Gutsy Nurses: Healing, Authenticity & Change in Healthcare with Kathy Allan on The Healers Café with Manon Bolliger/h1>

that’s something that is going to be benefiting both the patient and the nurse. So that’s, that’s a little bit about the program.

Manon Bolliger  06:39

Okay, interesting. So when you say, you know, you recognize that you were that you had experienced trauma and it was triggered, yeah, what is it that? How do nurses recognize this? What’s well,

Kathy Allan  06:56

 not, not everybody has that same experience that I had, you know, I had, this was childhood trauma that was coming up. And for me, I had full blown PTSD symptoms, flashbacks, you know, all the usual symptoms. Now, not all nurses have that. I had it, and it turned out to be a gift in the end, because of course, I didn’t know, yeah, I didn’t know about it, and, you know, was unconscious to it, and then when the consciousness came up, I was able to heal it, and then able to create something positive out of the whole experience.

Manon Bolliger  07:34

Yeah, yeah. I mean, that’s, I mean, that is really the way forward with knowledge and consciousness, right? Is that, you know, if we believe that we are in a world where kind of, what we experience is happening for us, not to us

Kathy Allan  07:53

exactly,

Manon Bolliger  07:54

we’re living in that universe where we understand that there’s something there to be received. Sorry,

Kathy Allan  08:01

and I’m just going to say it gave me, it expanded my ability to support my patients, because having come through that and knowing how to heal that, I was able to hold space for people who’ve been through terrible experiences. Now as far as nursing goes, not all nurses have had that experience, but there is, in the healthcare as we know it today, there’s a tremendous amount of betrayal that nurses are dealing with.

Manon Bolliger  08:31

So yeah, well, actually, I was going to ask you, if you don’t mind a little bit expanding on what was the difference, you know, when you said, and I don’t know if money alone is thepart of the culprit for the change. I mean, we’ve just gone through this, you know, so called pandemic where, you know, we can see the trail of money and what it did and the pressures and, you know,

Kathy Allan  09:01

yeah,

Manon Bolliger  09:02

it changed everything, you know, from patient care to management for profit and whatever. So we can see that. But what was different when you started your practice?

Kathy Allan  09:17

Oh, well, when I back in the Yeah, back in the 60s,at that time, care was an action word, and at that time, we were devoted to giving really good care. I went to a Catholic nursing school where the nuns would come around in the morning and then in the evening to make sure that the staff was okay, and to make sure that the patients were okay, they we didn’t have all of thetools that people have today, and so our care was really coming from a very compassionate connection to our Patients in today’s world, they don’t have the ability time to have that. Our patients were in the hospital for usually. The usual amount was four or five days, so that and we worked eight hour shifts, five days a week, and so we had time to get to know our patients, to have a relationship with them, and for our patients to feel safe with their caregivers. I don’t think we have that today. I think for profit has taken over, and not only that, well, I can save that for later, but it’s taken over in a way that diminishes patient care that that they’re really they move them through as fast as they can to get reimbursement for insurance companies for procedures and lab tests, and then as soon as that income stops coming in, then they get rid of the patient. They send them either home or to a long term care facility that doesn’t cost as much, yeah,

Manon Bolliger  11:04

yeah, yeah. Well, I know from nurses I’ve, you know, had opportunity to work with or or to train in what I do that, Bowen College, they said it’s like they’re, you know, their administration now, basically they’re spending all their time taking notes, making sure everything is, you know, documented, except for the really important things, obviously, which are not to be discussed, but

Kathy Allan  11:32

Right!

Manon Bolliger  11:32

But basically there’s almost no time. And there they, they say that they they feel wiped out. They feel that it’s dehumanized

Kathy Allan  11:45

Absolutely Well, I’ll tell you, and I’ve, since I’ve started writing my book, I’ve been doing a lot of research, and I found out thatthere’s a new element involved, and that is private equity firms. Now, private equity firms are places where people can do investments for various projects. They they have bought up many hospitals, nursing homes and emergency services. Now, the whole goal for private equity firms is to make money. They need to make money. Their focus is on their investors, and making money for their investors. The quickest way to make money when you buy a hospital or a nursing home is to cut staff, because then you have that money available for your investors, and so that’s what they’ve done, is they’ve cut the staff, and there’s been some research done on that, and without the staff to care for the patients, the staff are reallysupporting The private equity firms not they want to, but because they have to. Yeah,

