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Demystifying Nursing Publication with Dr. Julie Waldrop

• Elizabeth Miller Walters, Ashley Kellish • Season 1 • Episode 13

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In this episode of Inside the Hive, we are joined by esteemed nurse practitioner and associate journal editor Dr. Julie Waldrop to demystify the nursing publication process. We explore why many nurses feel intimidated by the prospect of sharing their work and how to overcome the structural and personal barriers that often stand in the way.

Key takeaways from our discussion include:

  • Overcoming Personal Limiting Beliefs: Many nurses carry the belief that they cannot write well, often stemming from negative feedback received as far back as grade school or early college. We discuss how to shed these beliefs and recognize that clinical expertise is the true foundation of a great story.
  • The Power of Mentorship and Support: For novice authors, finding a mentor who can offer support and tips is essential. We introduce the concept of a "pre-peer review," where a trusted colleague provides feedback before formal submission.
  • Starting with Case Studies: We highlight case studies as an accessible entry point for practicing clinicians. These allow nurses to focus on specific patient encounters they are already intimately familiar with.
  • Navigating Structural Barriers: Current publication systems are heavily academic, which can make them feel inaccessible and time-consuming for clinicians who lack dedicated time for scholarship in their regular workflows.
  • Reimagining Peer Review: Peer review should be viewed as a developmental process rather than a punitive one. We call for more clinical experts to serve as reviewers, focusing on the practical validity and evidence-based nature of the work rather than just grammar and structure.
  • Expanding Dissemination Formats: We discuss a future where dissemination includes a wider spectrum of evidence-based formats, such as blogs, YouTube channels, and podcasts, to ensure that nursing voices are more widely heard.
  • Focusing on Impact Over Validation: The ultimate goal of sharing our stories and research should be to impact patient care and help others, moving away from publishing as merely a "check-box" for professional advancement or personal ego.

Join us as we challenge the current paradigm and encourage every nurse to reclaim their voice in the world of professional scholarship

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SPEAKER_02

Welcome to Inside the Hive with Hive Nurse, our amazing podcast here. I'm Ashley Kellish and I am so excited to be here today with two of my closest friends and colleagues in the world of nursing. So I'm here with our co-host, um Elizabeth Walters, and we have a very special guest today. Elizabeth, do you want to introduce our esteemed call?

SPEAKER_00

I never get to introduce an esteemed famous person. If you were looking for celebrity in nursing, you would want to look for Dr. Julie Waldriff. Mainly because she has been my mentor and Ashley's mentor for a long time. But she's fabulous. She is a nurse practitioner. She's got a DNP. She ran several prestigious DP programs. And my most favorite fact about Julie is that she was the legit medical director of the newborn nursery at a healthcare system that Ashley and I both worked at, which at the time was really novel to have an NP in charge of the newborn nursery. So welcome, Julie. We're so excited to have you. And I think we'll segue into kind of like our topic today. Um, one of the reasons we invited Julie is because she's the past um editor of Journal for Nurse Practitioners. And we want to talk a little bit about how to help nurses get published and how do we get that out there and also how do we demystify the public publication process? I think it's like really scary. You hear about reviewers, you hear about getting your article reviewed multiple times, like you know, all the things. So we just kind of wanted to chat about that. But if you wanted to go ahead and introduce yourself, that would be awesome.

SPEAKER_01

Sure. And um, first let me just say that I am truly honored to be a guest on the Hive podcast. You two make me so proud. And I um yeah, I'm just happy to be here. I currently am the associate editor for the Journal of Professional Nursing, and I do still work with the Journal for Nurse Practitioners with the Emerging Scholars Program. So that's a program for novice authors who have done something they would like to share, but have perhaps no experience or limited experience writing for publication for a peer-reviewed journal.

