you're walking into their house immediately, I found that most patients are a little on guard. They're a little bit like, Who are you? Can I trust you? So I probably use a lot of humor and I try to be very authentic. I think when I first meet somebody because I just want them to see that, look, my wall is down.

You can take your wall down, too. Did you feel like that was your experience with me? Like, did you feel like I was like, Yeah.

Ted Meyer

I think a lot of it too. Like, I've been sick my whole life. So for me it's very normal. But I could see if somebody gets an illness later in life or becomes diabetic or starts showing up with a list or something that is, you know, pretty severe later in life and they've never had to deal with being sick.

It's a whole different thing. And I could see them and maybe you can speak to this, I'll start interviewing you. But, you know, I would think that people that get some of these severe illnesses later in life probably really resent it and they don't know how to deal with it, whereas I grew up learning how to deal with it.

So I would think they might resent you showing up like, Hey, I was on the football team and now I can't walk.

Cara Lunsford

Yeah, yeah. I mean, that happens sometimes. It takes a minute to connect with someone and it is not a one size fits all. I've said before, being a nurse, I always feel like a chameleon a little bit. I walk in and immediately I'm trying to like, acclimate to that environment. I'm I'm sensing I'm using a lot of my intuition.

I'm using a lot of like, how do I feel right now? I'm looking at this person. I am. I'm making a very quick like assessment of them. And and I'm saying, this person looks like they're in pain. They look like they are ready to cry. They look tense. They look, you know, like their shoulders are tense. They look, you know, like they're literally guard or they they look like they could shoot daggers through me right now.

And I know it's not about me. They don't even know me like they haven't even met me yet. And they're and sometimes there's just like, lasers, like coming out of their eyes, like, boring through my body and immediately, like, kind of centering myself and grounding myself and going, How are you today? You know, Are you having a lot of pain?

What can I do for you before we even talk about the medications that you have that we got to do, let's sit down for a second so that I can understand. And what are you feeling right now? And it is just kind of taking stock of that that moment. I think that when we can out of the busyness of our mind, because sometimes like what happens is that nurses walk in and they are thinking about the mountain of paperwork they have to do.

They're thinking about the fact that they're already late and they need to be at the next patient. And now they're going to be working longer in the day than they thought they were going to be working. Or if you're in the hospital that you just have all these things going on in your head about the things that you need to do or you're thinking about this laundry list of of patients that you have.

And it's hard to just kind of be in the moment for that. But I will say that it is so incredibly important to try, if you can, to just be present.

Ted Meyer

Mm hmm. The only other real piece of advice I would give is to remember that you guys, you see things repeatedly. And when I give talks to patient groups or medical groups, I really like to remind whoever's watching, Look, let's say you come in for a hip replacement like I did or, you know, I just interviewed somebody who had had a lung transplant from cystic fibrosis.

That lung transplant was probably the major of them in that person's life. But you guys see it all the time. So you're more likely to know what that person's going to go through over the next five months while they heal up, assuming the lungs aren't rejected. But that's part of it. Or when I had my hip replacement, I know that hip replacement doctor probably does at least one a day every week, maybe two.

So for him, it is totally routine and maybe for you guys in a hospital taking care of someone with a hip replacement, it's easy for you guys to think, okay, you'll be out of here in a day or two days and you'll be walking. And depending on what kind of treatment, you know, in a month you'll be fine.

Whereas the patient is sitting there going, I just had this major. It's like I just said, it's probably the major event of their life. And there's such a disparity of how you guys view it to how the patients view it, and that's also part of your job to calm them down, but it's also part of your job to not become indifferent to it, even though, you know, it's something that's relatively routine nowadays to the person.

It's not a routine day.

Cara Lunsford

Yeah, and I think we're all when I say we, I mean the nurses like I think we're all guilty of that, you know, in so many ways because a we feel for time and so we don't communicate everything that's in our head because sometimes we just forget like, oh, this person know that they're doing great, that they're healing faster than people we've seen in the past.

Or, Hey, you know what I'm really thinking just so know, I the doctor may have said to you, like the year, give me out in two days. I'm just telling you, based on where we are right now, you should probably be thinking four or five days, because taking that information we have in our heads and sharing that information with the patients is something that really helps bring down the anxiety that they're experiencing.