Manon Bolliger  13:05

yeah. I am no, it seems, and many decisions are made to benefit exactly those equity firms or the the hospital per se, right and right,

Kathy Allan  13:18

right now, what has changed since I became a nurse is that in those days, patients would go to their doctor, and their doctor would decide if they needed to go to the hospital, and then the doctor would take care of them while they were in the hospital. So the doctor knew them, knew who they were, knew their history, and, many times, knew their families. In today’s world, the doctors are not allowed to go to the hospital. They have what they call hospitalists, which are doctors that will take care of you while you’re in the hospital. And what the industry has also done is, in order to save money, instead of using a doctor, they’ll use a physician’s assistant to take care of you and give the orders, or they’ll use a nurse practitioner. So and these people don’t know you from Adam, so they need to do a lot of tests, which means a lot of reimbursement for the hospital. That’s a money maker, right? I have to tell you that there was a doctor who they told, I can’t remember the exact who this was, but he was told to take on more patients than he felt like he could handle. And he told the administration, I already have too many patients I can’t take on anymore. And the guy said to him, Well, you know, if you take on more patients, then you’ll have more skin in the game, as if to say you’ll be making more money. If this person had no idea that saving lives is all the skin in the game that we need as doctors and nurses.

Manon Bolliger  14:58

Yeah.

Kathy Allan  15:00

So anyway, that’s where healthcare has gone, and that’s where why I’m writing my book to help nurses and to also show patients what’s really going on, yeah, and how we can change that.

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Manon Bolliger  16:16

 so let’s talk about that. How can we change this?

Kathy Allan  16:27

Yeah, well, my feeling right now is that there are too many people making too much money off of the Profit System, and that these private equity firms are making huge contributions to politicians and to people who make the rules, and so that’s not going to change. So I don’t think we can necessarily change the system so much as we can dry up the market. And what that means and is to eat healthy. Don’t eat foods that have been grown in poison. You know, eat organic foods as much as possible, exercise, do all the things you need to do now there are a lot of nurses, and the big rage today with nurses is being a nurse coach, because nurses have the background to know what illnesses are caused by they can work with individual people and help to keep them healthy so they don’t end up in the hospital, which is really just, you know, being in the hospital is more like a moneymaker for the industry, not not for care.

Manon Bolliger  17:34

Yeah. It’s not prevention, for sure,

Kathy Allan  17:36

right! Exactly. So if we can prevent people from going into hospitals. We can dry up, dry up the market. Yeah,

Manon Bolliger  17:46

I mean, it’s, it really is. Health is part of a bigger issue, obviously, because, you know, how do you stop the the spraying of fields? How do you stop companies like Monsanto, how do you stop the, you know, the geoengineering of the weather, right? All this eating and like, you know, we’re getting bombarded. Because, you know, I don’t, I think since Rockefeller and the Flexner Report, you know, I think we have, it’s been a sick care system, not a health care system.

Kathy Allan  18:22

It’s designed to keep you sick because there’s a market, and then they don’t want the market to go away. So if you get well, then you’re going to go away. But if you stay sick, then they can continue to make money off of you. And it used to be that people were called patients, and then from patients, they went to customers, and then they are consumers, and I think today they’re the cash cow.

Kathy Allan  18:51

That’s where it’s gone.

Manon Bolliger  18:54

So, yeah, so as it’s really creating, like an alternative model, which is really focused on health,

Kathy Allan  19:02

yes,

Manon Bolliger  19:02

and avoiding needing to be in in a hospital setting, which, I guess, you know, if you break a leg, you’re kind of

Kathy Allan  19:13

Yeah, and if you you’re stuck. But if you have something that’s an acute situation, you can get very good care. Yet, you know, if have a heart attack, you have a broken leg, whatever you get a stroke, get to the hospital right away and they’ll give you medication to reduce any symptoms of a stroke. So there are some things that are very, very helpful when you go to the hospital, but if you have a chronic condition, that’s not so that’s not so true.

Manon Bolliger  19:44

No, no, exactly. And you know, many of the chronic conditions, like you were saying, are preventable, yes. So even if we go back, even a stroke is preventable, a heart attack, you know, I.On this, yeah? So, I mean, it’s interesting because you’ve been around and practicing shortly after I was born, it’s many years.

Kathy Allan  20:11

Yeah, you’re just a kid.

Manon Bolliger  20:17

So it’s funny to hear that perspective and to see really how much has changed, you know, and a lot of people don’t, really realize that. I think a lot of our history is not known.