SPEAKER_02

So well, Julie, you come to this with so much lived experience because I think what's so powerful is that not only have you been a part of these journals and done the editing and the reviewing and helped to promote work so it's disseminated, but you also have taught so much. So you've taught people how to write. But how do we how do we get into this conversation in such a way where we can really, like Elizabeth said, start to demystify this process for nurses today? Why do you think so many nurses today say, yeah, I have a story, but no, I I don't know how to publish it, or no one would want to read that? How do we get to sort of change that paradigm for our our people out in the workforce today with so much to share, in my opinion?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, exactly. And I'm I think by talking about it is one way that we're going to demystify it. And also, you all are famous at the hive for sharing stories. And so if I could just share the story of how I decided to, I would how I decided to write something and submit it for publication the very first time. And I was absolutely um a full-time practicing c clinician at the time. Because um back back in the day we used to get nursing magazines in our mailbox. I realized that's not how people uh read about um what's going on in nursing these days. But I would read, you know, cases and I would like quiz myself, you know, and always felt like I was super smart if I figured out what the diagnosis was. And that was one of my favorite things. And so I had in practice a very interesting case that stumped myself in my physician colleague for quite a few weeks. And that was something I thought, you know what, this presentation, what's going on here, this could be really common. And you know, maybe I could write a case study. Which is, I think, one of the the easiest things to write um in the begin in the beginning. It's one of one of the easiest um types of things to write because we're so close to it. And you know, I was a nurse practitioner at the time, but nurses have have patient encounters all the time. And uh often you are solving problems or learning, you know, having to go and look in the evidence to try and figure out what would be the next best step or how they might uh make a suggestion for care. And all of these things, you know, uh can can tell that story. And, you know, that doing it that very first time is scary, but truly, what do you have to lose? I mean, particularly when you're a practicing clinician, your your job is not dependent on whether you publish something or not. So it's almost um, you know, kind of lower stakes. But that being said, I uh I still would recommend that you reach out to somebody who's done it before uh and so that you have um um some support and can get some tips. And I call um I I learned, you know, uh very late in my pu publishing writing journey that having what I call a pre-peer review of my writing is one of the smartest things I ever decided to do.

SPEAKER_02

And so by that you mean sending it out to maybe a group of people that they're not gonna be the ones to put it in the journal, but they can offer you some feedback before you submit it and make sure, hey, does this make sense? Am I missing the mark here? How does this come across?

SPEAKER_01

Yes, but it's usually only one or maybe two because people are busy and a group would take a long time.

SPEAKER_00

It would. It would.

SPEAKER_01

And the paper might go all different ways by the time you're done. Yes, and they might have a lot of different ideas. And so, yeah, exactly. But that's the same thing.

SPEAKER_00

Why do you think this um feels so intimidating to nurses? Why does it, what is the like? I mean, I remember being excited about publishing when I was out, I I, you know, I've had very exceptional careers and very special things have happened to us and all the stars have aligned. But I just remember like the first time that I was publishing something, I was like jammed. I was like, yes, we're gonna do this, we're gonna put this out there, we're gonna change everything in nursing with this one article, which of course we didn't, but you know, like what is it that what is it is it that you don't have that mentorship? Is it that you don't have that person to reach out to? What do you think is is the issue?

SPEAKER_01

I actually think it's personal limiting beliefs. So I believe that most nurses who are um intimidated by the writing process have been told or made to feel that they couldn't write or they didn't write well at some point in their life. Whether that was in third grade or 11th grade or freshman in college or in nursing school, somehow they have received a message that this is something they're not good at. And I think that is the biggest barrier is your personal limiting belief about if you could do it or not.

