TRANSCRIPTION 🔗
WEBVTT
00:00:57.829 --> 00:01:00.949
Hi everyone, welcome to another episode of Tattoos and Telehealth.
00:01:01.030 --> 00:01:07.829
I'm Nicole Baldwin, Board Certified Nurse Practitioner, and this is my good friend and colleague, Kelly White, also board certified nurse practitioner.
00:01:07.989 --> 00:01:12.150
And today, in honor of 9-11, can you believe it's been 25 years?
00:01:13.189 --> 00:01:13.909
A long time.
00:01:14.069 --> 00:01:14.950
A long time.
00:01:15.509 --> 00:01:29.590
It doesn't feel like it though, because most of us can remember, especially us, we're dating ourselves, but there's so many of us that can still remember where we were, what we were doing, 100%, what was happening when the very first tower was struck.
00:01:29.909 --> 00:01:30.629
Oh, 100%.
00:01:30.949 --> 00:01:31.349
I can.
00:01:31.509 --> 00:01:32.549
Absolutely, I can.
00:01:32.710 --> 00:01:43.829
And I mean I was in Florida at the time, and I remember people that I was working with had family in New York and the panic.
00:01:45.030 --> 00:01:48.390
It's just um devastating.
00:01:48.549 --> 00:02:01.590
And I remember when year 19 hit of 19 years, I remember some of the first children that were the moms that were pregnant going into the fire academy.
00:02:01.669 --> 00:02:07.829
There was like several of them that they had turned 18, had graduated, had gone through the fire academy.
00:02:07.909 --> 00:02:12.949
And I thought just that was such a special, yeah, a special, special time for them.
00:02:13.109 --> 00:02:15.829
You know, they didn't get to meet their dad.
00:02:15.990 --> 00:02:16.469
Yeah.
00:02:16.789 --> 00:02:20.069
But that they're carrying that on.
00:02:20.150 --> 00:02:23.669
And then now I feel like it's just been a blink, and now we're at 25 years.
00:02:23.829 --> 00:02:24.150
Yes.
00:02:24.870 --> 00:02:33.590
That's kind of where Nicole and I want to spend some time today, mostly because I think there's a lot of things that happened between then and now, not just these big events.
00:02:33.829 --> 00:02:38.150
We've had 9-11, we've had COVID, but we've had a lot of little things happen in between there.
00:02:38.229 --> 00:02:43.349
These are just the big things that we can talk about in healthcare that kind of stand out for us.
00:02:43.430 --> 00:02:55.990
But I really want to bring forward and shine some light on first responders, healthcare workers, those that come out in times of trauma, whether that's Red Cross or the National Guard or people that are on standby at all times.
00:02:56.069 --> 00:03:04.149
You know, there's this stigma around first responders and healthcare workers because we are culturally conditioned to be the strong caregivers.
00:03:04.469 --> 00:03:08.149
And that makes us sometimes less likely to reach out for help.
00:03:08.310 --> 00:03:12.229
If we need help ourselves, we are much less likely to reach out in those times.
00:03:12.469 --> 00:03:16.389
We don't seek mental healthcare as a standard part of our routine.
00:03:16.549 --> 00:03:19.189
It's not a part of our conversations on a daily basis.
00:03:19.269 --> 00:03:19.989
We normalize that.
00:03:20.069 --> 00:03:20.789
We internalize it.
00:03:20.870 --> 00:03:21.429
We normalize it.
00:03:21.509 --> 00:03:22.949
It's similar to physical conditioning.
00:03:23.109 --> 00:03:26.949
When you have people that are in the military, they physically condition themselves to be ready for combat.
00:03:27.109 --> 00:03:31.189
Healthcare workers and frontline workers and first responders, that's part of our conditioning.
00:03:31.269 --> 00:03:33.429
We that's our mental conditioning to be ready.
00:03:33.590 --> 00:03:37.590
You see terrible things, you see horrible things that people should never have to lay their eyes on.
00:03:37.829 --> 00:03:40.629
We pack it away, we store it, and we move on.