Kathy Allan  20:31

That’s right, and that’s why I wanted to include the first part of the book talking about what care was like, because so many of the nurses and hospital workers today are so young that all they know is this extremely dysfunctional health care system. They don’t know what it was like before, and also, hopefully to give them some ideas about what it can be like again, you know you talked about the the pesticides that they’re using for spraying on the crops. My my granddaughters live in Iowa, and I was talking to one the other day, and she said that you can smell the chemicals that they’re putting on the field. Of course, the wind takes it just on that field, but all around the country, all around the area, I should say, yeah,

Manon Bolliger  21:21

yeah. I think things, in some ways, are becoming more to, like, more critical. You know, I think thethis whole covid fiasco,

Kathy Allan  21:34

yeah,

Manon Bolliger  21:34

management now it looks like clearly premeditated. I mean, you know, we can go deep into that, but I think it’s, it’s sort of shown that a lot of the people, even, even the doctors and the nurses, have very little hope to be able to get out of the system. Or they feel as if, you know, I’m not saying they don’t have hope and there’s no way out. But you know, the people who did speak out and who refused to use the respirators, because that wasn’t the option,

Kathy Allan  22:11

right

Manon Bolliger  22:12

They all got punished. They all got fire. They all got you know, they lost their income. They had to make major decisions, right? Yeah, yeah, you know, we’re really it’s, it’s a big change that we need to all stand for. It’s huge,

Kathy Allan  22:29

and that’s why I created a couple of my classes. One is to teach people how they can go from a regular nurse to being gutsy. And then also, yeah, how to be how to do that. And then there’s another class called looking in speaking out, which is to be authentic. Now you’re right. Many times when healthcare providers speak out, they have consequences. They’re told they’re going to be fired, and many times they are fired. But what it does to your soul when you don’t speak out is more dangerous and more destructive than being fired from a job that you know is unethical. So I help people to be able to be in tune with their authentic self.

Manon Bolliger  23:18

Yeah,

Kathy Allan  23:19

and yeah,

Manon Bolliger  23:20

yeah, yeah. And I do think that people will, you know, or are starting to realize, you know, like, I lost pretty well the use of my naturopathic license for speaking out, you know, and I didn’t think that, you know, writing newsletters or, you know, telling people, well, why don’t you do some prevention, you know, we could take because at the beginning, I didn’t realize this was all a plan, right? I thought, Okay, well, you know, do the usual things, take some zinc, make sure you you have sunlight, or go take Vitamin D like, we don’t have a lot of sun at in periods, right? So I was saying things that I thought, wow, this is the opportunity for more health oriented, you know, medicines to really show the way. Little did I know what we were truly up against, you know,

Kathy Allan  24:15

right up against a much a huge machine, yeah, it’s going to make money no matter what, and the tremendous movement of money from small businesses to large corporations,

Manon Bolliger  24:30

correct

Kathy Allan  24:30

Yeah, yeah. And I really do know that it was staged,

Manon Bolliger  24:36

yeah. T

Kathy Allan  24:36

he thing that really concerned me is that there were doctors who had other kinds of approaches that could help people, and they were forbidden from doing,

Manon Bolliger  24:45

yeah,

Kathy Allan  24:46

yeah. And I thought, what’s up with that? Who’s gonna who’s profiting from that? Because somebody’s profiting from it, yeah.

Manon Bolliger  24:54

And I think by now, you know it’s, I mean, more in the States and Canada, we’re still highly. Censored, but you know, it is coming out. I mean, truth finds a way to come out. And you know, and you you can’t hide from it, you know.

Kathy Allan  25:12

So it’s either Hamlet or Macbeth, I forget, and that famous line, the truth will out.

Manon Bolliger  25:17

Yes, no. And I think, you know, I think it’s great to create ways for people who, you know, have devoted their life to helping people to find the heart in it again, when they’ve been so demoralized, you know, and traumatized,

Kathy Allan  25:34

right,

Manon Bolliger  25:35

from what they’ve had to witness, see and

Kathy Allan  25:39

well, in my Yeah, and in my research, I it came to the conclusion that healthcare people think differently from private equity people, from capitalist people, capitalist people, their whole thing is money. But you know, the problem with that as they never have enough, never they always have to have more. And an example of that is, you know, the Jeff brisos of the world, who wanted a yacht. He didn’t want a yacht. He wanted a ship. So he’s got a $500 millionwhat he calls a yacht, but it’s not, it’s a ship. He wanted a jet airplane. So he got one, and now he has four, so he doesn’t have enough. So when your whole focus is on having money, you’ll never have that satisfaction that you do when you’re connected to humanity, to your own humanity, and toand to care the way that we are. It feeds your soul in a way that money could never feed your soul.