SPEAKER_02

It's so interesting. You say that my 11-year-old just came home the other day so excited because in her English class, she was told by her teacher that her hook that she wrote about women's history and um how women got into the workforce and all of this. That's what they're studying or looking at right now, was the best in the class. And she looked at me and she said, Mommy, I am so excited because now I feel like you. I feel like I'm a writer. I feel like that's gonna stick with her. And I think you're so right when you put that simple perspective on it. You're so right, Julie. If you haven't been told that, why would you ever even try?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. And you know, uh I was uh I was thought, you know, I always thought I could write in high school, you know. I went to I had honors English and and all that. And and then I got to college in my freshman English course, I got a a C on my very first paper. And that that made a huge difference in what I thought I could actually do, choose as a career in my life. I thought, okay, well there there goes everything that has to do with writing. So I'm left with, you know, being a PE teacher, which is what I did the first time around. I didn't, you know, I I didn't do nursing um until until later. So you know, that that was huge. One C. And it changed everything. My like my view of what options I had in life.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it just blocked you, right?

SPEAKER_01

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Yeah. Um so you talked a lot about this this barrier, right? This like big barrier of like, you know, I don't have the confidence in it. So what what do we do as mentors? What do how do we sort of find the the people that need that support? What is the best way for us to do that?

SPEAKER_01

Well, certainly I think a great way to do that is to listen to our fellow nurses. When we hear or observe or become aware of, you know, maybe we even just go are going to a conference and we see somebody that has like a really great poster, or they say, you know, we in a conversation is that we encourage each other. We encourage each other and not only encourage, we offer help. You know, if we really believe that somebody has a message that or a voice that needs to be heard, then you know, we should put our, I don't want to say our money where our mouth is, but our time, maybe where our where our mouth is, and and offer that uh extra bit of assistance. You know, you're not gonna write it for them. I'm not saying I'm not saying that, but but if they are willing to then to be there to support them and you know, keep them, you know, moving in the right direction to get it done.

SPEAKER_00

And definitely I know for like, at least for Ashley and myself, like we do that, you know, like we're like somebody tells us a fabulous story or like how they solved a case, or like even like the nurse nurse practitioners that I work with who are like, oh, I had this interesting case and this is what we did. And it's like, let's write that up. Let's write it up, let's do it together, you know. Like, I'll I'll send you a template of, you know, like what journal we should we should try. And, you know, I think that having that encouragement is so important. Um, and and then saying, like, okay, I helped you, now you pay it forward, right? Like the next one, the next one, the next case study, you you pull somebody under your wing to publish that for sure.

SPEAKER_02

You're making me think of um, you know, we do a lot of work in mentorship around the clinical experience and the preceptorship and growing your clinical skills, but you're making me think of what if we could develop like publishing partners, right? Like in when you come into an organization or you're working with a group of people that you get that partner because it's true, it only takes I've found that in my work today, at the end of any meeting or any um any practice that I'm trying to implement or change, I always say, okay, and we can publish this. And just by saying that, people's eyes light up. They're like, really? Absolutely. And then it goes to what you say, Julie, about helping them along the way or getting whatever resources, you know, there's so many people out there that will offer the actual writing support or the editing or the grammar piece, but they don't have the story. But if we had that, if that was an expectation that you have, you know, you tap that person next to you, like, hey, we just did this really cool thing with this patient care situation, we're gonna publish it. And it would really start to change that, the culture of it, because I do think that self-limiting belief system that you're talking about is pervasive. I mean, it's like when we talk about the nurses that say, Oh, I only have a BSN, we just talked about that earlier. You know, it's it's also self-limiting. Like we've we've sort of degraded ourselves when if you look at some of our other interprofessional colleagues, they publish it, they sneeze that they go and write about it. So I'm so true. We gotta we gotta step up a little bit, you know, or they just they just make it look so easy because they have they've not been told the things that we've been told, I think historically in our profession.

SPEAKER_00

Absolutely. What um let's talk a little bit about structural barriers, right? So, you know, it's it's like it's confusing. I mean, the first time I published something in a journal, it was like, you gotta go here, you gotta put it in this format, you gotta have it all our way, right? Like, and it doesn't feel natural to the way that you would like tell a story or tell about a project. What are some of the like tools and tips and tricks that you recommend to nurses who are like, I really want to publish this case study, I really want to publish this QI project. What are some of those like things that are helpful, those tangible things?