00:03:40.789 --> 00:03:47.989
And I think that that's one of the things that sometimes people, especially in healthcare and first responders, we don't think about.
00:03:48.149 --> 00:03:51.590
We're culturally conditioned to move that to the back, right?
00:03:51.669 --> 00:03:52.469
That's part of who we are.
00:03:52.549 --> 00:03:56.149
And I think that there's some cumulative effect there.
00:03:56.229 --> 00:04:04.789
There's some cumulative burnout, especially when you think about that daily exposure, that cumulative effect, that secondary trauma and what that turns into.
00:04:04.949 --> 00:04:09.349
So we have this, we have this full culmination of where it goes.
00:04:09.429 --> 00:04:21.670
And then we have secondary trauma that comes in the form of whether it's sleep disruption, shift work, high-stakes decision making that can compound into this physical and emotional exhaustion.
00:04:21.910 --> 00:04:27.590
I have spoken to nurses, frontline workers, firefighters, or attire EMTs.
00:04:27.829 --> 00:04:44.470
They reach a point, Nicole, where it physically hurts their bodies to get out of bed and go to work, to step a foot back on the bus, to put a foot back on the steps of the fire truck, because it's their body's visceral response to what they've been through.
00:04:44.790 --> 00:04:45.590
Yeah, for sure.
00:04:45.829 --> 00:05:11.189
I think fire and police constantly, specifically on 9-11, the the police and the fire, you're seeing body parts, and you cannot, and nor do you have time to deal with it or even comprehend fully what you're seeing before you move on to the next thing.
00:05:11.509 --> 00:05:14.069
And that's how EMS and the police work.
00:05:14.310 --> 00:05:41.990
They are going from a crash where people were thrown and are deceased, or maybe they're doing CPR and maybe the patients live, maybe they don't, and then they're getting called to a completely different scenario that very well could be equally devastating, and they still haven't had a minute to even think about what just happened.
00:05:42.069 --> 00:05:58.310
So there's no processing time
Load full transcript
because the last thing we want to do when we get home is think about how our of all the things and all of the decisions, life-sustaining, life-changing decisions that we had to make.
00:05:58.469 --> 00:06:15.029
And then, especially on 9-11, being in such a mass casualty and such an acute situation, just going from body to body to body to body to body, and the things that you're seeing, you can never unsee those things.
00:06:15.269 --> 00:06:18.230
You just cannot unsee those things.
00:06:18.310 --> 00:06:37.029
And I think it's devastating to the families of those because I feel like for police, and I can say because there's police in my family, that if they went and got help, that's offered to them.
00:06:37.349 --> 00:06:39.909
They would be seen as weak, and so they won't.
00:06:40.230 --> 00:06:40.550
Yeah.
00:06:41.110 --> 00:06:41.589
Yeah, absolutely.
00:06:41.829 --> 00:06:42.709
And I'm quoting.
00:06:43.430 --> 00:06:50.870
So oh, I can't reach out to so and so who does post-traumatic counseling.
00:06:51.029 --> 00:06:51.990
They offer that.
00:06:52.469 --> 00:06:52.789
Yeah.
00:06:53.269 --> 00:06:54.629
But will they go?
00:06:54.789 --> 00:07:01.029
I hope they do, but I will tell you, in most cases, they do not because it makes them look weak.
00:07:01.349 --> 00:07:01.750
Yep.
00:07:01.990 --> 00:07:08.550
And then you have that occupational stress carrying over into the domestic life, carrying over into their home.
00:07:08.789 --> 00:07:14.149
And that will look often like emotional withdrawal from their family, or they become hypervigilant.
00:07:14.230 --> 00:07:16.069
So you have one of two scenarios.
00:07:16.230 --> 00:07:24.629
They become this recluse, withdrawn, won't participate in family functions, won't discuss, won't, they just become this person that nobody recognizes anymore.
00:07:24.870 --> 00:07:31.670
Or they become this hyper-vigilant person at home where they are just like constantly keyed up and they can't get their body out of that state.
