Family Nurse Practitioner Talk with Colleen Booth

Today’s guest is Colleen Booth.

Here’s our Job Talk with a Family Nurse Practitioner.

Welcome to the Job Talk Podcast.

Where we talk to people who love their jobs.

Our guests open up about their challenges surprises and secrets to success in their industries.

Through conversation we explore their careers past work experiences and the education that got them to where they are now.

and when you graduated from high school, did you know what you wanted to do with your life career wise?

So I did, but I only discovered it in Grade twelve, so I actually peaked out a little bit in high school Grade ten, 1990, I was at a junior high and I it was the best year of my academia, for sure.

Captain of the basketball team, Student Council President Straight well, maybe not straight A’s, but close.

Everyone thought I’d be going into medicine.

That’s just was the expectation.

It was never if I would go to university, it was where and for what.

Colleen, what kind of high school student were you And so but I didn’t really know what I wanted to do.

And then I had Grade eleven move schools.

That was tough because now I wasn’t the king of the castle anymore.

Whole bunch up.

All the schools in our town merged into two schools and.

That the pond was a bit bigger, and so for my grade in grade eleven, I heard this announcement saying there’s rotary exchange overseas.

Try out if you want.

I thought, Hey, that sounds cool.

And I went and lived in Germany for a year with rotary exchange, and that’s a whole other conversation.

But during that year, and this is how I decided I was going to become a nurse.

So during that year, the short story is we were on this.

All the rotary exchange students were on this tour holiday and a group of the boys decided they were going to go skiing one day.

While we’re on this tour, like in the Swiss Alps, in the German side of the Swiss Alps, and they all got sunburned so badly because they were in their jeans and they’re like, Hey, let’s go run some gear.

And that night there was four of them.

And one of them, I ended up nursing for the whole night, so essentially applying cold compresses to his face like they burned their eye, their sclera like their eyeballs.

It was that bad.

And, you know, after that day and then we’re on the bus again and whatever.

I really thought, you know, it kind of seems like I.

I’m good at this and I think I should be a nurse.

And so that’s how I decided.

And then I went back to grade twelve year.

I applied all over the place.

I was actually first accepted at UofA.

The reason I applied at UofA is because my family that’s quite dear to me lives and it lives in Edmonton, and I thought to be closer to them.

I would apply there.

In the long run, though, I ended up going to UBC knowing what I know now and the advice I would give to young people is if you could stay closer to home for for post-secondary, it’s way cheaper and it takes away some of the like the life skills stuff.

You don’t have to worry about it, right?

If if you have access to laundry and even if you’re cooking your own food, but your parents buy it and you don’t have to pay rent.

I think that would have been good.

And at the time, the nursing the university in Prince George, where I live now, so it’s an hour away from my hometown, which is Quesnel was just starting, and so I didn’t really want to go there because I was a snob.

Let’s just call it what it is.

I wanted to not going to Prince George.

I want to go to the big smoke.

So I went to UBC.

I have to admit, I’m a bit ashamed to admit that my mom registered me for all my courses, like I was a spoiled princess.

So come second semester, as well as second year like that.

Now I’m going to register for what I want, and I didn’t know how to do it because all that stuff was taken care of for me.

So the short answer is no, I didn’t know until Grade twelve, but I am so, so thankful that I chose nursing and this is the main reason I agreed to it.

While one of the main reasons I agreed to do this talk with you is I really want to encourage high school students.

Now, if you don’t know what you want to do, consider going into nursing because the opportunities once you get through that four year degree are endless .

Excellent.

I just want to back you up for a second.

What an experience to live in Germany for a year.

How’s your German?

Not me.

So good yet.

You cannot be fluent at the end of, I wouldn’t think.

Were you fluent at the end of that year?

I was fluent.

I can certainly stand up and give a big speech.

But in terms of grammar and whatnot, probably not good as I know.

You know, I quite enjoyed public speaking and you know, I could get my point across.

Sometimes now, when people speak slowly, I can still kind of understand that I had no even that like I was not prepared to go to university.

I was certainly not prepared to go to my exchange year.

You know that we were given all this advice about language and we want these stickers, and my dad still has this old clock that used to be in our kitchen.

It’s in his garage and it says Die Uhr, which means the clock.

But I didn’t prepare and I still managed to make my way through it.

I think it’s important for kids to take a look at opportunities, especially if they have an opportunity to go overseas or to a different country to get that perspective.

When you returned to Canada and went to UBC, are you jumping, jumping into a Bachelor of science or is it specifically Bachelor of Science Nursing, Bachelor of Science?

What is that Bachelor of Science in Nursing, Bachelor of Science Nursing?