SPEAKER_01

So again, I would say, you know, get help from someone who's done it before, they can kind of guide you step by step through it. I think that's one of the more most helpful things. Um however, I would also say that nursing publications, uh, you know, what we would consider peer-reviewed publications are very most of them are very academic. Um, you know, this is something that grew out of academia and nursing as a fairly young discipline in academia compared to some. Um basically just try to be like everyone else, right? And and science and research are king. And those were the very first types of publications that came out of nursing were to publish nursing research, nursing science, because that's what uh we deemed would give us as a professional legitimacy and credibility, right? So I think that there are that we have come a little a little ways. You know, we have very we have more clinically focused journals now, and those are are definitely a better option in in many cases for practicing nurses at at all levels because what we are is clinical experts and experts in care. And so those can be better. Still, though, most publications will require you to put your work in um a professional writing style, and they will require you to support what you say with evidence. So you can you you still want to be able, you still want to tell your story, but the structure that you will be I won't I don't want to say forced, but strongly encouraged to to put your writing into is that structure of uh professional writing style and uh supported by evidence. And there's nothing wrong with that. Uh, but it it is um so that is something you would need to kind of expect if you were were publishing. Other than some journals do accept opinion pieces or um and editorial opinion type style pieces, and those can be more opinionated, but also often too they need a little bit of evidence to support them, otherwise you you know it's not as credible as you said. Yeah. Actually. And and you're the you know, you're the evidence nerd there, Elizabeth, as you always say on the podcast.

SPEAKER_00

So yes, uh the nerdy, nerdy nurse. We're well, we're all three of us are very nerdy nurses. We have no control over that.

SPEAKER_02

But I I think you're calling attention to a really, a really big point in that a lot of times you'll hear nurses that are practicing say, Oh, I did all that in school. I'm never, I'm never doing that again. And that is where academia really did drive and grow this dissemination pathway. Um, also because a lot of times in your day as either at the bedside in your shift or as a leader managing um any of those different roles, trying to fit the time in. We always joke that um, you know, I've I feel like I'm allowed to say this because I've worked in both academia and practice, and at the same time, I've literally been a foot in each. And academia is slow. It's different. The pace is different. The time that you spend is pouring over evidence, is writing, refining, doing that. We just don't have that same time. So the journals are built on a foundation that clinical practitioners don't even have the time to put into unless they're doing it on nights or weekends. Um I have, I have literally put the word scholarship on my calendar as in my busy role to remind myself to do it. Do you think I ever actually sit down and write something during that time that I put on my calendar? No, something else comes up, it's the first thing to go. So I think structurally, we've built it and designed it in such a way where it's hard for the practicing person to even go down that path and find the evidence to support the story because literally they don't, their jobs are not set up for that. Um it's an interesting, it's an interesting dynamic that we've created.

SPEAKER_01

And I and I do think that's it's valid that you call academia and nursing programs and faculty that teach and nursing programs out on that because we have not included um traditionally anyway, we have not included uh scholarship as a as a pillar of our profession, right? At all levels. Right. And and that is um that's something that we uh that if we did and you were putting that scholarship time on your calendar, it would not be the first thing to go because you would be conditioned. This is a part of me being a professional nurse, is taking time to write or taking time to disseminate good stuff, good things that are happening in nursing that are making a difference for patients, nurses ourselves, health systems happening every day. And it's not part of our scope and standards.

SPEAKER_02

It is, it's actually part of our um our scope and standards and our ethical decision making that we are up to date with the latest evidence and that we're constantly seeking it as we're practicing. But you're so right. You're right, Julie.