00:07:32.069 --> 00:07:34.230
And that's not any way to live on either direction.
00:07:34.389 --> 00:07:37.990
And so it just becomes this lose-lose situation from them.
00:07:38.149 --> 00:07:42.629
And so we have this situation where no one wins.
00:07:42.709 --> 00:07:51.029
But again, it's because we have, as first responders, as healthcare workers, we have been trained to do this.
00:07:51.189 --> 00:07:54.310
It's part of our conditioning, it's part of our emotional conditioning.
00:07:54.469 --> 00:07:55.829
And that's that cumulative effect.
00:07:55.909 --> 00:08:06.469
And so I think that thinking about today, remembering 9-11, remembering that cumulative effect of very catastrophic, very acute events that culminated and led up to that.
00:08:06.550 --> 00:08:15.990
I also want to take a moment to recognize just the citizens, the everyday people that were impacted by that.
00:08:16.149 --> 00:08:19.909
So many people were shoved into a first responder role.
00:08:20.149 --> 00:08:25.670
People that had never been in healthcare, never been in a first responder situation, never had to do that.
00:08:26.069 --> 00:08:27.509
That instinct kicked in.
00:08:27.670 --> 00:08:34.950
We saw people that had no clue, had no idea, or had never been involved in first responders.
00:08:35.110 --> 00:08:37.830
They just jumped in and started helping because that's what we do, right?
00:08:37.909 --> 00:08:40.070
We rally, we come together, we do those things.
00:08:40.310 --> 00:08:48.230
And then we started seeing the effects of what that looked like for them, especially for them, because they'd never had to deal with that before.
00:08:48.389 --> 00:08:53.430
And so we started seeing that secondary trauma manifest itself in the average person.
00:08:53.590 --> 00:09:01.110
So think about what that looked like for someone who had never been exposed to something like that, who had never had to see something like that.
00:09:01.350 --> 00:09:03.269
And so I think that those are big things to think about.
00:09:03.350 --> 00:09:17.750
And so I really want to hit home with first just in this the season that we're in, this political environment that we're in, and this time of unrest in our society, for everyone to just step back and take a moment to consider not only what today represents.
00:09:17.990 --> 00:09:26.870
If you're listening to this today, it's September 11th, it's 9-11, Patriot Day, if that resonates with you, but just to have some grace for each other, right?
00:09:27.029 --> 00:09:33.429
Just to have a moment to just stop and just love your neighbor, to just realize that we're all going through something.
00:09:33.590 --> 00:09:38.309
We've all gone through some type of tragedy or acute trauma or a cumulative effect of something, right?
00:09:38.389 --> 00:09:39.269
That's happened in our life.
00:09:39.509 --> 00:09:40.069
For an hour.
00:09:40.309 --> 00:09:45.830
For a long time after, not an hour, for a long time after, weeks and maybe a month.
00:09:46.629 --> 00:09:51.189
People were so nice because we were all going through the same trauma.
00:09:51.509 --> 00:09:51.830
Yeah.
00:09:52.069 --> 00:09:52.309
Yeah.
00:09:52.549 --> 00:09:53.590
This world looked very different.
00:09:53.830 --> 00:09:54.950
It looked very, very different.
00:09:55.110 --> 00:09:56.549
It looked very, very different.
00:09:56.629 --> 00:10:01.990
But I will never forget watching them, even on TV, carrying out the Catholic priest.
00:10:03.110 --> 00:10:04.710
Nobody's can can forget that.
00:10:05.110 --> 00:10:05.990
Carrying him out.
00:10:06.789 --> 00:10:06.950
No.
00:10:07.590 --> 00:10:13.669
And I'm glad that they put things like that on TV because that's real life.
00:10:13.990 --> 00:10:23.350
And when they handicote stuff, it gives us a false perception of what's really going on and knowledge is everything, right?
00:10:23.509 --> 00:10:24.549
Knowledge is everything.
00:10:24.870 --> 00:10:25.990
But I think you hit it.