We have to find ways of being able to do that. We also have to make sure that we are practicing good professional boundaries, which means that when we are asked by administrators or or our managers or someone, can you take an extra patient, Could you do this? Can you do that? Learning to say no, because we have to start prioritizing these things that you're talking about and saying, you know what?

No, I can't do that. And you know why I can't do that? Because I need to go into room three and I need to tell my patient in room three what's going on with them, what they should expect over the next couple of days. And I haven't done that yet. And I need to do that because that's part of my job being able to say, no, you know what?

You guys need to hire someone who comes in and does transport you. You know what, you manager, you can transport this patient down to C.T. because I'm not doing that. I can't do that. But you can do that. Go ahead and transport like, you know, So we have to start practicing our professional boundaries so that we can do exactly the things that you're talking about.

Because I guarantee you, if we can do those things, we're going to have a lot more job satisfaction.

Ted Meyer

Yeah.

Cara Lunsford

100%.

Ted Meyer

Yep. And I just want to say, patients are aware how important you guys are. They might ask what the doctor says, but we're we're always aware of how important you guys are. So.

Cara Lunsford

Well, I appreciate that. And I'm just going to say this. If you are a patient in the hospital, you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar. And I know that if you're in pain or, you know, it's hard it's hard to be nice. It is. It's hard to be nice. But I will tell you that more nurses will come in your room more.

They will be there more if when they walk in that door, there's there's some kind of kindness waiting for them on the other side because we're human.

Ted Meyer

When I was a kid, I have to say I learned that if I was really nice to the nurses, I could leave my TV on later at night and I could get an extra cup of pudding from the refrigerator at 9:00 at night when all the other kids had to be asleep.

Cara Lunsford

Well, there you go. See, you know, just just remember that we're all kind of suffering and the patients are suffering and the nurses are suffering right now, especially right now, more more than more than ever before. We've got two sets of suffering people. And it's really hard. We tend to not see outside of ourselves when we're suffering. And so being able to lean in on those ideas of just kindness, you know, being kind to each other, I think the overall nurse patient relationship will blossom and flourish when you can pull from that.

And so I wanted to well, first, I just want to say thank you so much, Ted, for doing this interview with me, and I am looking forward to having future interviews with you about a variety of subjects. But I do want to just let you tell people really quickly what you do, because you have actually you have art and med, so your website where people can find you, learn more about what you're doing.

Ted Meyer

Yeah. So my website is Art and Med A.R.T. and the M.D. dot com. And as I said, I'm a patient advocate, but I do it all through art and I go around the country and I talk to doctors and patient groups about it, telling their story through art. And I have lots of talks with lots of great artwork by different patient artists from all over the place.

I just got back from University of Indiana, and I think we're going to start a program there and help them do it. And I'm the artist in residence at the Keck School Medicine at USC, where I run a gallery where I show work by patient artists that corresponds to the core curriculum of the medical school. So if we're studying respiratory illness, I'll show an artist with emphysema or cystic fibrosis who does work about their illness.

And it's all to show the doctors what the lived experience of the patient is. So when they run into patients in the hospital, they they've not just heard the words of the patients, but they've seen them depict what their life is like. So so if I show artwork by somebody who's had pancreatic cancer, it's going to be about pancreatic cancer.

It's not going to be, you know, a beautiful scene of the ocean or something like that, because I just think pictures, you know, pictures are worth a thousand words and pictures by patients are worth 2000 words, I think. And they really can show people that, well, first, the patients have full lives. But I'm also a strong believer when it comes to creativity.

It's some of this thing we've suffered through makes better artwork. And I love showing that artwork because a lot of galleries are not going to show work about a colon reconstruction. But I have a gallery that can do that and the work is beautiful and profound and should be seen.

Cara Lunsford

I love that. Oh my gosh, what a wonderful way to end such an incredible interview. Ted, thank you so much for being here with me.

Ted Meyer

Thanks for having me. Thanks for taking me with the needle for 12 years.

Cara Lunsford

It looked like.