SPEAKER_00

And it's an entire competency for for us, it's an entire competency pillar, right? Scholarship is something that is grounded in nursing education and therefore then grounded in continuing to grow as a nurse, right? You can't just say like, oh, I checked that box. I I was a master's student and I published a lit review and I or you know, a scoping review, and then I'm done and I'm like competent, and so I don't ever have to do this again, right? It's always about growing and moving forward. We have this conversation a lot in um academia about sort of like what counts, what counts as dissemination and like what counts for us? And it's like, you know, how many articles do we have to publish? And it's like not how many things do you need to publish, but like what is the quality of what you're publishing? What is coming out? Like, are you publishing, are you working on a randomized control trial and then I'm publishing seven case studies? Right. Like it's not equivalent. So I think that's one of the things that we we do disservice to ourselves too, is like we put it in as this checky box and like let's check it off and let's get it done because it's required for tenure, for promotion, for you know, the next step in my clinical ladder, you know, magnet, PTAP, like all the things, you know?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, this is just the triangle, right, of evidence. What we're our work, like I always have to say this to students when you're trying to implement a quality improvement project and you're looking for evidence to support it, there's a there's a hierarchy that we want you to pull from with your systematic reviews and your randomized controlled trials. And oh, by the way, when you get to other work that you're gonna publish, it really doesn't count that much. So we even the lowest level. Like when you get to that quality improvement, you know, it's not transferable. Like the our length. Language around it even dismisses it actually. And and what and then I think that's part of the gatekeeping that we've talked about that we've created our own structural barriers to it to put between us and them and those that can and those that cannot. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00

I mean that just leads to the question like, is it too academic and not accessible enough? Right. I think that's like a theme that we've been saying.

SPEAKER_01

That's a really good question. Yeah, I think in in many cases, uh that's probably it uh true that that it is too academic. And it would be wonderful if there were some other options.

SPEAKER_00

So like if if the three of us were gonna like, you know, reinvent the wheel, like just start over, right? Throw all of the academic stuff out the window and design our dream way of disseminating, what would that look like? What would that include?

SPEAKER_01

Wow, that's a good that's a cool thing to think about. Um I mean, I feel like it could it could include I I don't want to say everything, but uh uh a wide spectrum of things. And I do um, you know, things, you know, at at and I don't even want to say at one end, but if you kind of think of it as maybe a mind map where where you know writing is in the middle and here are all the things you can do with it, you know, certainly you can do the traditional method, but maybe you could also, you know, to you know, do a blog. Like I know you've you you've talked before.

SPEAKER_00

We love blogs.

SPEAKER_01

Uh yeah, uh um, you know, a blog or you know, a YouTube channel, or there's so many different things that you can do. Um uh, you know, not that social media is is the everything for dissemination, but also I would love to see, um, I would love to see more publish publication venues for people that are a little more towards like I don't know, um a middle road between social media style publication with absolutely no peer review or filters and the kind of super like rigor, not when you say rigorous, but the super structured way that we have um traditionally done it in academia. So something that's kind of a middle road where um it you know, you don't want to disseminate a bunch of stuff that's not evidence-based. You you guys aren't aren't for that, but you also want to make it so that nurses' voices are are more out there, are more out there for the people to possibly hear. And we've seen the studies before uh about nurses' voices in the media, right? Nurses' voices in the media ha haven't really changed in 20 or 30 years. Are still hearing um, you know, other healthcare professionals' voices much more frequently and much more often than ours.

SPEAKER_00

And when we hear about a nurse, it's like, she's she was so caring and so loving and so kind. And it's like, no, there's like some real deal nurse scientists out there. We're like generating new information. We're we're translational researchers, we're instituting this, these into actual practice. Like when CMS comes out with a new rule that says, oh, now you have to like have four nurses walk a patient to the bathroom. Whose job is it to figure out who's gonna get those four patient, those four nurses to walk them to the bathroom?