So back in the book and then that’s a four.

It’s a four year degree, but there’s various streams.

My sister in law, she’s in her mid to late twenties right now.

She’s a mom.

She’s already had a career as a hairdresser.

She’s in the nursing program right now, and she did a whole bunch of credits ahead of time.

And so her course load isn’t as heavy and I suspect.

.

.

I’m not sure if it’ll take her four years or not.

But on average, if you go start to finish, it’s four years.

Yeah.

And you were, you’re an excellent student.

How was the course load?

How difficult was the program through the four years?

Did it get harder as you went along?

Or do you think it got maybe a little easier because you started to understand what it was like to be a university student?

I yeah, that’s exactly it.

I think the first year was the hardest.

first of all, I’m excited to try now, which I never did before, which I hope that doesn’t sound arrogant.

But it’s the truth.

It doesn’t.

It doesn’t.

We’re just opposite students, you and I.

But go on was also.

It was also hard because here I am, living eight and a half hours away from home in residence.

I lived in the first year dorms.

I was old enough because of Germany that I got my own room, thankfully, but that in itself was an education like I cannot stress enough if you have the like, even though I just gave a big spiel about living at home, if you have the opportunity to live in residence, do it.

I learned more about life and who I am from living in that residence than I learned at school ever, even in my master’s degree.

Wow.

The answer to your question harder the first year.

And also, I didn’t really get it the way again.

We’re talking.

So 25 plus for 29 years ago is when I graduated high school and started, and that’s a long time.

And yet we’re still young.

We are still young.

You know, I didn’t really like our biology and then Psych 101.

Oh my god, I thought I was going to die.

It was so boring.

And yet now and we’ll get to it and the practice I have now, I specialize in mental health.

So, you know, I had had that.

I’ve had my impression of that first year, like just basic first year courses had sort of soured me.

I would I don’t know that I’d be where I am today.

But then once, once we kind of got like the English and all that other stuff out of the way and went straight into nursing, I really started to try, especially fourth year.

Once you really know what you want to do or have maybe an idea, although what I thought I wanted to do, what I ended up doing completely different.

Yes.

So you graduate from the four years at UBC.

What happens next as you take a drink?

I can go on.

Oh, that’s OK.

I went and I worked.

So usually your final practicum is where you’re going to work, so.

And I think nowadays there’s way more opportunity by that time to really suss out, like back then in art, 30 years ago, medicine nursing, right?

You had to work two years on the med search floor at the hospital before you could do anything else.

That is not the case anymore, like if you want to be in mental health, do your final practicum in mental health.

So my final practicum was at Vancouver General Hospital, the 12th floor surgical cardiac surgery and solid organ transplant.

So I just laugh when I think back to that now because I knew what to do, but I had no idea why I was doing it.

And that’s something else I really want to the point I want to drive home.

Talking to everyone that’s listening today is that.

You don’t necessarily learn, but you learn skills and whatnot, but this is the thing that the UBC program did teach me is how to think and how to figure out the answer.

So even in my job now, you know, someone comes in with a weird symptom and I have to diagnose it.

I might not know off the top of my head what it is, but I 100% know how to find the answer with my critical thinking skills.

So, yeah, so I worked a year at Vancouver General, it was crazy.

Looking back now, 25 years later, what I didn’t like was being acute care hospital nurse, and I didn’t know that at the time.

I just knew that it was.

I only had three people I was responsible for, but they were really acutely post-op.

They weren’t sick, but they, you know, just had a liver transplant and had a heart bypass, and it was just too much.

And so I moved over to UBC Hospital for a year and worked more on a general medicine floor and then landed a position in a surgical daycare, which I loved.

I loved that short stay surgery.

And the reason I love it is because there was lots of teaching.

That is what I’m good at.

I am not good at giving Bed Bath.

I am not good at helping people mobilize so that their lung function improves.

I’m good at teaching.

And so, you know, here’s someone.

They just had a weird surgery on their leg or like breast surgery or something.

Here’s how you look after yourself for the next bit off you go.

The staff dynamic at that hospital was awful.

And again, I didn’t have the skills to stand up for myself because I was what I can’t even do.

The math.

.

.

19.

.

.

I was like 24 – 25.

Oh no, I was 25.

Yeah, I just didn’t know how to communicate.

And like my thing is, Oh my God, conflict run away.

Like, there were some nurses there that were like old school nurses just screaming at each other in the back room, and I just couldn’t handle it.

Our leadership wasn’t really involved.

And so I I ran away from there at that point.

It’s pivotal.

That’s another pivotal point in my career.