00:10:26.069 --> 00:10:33.750
I think it's super important to acknowledge not just the, of course, the first responders.
00:10:33.830 --> 00:10:34.870
They're top on the list.
00:10:35.189 --> 00:10:41.590
Police, fire, EMT, hospitals, but also those people that are just going through it.
00:10:41.830 --> 00:10:47.429
That are just going through it and having to live through it when maybe they have signed up for that.
00:10:48.230 --> 00:10:49.110
Yeah, exactly.
00:10:49.350 --> 00:10:55.350
I think that we're talking about these things compounding into just this physical and emotional exhaustion.
00:10:55.669 --> 00:11:06.149
I want to lay out for everyone, specifically talking to our healthcare workers, our first responders, our people that are there daily, but to anyone, there's some pretty significant signs of compassion fatigue.
00:11:06.309 --> 00:11:10.950
Nicole and I have had this beat into our heads as first responders, but it is always good to talk about them.
00:11:11.189 --> 00:11:16.789
Compassion fatigue is something that you have to watch for in yourself, in your colleagues, and those around you.
00:11:16.950 --> 00:11:25.429
And it's okay to talk about compassion fatigue with your loved ones and let them know, hey, this is something that I think I'm going through, or maybe the people that are around me are going through.
00:11:25.590 --> 00:11:40.230
But the one thing that I think is really key to notice is if you see someone or maybe you're starting to experience some emotional detachment, maybe even some cynicism, you're not quite as bothered, that's a problem.
00:11:40.389 --> 00:11:43.509
We can in turn put that in a box and set it aside in the moment.
00:11:43.750 --> 00:11:46.309
But if you're numb to it, that's a problem.
00:11:46.549 --> 00:11:49.350
Chronic irritability, insomnia is a huge one.
00:11:49.509 --> 00:11:51.189
That's oftentimes the first thing that shows up.
00:11:51.269 --> 00:11:57.590
People start losing sleep and they're just like, I'm not sleeping well, I can't function, then they get numb and then they get very cynical, and that's a problem.
00:11:57.830 --> 00:12:00.389
Or if you start having some unhealthy coping mechanisms.
00:12:00.470 --> 00:12:01.590
I've given my story before.
00:12:01.669 --> 00:12:04.309
I've told Nicole this when I left in-person care.
00:12:04.549 --> 00:12:08.230
I had gotten to the point where it was at the height of COVID, things were just rough.
00:12:08.389 --> 00:12:14.870
I had spent some time in the ICU, I had gotten sick, I had gotten so tired of stacking body after body after body.
00:12:15.590 --> 00:12:19.669
I was, I was self-medicating and I was drinking and it was a problem.
00:12:19.830 --> 00:12:21.189
That's self-medicating, guys.
00:12:21.269 --> 00:12:24.230
That is an unhealthy coping mechanism, but that's what was happening.
00:12:24.389 --> 00:12:28.629
And it wasn't until I stepped back and I was like, whoa, I can't do this.
00:12:28.789 --> 00:12:29.590
I can't keep doing this.
00:12:29.669 --> 00:12:31.029
And so those are some red flags.
00:12:31.110 --> 00:12:36.470
But I want everyone to understand that there is, there are peer support programs out there.
00:12:36.629 --> 00:12:39.189
There is power in those peer support programs.
00:12:39.350 --> 00:12:44.870
Even if, like Nicole said, oftentimes there's this stigma against reaching out to those.
00:12:45.189 --> 00:12:49.750
Man, sit down and have a meal with a friend and just tell them what's going on.
00:12:49.830 --> 00:12:54.870
You it doesn't necessarily have to be with a pastor or a psychiatrist or a psychologist or anything like that.
00:12:55.029 --> 00:12:59.509
Just tell someone how you're feeling and get the conversation started.
00:12:59.669 --> 00:13:01.189
Then it feels like a safe environment.
00:13:01.350 --> 00:13:06.309
You can go from that to even something so much as a structured, peer-led situation.
00:13:06.549 --> 00:13:07.830
There's all kinds of things out there.