SPEAKER_02

Well, I think absolutely Julie, you hit it on the head too with your first thing that you'd like to do everything. And I think that's that's it. Let's let's remove the red tape, right? Let's make it so that there's multiple options. Um, I've been working on a paper for almost um three years with actually, I won't use her name, but a very pretty esteemed colleague in the world of nursing and publication around competency development. And three times now we've had the peer review system kick it back to us and say, you know, you haven't used this model fully in a place. And so we can't publish it yet. But it's we've said from the beginning, this is just a new way of thinking. Let's let's start the conversation. And we want to get it out there so people can read it and try it and use it. Like, why do we have to say that we've run it through an end of 355 people and they all have reported increased, you know, competency, this and that. There's no place for just this idea to be shared formally and across different audiences, or maybe we haven't found the right place yet, or maybe we have to develop that place so we can have more conversations because we the moment that it's oh, you have to have these certain things in place every time, I feel like we're missing so much of the voice and the story and what people are working on. And then that's when people get discouraged and don't go back and they don't, you know, they don't publish, they don't disseminate the stories in the work that they're doing.

SPEAKER_00

And I love that you brought up peer review because that is like the bane of my existence. So Julie, I've I've reviewed for Julie for a long time. And one of the things that's frustrating about peer review is it feels so critical. It feels so punitive. It feels so like you get comments back and you automatically read them with a critical eye instead of a developmental eye, right? Like, oh, I see that this person is trying to mentor me through these comments on how to make this stronger, how to make this better. You know, I mean, like anytime I'm always like, I have a contract with my students about feedback. Feedback is always a good thing. It means the person cares about you and the thing that you're doing. The worst thing you can do is submit a paper and then they say nothing, right? Like, you're amazing. Yeah, we're gonna publish that. Like, no, like there, it's like, did you even read this? Like, there's gotta be something. There's gotta be something that sparked your passion or interest or whatever. So, how do we like kind of zhuzh that up a little bit?

SPEAKER_01

Well, if I could go back one second to something that that um that Ashley said, I'm really grateful that the American Journal of Nursing did not require all of that type of um work for the mountain model because the mountain model had never been tested when we published the mountain model. Now, of course, people are using it and practice and it's working and you know, they're publishing about it and that kind of thing. And so I call that the, you know, how do we know until people actually use it? Yeah, you know, and yeah, maybe, you know, we had we had criticisms that we didn't, you know, from neuroscientists, let's say, that we didn't like test it and do all this stuff with it before. I'm like, hey, it's a great idea. We're gonna put it, see if we can get it out there. So I'm grateful for that. The other piece that I wanted to address is um right, you know, when you do get that type of feedback. That's where I think you hone, like like Elizabeth said with the peer review, you hone what I c what I call your writing resilience. And and we all need that. I mean, I have over like 250 publications, but you know, just a couple of three weeks ago, I got a desk reject. You know, I got I got an editor say, you know, meh, it's not not not for a journal, you know, our readers already know all this, which I disagree with, but hey, you know, it's um, you know, it it is this the same thing. Um peer review uh system is uh wonderful. It is what keeps the work that we do um, you know, it's what brings the integrity to the work that we do, right? And peer reviewers are also a mixed bag. Uh and uh it is the journal editor's responsibility to manage the the peer review and the peer reviewers. So when people have, you know, when they receive, I call it an unprofessional peer review, then I do hope that they will let the editor know. The editor um should be looking at the peer reviews and what they said and how they said it to you. But they're human, and so every once in a while they may not, you know, they may look at something quickly and not quite get how it felt in your heart when you heard when you read it. And um, you know, they want to know because they don't want that for you.