I was looking for some adventure, so I was I was ready to move to either New Zealand or Australia because of family or Vernon because of family and just get out of, you know , smaller town.

Vancouver too big for me.

I’m from a town of 30,000 people.

And then the universe intervened and I met my former husband, which in itself is a big story.

Because that was another pivotal point is because I went to this personal growth seminar and really got some communication skills and really looked into, you know, spent five days looking at who am I and what do I want instead of just doing what everyone expects me to do, which is go to university and be in medicine and have a full time job and get married and have a family like, who am I?

Which is why I’m not going to jump ahead for a quick second.

This is why I got my master’s degree because I wanted to go teach in first year nursing and teach nursing students that kind of stuff so that they could.

As they’re learning to be a nurse, they could learn about themselves and be better nurses.

That didn’t work out because the program I tried to get into wasn’t working, that it was a master’s of community health science.

So I went into this new brand new.

.

.

UNBC first cohort, 2005 of the family nurse practitioner program.

Not really knowing what a nurse practitioner was.

Frankly, I was just going to ask you, like, how did you find out about the family nurse practitioner?

You know, I don’t even remember.

I think I just I was looking to get a master’s degree and be a teacher of nursing.

And I saw like the school got back to me and said, there’s a moratorium on this.

We’re trying to get this program running.

And I thought, OK, I’ll get my master’s in nursing.

It’ll it’ll still help me teach.

And at that point, I had done a little bit of sorry, I’m totally jumping all over the place.

I did a little bit of, Oh, you’re saying so.

Rather than working in a hospital, I would fly in and out of different communities and do work.

And so a little bit of acute care, but also a lot of community care, which was much more along what I value and the skill set I have in my previous marriage, my former husband, we travelled a lot with his job and I discovered nursing in indigenous communities and again pivotal moment in my career, my first job outside of the hospital.

So, yeah, well, when we moved together, I moved to a small community on Vancouver Island, barely lasted eight months of the hospital and said, That’s enough.

I can’t do this.

I don’t like acute care nursing.

My sister in law’s, an acute care nurse.

She is awesome.

She loves it.

I don’t like it.

So I was the nurse at a at an inner city school.

I say I see it in air quotes because our town wasn’t big enough to have an inner city, but it had all the, you know, the poverty and all the social issues that go along with what we would think of as an inner city school.

And so I was essentially a public health nurse at this elementary school, and that really started me on my path to to where I am now.

Could you tell me the difference between a doctor and a family nurse practitioner?

So when we think of a doctor, it’s just like thinking of nurses, right?

Family nurse practitioner is quite similar to a family doctor in that whatever you would go to.

Your family doctor for.

You can come to a nurse practitioner for if they’re working in in primary care, that’s that piece of it because there’s other kinds of nurse practitioners.

There’s adult family or adult nurse practitioners, which are more acute care based, the one I know quite well.

She works on a bone marrow transplant unit in Vancouver.

She has different training.

Hers is more acute care.

There’s also pediatric nurse practitioners, all the nurse.

Well, I would say most of them at Children’s Hospital in B.

C.

and probably at the Stollery I think that’s when you guys have they would have specific pediatric training.

So I’m a generalist birth to death, but where I am now, I baby scare me.

I love studying them.

But when they’re sick, can’t deal with it.

And I’m not really keen on old people.

Same thing.

I love visiting them, but their complexity of health is too much.

I just it doesn’t interest me.

So the clinic I work in now.

Anything you would go to adult family doctor for you would come to me for and my clinic was created specifically.

And this is where nurse practitioners are really, really valuable and why our government in particular in B.

C.

, is dumping piles of money into training and making positions is because we can do many of the same skills as a family doctor.

But we come at health and wellness from a nursing perspective.

So we’re not so dis ease or disease based like the medical model is right.

There’s a germ or something negative happening and then we suss out what that is, and here’s some tools to fix it.

We come, and this is my opinion.

Some some physicians might disagree with what I’m saying, but this is having been an MP for ten years now.

We come at it for a more holistic thing, you know, in the work and my clinic specifically, we’re created for people who do not have family doctors for various reasons because they’ve moved, but mostly because they have mental health or social needs that aren’t met in a regular family.

Fee for service, family practice office So the way medicine works in B.

C.

anyway, as you know that the physician gets paid per person, they see and you get more or less money based on the diagnosis and whatnot.

I am a salaried employee.

I get paid what I get paid, no matter how many people I see.

But that allows me to spend more time with people.

So whereas a typical appointment in your GP’s office would be around seven to eight minutes, people if they can stand to get up to half an hour with me.

But in our clinic, we also have physicians, GP’s and they they too get half an hour.

But they’re paid.