Manon Bolliger  26:44

Yeah, no, I agree. And I think it may have taken something as horrific as what went down for more people to wake up. Because I think we took it for too many people took it for granted.

Kathy Allan  26:57

We believe, we believe that other people were as good as we were.

Manon Bolliger  27:03

Yeah, or believe in authority, that we’re not big enough to stand up and we’re not alone, we’re not

Kathy Allan  27:10

 right, right

Manon Bolliger  27:11

as a group, as many people now saying, Okay, enough is enough, I don’t think they’re. They can get away with anything anymore.

Kathy Allan  27:21

Yeah, that’s right. People are waking up now, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that’s, you know, that’s an example of that is when Luigi Mangione killed the healthcare CEO, right? And everybody was supporting him, Luigi Mangione, so he opened up a Pandora’s Box. Was a terrible thing to do, but it made people more aware of the of the corruption in the system.

Manon Bolliger  27:55

Yeah, and I think in the end, I mean my my own analysis at this point, money, in and of itself, need not be a problem. I think what’s behind it is power, you know, and a lot of there’s a lot of peons who are drunk with money just in the front, because they’re not looking at who’s controlling this and really has the power. And if we go further back and we look at the big, big picture, it’s these are power hungry people, of which the rest are mostly puppets, thinking that money is the answer, when, yeah, they’re never going to find it in the money. It’s, you know, but it’s not any by itself. I mean, there are some people who have money and don’t have power issues, and they do fabulous things. So, yeah, you know, I think, yeah, it’s just, it’s, it’s who’s controlling this and who’s allowing, yeah,for the control to happen, right?

Kathy Allan  29:02

Well, you know, at the beginning of the century, we had the robber barons, people who were making tons of money off of coal and gas and, you know, all these things and they were doing, they were just collecting for themselves. And then FDR got in and broke all that up with the antitrust and and those people then started doing good things with their money. so they were highly motivated. So now we need to motivate the rich again to do good things with the money. Yeah. Yeah. Well, anyway, we’ll see. I think we’re on the pinnacle of some interesting change.

Kathy Allan  29:47

And I yeah, I agree with you absolutely.

Manon Bolliger  29:50

Maybe that’s exciting. So so give us again, because our time is actually up. How do people find you? Your trainings, your course?

Kathy Allan  29:59

Yes, well, they can go to my website is gutsy nurses.com and there you can see all the things that I offer. You can see how to get in touch with me. My email is there. [email protected] my telephone number for the company is there. And then you can there are things on the website that can be very helpful. You can download the 10 Steps to healing trauma. You can watch these little videos that can give you tips on what to do if you’re too stressed out. So there’s a lot of information to help people on that website.

Manon Bolliger  30:42

Okay, well, thank you for sharing all your knowledge and all your years of being in the field.

Kathy Allan  30:48

Thank you. Thank you, and thank you for all that you’ve done too, especially with the podcast here. Great. You’re reaching a lot of people. Yeah, that’s I, you know,

Manon Bolliger  31:02

I did, because this is my social time. I actually love meeting new people and finding out, you know, especially in this field, yeah, what are people doing, you know, and and what’s changing and what’s happening and what’s behind the scenes. So it’s been, it’s my Thursday, yeah,

Kathy Allan  31:25

very cool, very cool.

Manon Bolliger  31:26

Thank you.

Kathy Allan  31:26

Well, thank you for inviting me. I have enjoyed it immensely. Loved meeting you

Manon Bolliger  31:35

with the conversation with Cathie Allen, I think one of the big takeaways is perspective, you know, is, if you’ve been in practice for 60 ish years, you certainly can compare what was to what is. And so learn, you know what the benefits of what was, or you know, could be the other way around. But what’s what’s happening? Mean, it’s, it’s really good to have contrast. It’s hard when you’re within a system and you’re educated by mostly the media, and then you doubt yourself because you don’t have time for self anymore. It’s very hard to to get a good perspective. So I think that’s really the big takeaway is, is perspective, and then obviously, you know, time for change.

ENDING: 

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