SPEAKER_02

Well, and I think looking at the bucket of peer reviewers, they are a mixed bag. And again, back to who has the time to do that, it's not going to be your bedside nurse, your person that's practicing clinically very often, um, unless they choose to do that outside of it. Technically, they are the peer that we're what that we need. So I think that's another, Elizabeth, when you asked about what we could do differently, I think bringing peer review into our clinicians' workflow, into how we onboard and teach people and even help. I mean, it would be nice to even have a journal that you could reach out to and say, hey, we've got five nurses that are on our shared governance group. They're very active, they want a peer review. How do we get them into that? Right. Like I think that's another, I think that's another thing that feels very inaccessible and unattainable for the practicing clinician. Like, no, I'm not, I'm not a peer reviewer. I can't, I can't do that. I don't have a doctorate degree or this or that. And I think we we turn people off again with that process.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and that's like unfortunate because what we as journal editors really need are clinical experts, people that are doing this stuff to read it. We don't need them to grammar check it. We don't need them to edit it into their own style. We just need to know does this make sense when you read it? Does it make sense to you? Does it seem like a good idea? Do you think they measured the right things? You know, very, very basic things that uh nurses with some experience can tell you. And I think that reviewers don't think that's enough. Like I think they think, but I also need to be able to write well and I need to be able to critique people's, you know, sentence structure and all these things. All of those things. And no, that's pretty much a waste of your time.

SPEAKER_02

Okay, so I'm hearing, I think, from this conversation, a few really cool, um, useful, because we always like to be strategizing at the hive and provide some things people can go out and implement. So, number one, stop that self-limiting belief of what your third grade teacher told you. Get rid of it. Number one, that C that you got in college, put it out to the pasture and and know that writing is not necessarily, or disseminating, I should say, is not about necessarily your skill set in writing. It's about finding the right story to tell with the right evidence behind it. And then I think this idea of mentorship, and I think that's what we're trying to do here, um, but really maybe building those mentors within the system so it doesn't feel like there's a big wall or barrier between you and academia, you and sharing your work. Um, and finding those cheerleaders that you can partner with to do this across wherever it is that you are working small, big, large, individual, whatever it is.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I mean, I totally agree. Like imagine a journal that you like approach them and you say, I have an idea. This is the the story that I want to tell. And then they had mentorship baked into your publication. And then it's like, then you have this set of peer reviewers from whatever unit, right? Like if you're doing a cardiology thing, like you're gonna find three cardiology nurses. Like, does this story make sense? Does what did what she do actually align with the evidence? So maybe like providing reviewers like a specific checklist of like the thing or the a specific template of the things we're asking you to do, not just like give me your feedback, right? Because when somebody says give me your feedback, I I default to you can't write a paragraph, you're you use set 17 semicolons, like quit that, you know, those kind of things. Instead of like, what's the story that you told? I was missing it in the methods. Like the methods were a little bit confusing. I'm not quite sure what you actually did because you talked a lot about all these things that sort of like weren't things that you did, but things that you kind of want to do, or that you're planning in a future iteration of the pilot program, like those kind of things. And so it's like, and maybe that is maybe that is like real reaction, right? Maybe it's like like I know it's all supposed to be blinded, but maybe it isn't. Maybe it's like we have a Zoom call and I'm like, I love your idea, I love your story. This is where I got lost. Like, can you refine that? You know, I mean, that's what we do with students. Yeah. Why should we not do it with with uh authors?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, it's true.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I would I would say that all of those are also really good ideas to put into place before you submit something. Because the people, you know, the peer reviewers, the the journal editor often is is, you know, paid very little and you know, additional um expectations for assistance within that framework that we currently work in, uh would is is difficult to to add. But but but if you can develop a kind of a group, and that's what I was gonna say. I mean, writing is always funner with you know with other people.

SPEAKER_00

Always is.

SPEAKER_01

And yeah, so we haven't really said that clearly enough. I don't think maybe this podcast is and all of those things would work really great within a group who is trying to write together about things that they're doing.

SPEAKER_00

Awesome. All right, well, it's take-home messages are find a writing mentor, reach out to the hive. That's we're trying to build that, right? That's what we're doing in the hive is we want to support nurses doing all the things. Um let's let's rethink the way that we're we're publishing. Like maybe, maybe the future is something like a hive journal, right? And where we have some of that mentorship baked into our submission process and and live peer review. Like maybe it's a pilot of something like that, you know, just kind of see how it works and how it builds nurses. Like, we don't that nobody needs to read anything else from me or Ashley or from Julie. Like, we we we've we put our stuff out there, but we need to be the ones that are driving those, you know, like Alexa, we had on our podcast um a few months ago, who's a new graduate nurse who has this fabulous story about being a D, yeah, about being a Division I, right?