They’re called sessional versus fee for service.

And when I think about two in particular of the physicians that work with us while they make less money, probably working sessional, it’s much better for their family life.

Can you prescribe medication?

Absolutely.

And this is partly why I like at the very beginning.

It’s why I really like being a nurse practitioner, because there’s a certain thrill and a certain power and a certain respect.

I think that comes from our community, all those things I like and wielding this prescription pad, right?

And I do want to speak to that, though, because what I saw, I’ll speak about my friend Amy.

She is the charge nurse of Vancouver General Hospital ICU.

She wanted to be an MP, too, because she wanted a prescription pad.

But you know, when push comes to shove, let’s say in COVID, she is saving people’s lives by doing this heart lung bypass, machine, brain catheters, I.

V.

medicines.

She’s really saving people’s lives.

And she said to me, oh but Colleen, you get to write a prescription.

Well, yeah, what am I?

Oh, here’s your blood pressure medication like, I think that whole power and prestige thing cannot drive what you want to do.

So while I like it that I have a prescription pad, it does not make me more important or more prestigious when push comes to shove, when you know you need to see .

So like, I can do CPR the same as anyone else.

The other thing I’m really good at is reversing overdoses, which is something we’ll get to.

I don’t know.

I always have this feeling about the prescription part because I think in our society, people tend to respect that a bit more than other health care providers that can’t write prescriptions.

But we all there is a role for all of us.

There is a lot of politics still like we’ve had nurse practitioners in B.

C.

since 2005.

That was the first year we graduated and registered NPS.

That’s the year I started.

So there was a class before that.

We’ve been in Canada, though, for it was 30 years prior to that.

But there’s this kind of turf war, you know, NPS versus GP’s.

And Oh, I like you much better, my doctor.

But I’ve also been said many times to my face, can I see a real doctor now?

And so, you know, there is room for all of us in the circle, right?

Our mental health clinician and our social.

A worker at our clinic are far are just as important to people’s health as I am with my prescription pad .

We all have a skill set and we need them all.

Let’s get right into your career and your position right now.

Can you take me through your day to day?

Yeah, I work in two positions, so my FTE, my full time equivalent, used to be full time at my my clinic.

We’re just a family practice clinic.

You know, we have a receptionist at the front.

People make an appointment.

They come in.

They see me, you know, I have a cold.

I have pneumonia.

I need a pap smear.

I have high blood pressure and I deal with all of that.

You know, here’s your medicine.

Here’s the lab testing we need to do.

Here’s some imaging we need to do.

That is a very different thing.

So from a registered nurse to a nurse practitioner, that is one of the big things is I’m allowed to order, interpret and treat diagnostic tests, which unless you have specialty training as a remote certified arm, you can’t.

And I enjoy that piece of it.

That’s that’s the piece that was missing for me before I became an NP.

And so, you know, I had my morning and afternoons booked.

I deal with a lot of mental health, so a lot of medicate of prescribing.

I also have a little bit more experience than most just because of the volume of people I see with anxiety, depression and a lot of people who have childhood trauma.

That is that is.

I am a nurse practitioner, so I can help people through that journey.

That’s very been made very clear to me over the years and and the last three years in particular.

I’m specializing in addictions, medicine as well.

And so half of my job as well, point six of my job is our regular clinic, so I just see patients all day long.

And then, you know, when I’m not face to face, I’m charting about it.

I’m reviewing lab results that come in.

I’m reviewing consults from specialists that come in.

And then the other half of my job is I work at an overdose prevention site and I am working to make a difference in our current overdose crisis that we’re having in Canada.

Prince George has the second highest rate per capita of overdose deaths in our province.

And so I help that by helping people get on treatment for opioid use disorder in particular.

So methadone, Acadian and Suboxone, those are treatments for opioid use disorder.

But we’re also at a space now, and I’m not sure where you guys are at because I think things are quite a bit more conservative in Alberta.

Whenever there’s conflict about programs closing, it’s coming from Alberta.

But anyway, I.

And this is where my prescription pad has really come into play and it is my biggest tool I use right now.

But I want to get away from it because I think there’s other answers to addictions and their side effects, but I prescribe safer supply.

So, you know, I meet people where they’re at.

Most of my clients are homeless.

Most of my clients have horrific, horrific childhood abuse and then get into.

Substance use or drugs and alcohol use as a way of as a survival tool.

And now it’s taken over their life and is causing problems so where you can go out on the street and buy heroin, which is just a big mishmash of poison right now that overdoses people?

I can give you prescription for pharmaceutical alternatives, which would be, say, Dilaudid or long acting morphine.

It’s very controversial.