00:13:07.909 --> 00:13:10.870
And then that goes on to cognitive behavioral therapy.
00:13:10.950 --> 00:13:13.509
There's EMDR, there's trauma-informed somatic techniques.
00:13:13.669 --> 00:13:15.110
There's a lot of stuff out there.
00:13:15.269 --> 00:13:24.149
And so I really want people to understand that getting help doesn't have to be going and sitting on someone's couch and pouring your heart out.
00:13:24.230 --> 00:13:25.189
It doesn't have to be that way.
00:13:25.590 --> 00:13:33.590
It can be just from moving from that cynical, numb feeling to just telling someone how you feel, truly.
00:13:33.830 --> 00:13:34.389
That is true.
00:13:34.549 --> 00:13:35.029
That is true.
00:13:35.189 --> 00:13:39.509
And if you don't have anyone, the 988 Lifeline is available.
00:13:39.669 --> 00:13:41.590
You can call, text, you can chat.
00:13:41.750 --> 00:13:43.189
They're Spanish speaking.
00:13:43.350 --> 00:13:50.789
They have, if you go on their website, 988lifeline.org, there's a deaf and hard hearing area that you can go to.
00:13:50.950 --> 00:13:57.110
But the 988, it's a suicide hotline, but it's and crisis lifeline.
00:13:57.350 --> 00:14:11.509
And so whether you're facing mental challenges, struggles, emotional distress, alcohol or drug use or concerns, or just need someone to talk to, they have counselors there that are waiting for you to call so that you're not alone.
00:14:11.590 --> 00:14:19.750
Because a lot of people isolate themselves and they are alone, or maybe they don't want to talk about it with someone that they know because of whatever stigma.
00:14:19.830 --> 00:14:22.309
But the 988 Lifeline, it's free.
00:14:22.629 --> 00:14:25.669
You can talk to a counselor right there.
00:14:26.069 --> 00:14:30.069
And so I hope anyone that's struggling, take advantage of that.
00:14:30.309 --> 00:14:31.350
Take advantage of that.
00:14:31.429 --> 00:14:31.909
They're there.
00:14:31.990 --> 00:14:34.789
And it was created for a reason because absolutely.
00:14:35.669 --> 00:14:36.950
Absolutely.
00:14:37.350 --> 00:14:38.230
All right, guys.
00:14:38.389 --> 00:14:48.470
So as we close up today, I just want to first and foremost thank anyone and everyone that is a first responder, a healthcare worker, a frontline worker.
00:14:48.629 --> 00:14:51.189
Maybe you are a volunteer for the Red Cross.
00:14:51.350 --> 00:14:54.710
Maybe you are someone who just shows up when they need extra waters.
00:14:54.870 --> 00:14:55.750
God bless you.
00:14:55.990 --> 00:15:00.149
If you are just that person that says, you know what, I can't do anything, but I can say a prayer.
00:15:00.389 --> 00:15:01.029
Thank you.
00:15:01.269 --> 00:15:02.950
It doesn't matter who you are.
00:15:03.110 --> 00:15:07.830
If you stop and take five minutes, maybe prayer isn't your thing, but you can stop and just give a moment of silence.
00:15:07.990 --> 00:15:08.710
Thank you.
00:15:09.029 --> 00:15:10.149
You are needed.
00:15:10.309 --> 00:15:12.549
Everyone, we are all there for each other.
00:15:12.710 --> 00:15:19.990
Whether that's just stopping for a moment and just saying, you are valuable, you are worthy, that is enough.
00:15:20.149 --> 00:15:23.029
And I just want everyone to understand and hear that you are enough.
00:15:23.189 --> 00:15:26.309
And days like today remind us that we are not in this alone.
00:15:26.389 --> 00:15:31.110
And when times like 9 11 happen, gosh, we can rally together like no other.
00:15:31.830 --> 00:15:33.189
Yep, that's true.
00:15:33.429 --> 00:15:37.509
So everyone out there, stay safe and God bless the USA.
00:15:38.149 --> 00:15:38.789
Amen.