SPEAKER_02

I'm writing a book. I'm helping her write a book. And the guess the first thing she said to me, I'm a terrible writer. In high school, I was told, I mean, Julie, you're just that's so true what you started this with. I was told I was a terrible writer. So forgive me. And I told her, I said, I don't care what you write on the paper. I just want you to write your story and we're gonna go from there. We're gonna, we're gonna refine it, we're gonna make it a story people want to hear. But you're right, she's she's doing it.

SPEAKER_00

And we didn't even talk about this. We'll have to talk about it at the next uh podcast. We'll have to make this like a little series, but like not just about writing, right? Disseminating in all different kinds of ways. Like, is it a peer-reviewed YouTube channel where we talk about this, right? Like, is it is it things like that where you can trust the information you're getting that it is, you know, been reviewed, that it has evidence behind it, you know, all the things, but it's not necessarily that academic, formal, like sentence paragraph, you know, all those things. Maybe it is more just like a fluidity. Like, I think Ashley, like your competency stuff, like what a great way. Like, let's make some episodes about the competency stuff, right? And then how can people actually implement it? You know, a toolkit, like all those kind of things. Like, how do we make this accessible, not just for uh, you know, for people like us, but also for everyone that's out there that is doing this work.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, because the whole point of it, I think what's happened too, if I could call this out, is that publication, publishing has become a way to make yourself validated. It's not about the story that you're trying to tell necessarily. And I think we have to change that, that mental model that however you get it out there, and of course, again, it has to have evidence, it has to be well done, it has to be enjoyable, whatever it is, whatever medium you use, you don't want it to stink, right? You want it to be good and you put all these things in place to make it good. But it really should be about how can I impact others with this? And I think we've the ego side of this work has a strong hold on you do this publication and then your name gets put out there. And I mean, I've done it. I put I published something and I post it on LinkedIn and I'm like so proud of myself. How many likes do I get? How many likes do I get? Like it's stupid. But it's like there is the ego side, but how do we, how do we flatten the ego a little bit, still be proud of what we can offer, but really say, how do I get this piece out there? How does the way that we're changing central lines or this competency idea that we have, which is just a new way to think about competency, how do we put it out there for the right impact, not just to validate our own credentials and our own role and our own, even our own organization. I I spend a lot of time with people that are like, oh, we want to be, we want to be famous, we want to be this. No, you want to, you want to be able to be a place where people want to learn from because you do it so well. That's I think the difference between where we are right now and where we could be if we designed this differently.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. And definitely we're not just checking checky boxes, like, oh, for my tenure, I need to have two publications. So let me just like write them tomorrow on AI and publish them in. Oh, we didn't even talk about AI. That's a whole another conversation. We need to have a whole another podcast on AI. Yeah, yeah. Well, this was really, really great. I loved have loved this conversation. We we have decided that this is going to be a series and we're gonna talk about it more. Um, so wait for some more episodes in the series. Uh, please follow us on all of our things at Hive Nurse on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook. You can receive continuing education credit for listening and reflecting about this podcast. Um, we would love to hear your ideas and your reflections on if we blow it up, right? If we start, if we reinvent it from the ground up, what do you practicing nurses really want to know? What do you really what would make you jump over that hump of I I'm not a good writer? I or I finished writing when I was in school, like all of those things. So um, check us out on hive nurse.com, follow us on all the things and listen out for more in this series.

SPEAKER_02

And Julie, thank you so much for being with us today. Thank you. So great to have this conversation with you. My pleasure. I loved it.

SPEAKER_00

Bye, everyone.

Contributor

Ashley Kellish

Host
Contributor

Elizabeth Miller Walters

Host