Old school medicine physicians in particular and some nurses, but mostly doctors, believe that abstinence is how you treat addiction.

You can’t help a drug addict who’s overdosed and dead.

I keep a lot of people alive right now by prescribing them safer alternatives.

But that also that’s just this much of it.

Again, my gifts come out in spending time with people, helping them recognize what they want, not what I tell them as a as their health care professional that they want.

But what do you want?

OK, now what can we do together or can I help you do to get those things?

What are some myths that you’d like to dispel about family nurse practitioner?

We are not Dr.

wannabes.

We are own.

I still feel that vibe coming off some of my colleagues that like, why don’t you just why don’t you just go back and be a physician?

Actually, some people have said that to me.

I always knew you wanted to be a doctor.

Yeah.

No, I want to.

I want to work in health care.

But my skill set is different because I’m a nurse and I can explain to you how, like the art and the knowledge of being a nurse, I just know that that’s how where I’m at.

I’m not.

This sounds bad to my nursing colleagues.

I’m not a regular nurse.

I’m not just a nurse, no nurses that ever just a nurse.

Nurses are awesome.

I would encourage more of you to just go into nursing and then decide later if you want to be an NP because nursing is such a wonderful base career to start with.

What do you love about your job?

I love spending time with people.

I love teaching.

I love it that.

I do have some power that many people don’t in health care.

That helps me help people navigate the system.

You know, myself and our social worker can both phone the same government agency and ask for something, but.

It’s my signature that counts.

I don’t like that that my signature counts more than my colleagues, but I like it, that I can get that done.

So and this is a story I was I’m just going to tell very quickly.

So I actually wanted to quit when I was in school to be five years to do.

If you go full time in our program in Prince George, you can do it in two years.

You got to work your ass off.

You can do it in two years, your master’s degree.

I did -5 because I took one course per semester because my life was kind of crazy.

At the time, I was almost done and I took one semester off because I wasn’t sure if this is what I wanted to do because it did seem like I was going in to be like this want to be doctor like work like a doctor but not get paid near as much.

Don’t have near as much respect in society.

At least that was my perception.

So, so I took a semester off, so I went back to one of the indigenous communities I had worked in previously, and I was filling in for their nurse and this young man came in.

And I can’t even remember what he asked for, but he needed something very medical.

I am right in that moment I thought, you know, if I was a nurse practitioner, I could help this guy because I know what he needs and it’s not a prescription.

And while I have a ton of respect for the physician in the community at that time, what this gentleman needed and was asking for, that doctor didn’t know how to give him.

And so that’s when I decided that even though I wasn’t enjoying school.

The reason I wasn’t enjoying school is because my personal life was in shambles, but that if I finished and became an NP.

This is how I could help people, it’s why.

This is a gift I’ve been given is to spend time with people.

Ask them what they think they need versus what do I as their health care provider, think they need?

I mean, lots of times it’s different than what I think they need, but we go to work on what they think they need first.

But really giving the space for that, for people to find their own answers and find find the light within themselves.

That’s what I love about my job.

That’s great.

And you can hear the passion that you have for it.

Is there one thing that you wish you knew before becoming a family nurse practitioner before you got into it?

And maybe this is a two part question.

What advice can you give to somebody that’s considering considering becoming a family nurse practitioner?

What I wish I had known then that I know now is don’t compare.

Don’t compare yourself to anyone else.

Stand true and what you know and who you are and what you’re good at doing and really look at why you want to do this job.

Again, there’s so many avenues in in to be a nurse practitioner.

You know, my colleague has the exact same training as I do, and she is the child and youth mental health guru in our community.

And she loves babies.

So, you know, don’t don’t compare.

We are not Dr.

wannabes.

We are our own profession.

I wish I didn’t spend so much time trying to prove that I deserve not only my position, but my salary is quite a nice salary.

You know, you start close to $100,000.

I don’t know where we’re at with money, but you know, if you were an RN and with lots of seniority and love shift work, I could make almost the same amount of money with shift differential and whatnot.

But that I don’t like shift work.

I love Monday to Friday.

I’m a bit more flexible because of the panel I look after, you know, a lot of people and myself included, I don’t like getting up before nine so I can flex my time.

You know, a lot of days I work ten to six.

I don’t have to do call.

I, I don’t have to work in the hospital.

I’m.

But I have credentialing too, and I want to, but very specifically around the addictions piece.

But because it’s so political in my community right now, I will get eaten alive by the politics, so I’m not doing it.

So that’s what I.

And then what was the second half of that question?

Oh God, now you’re going to make me think about it.

I think it was advice, direct advice to somebody saying, Hey, I want to become a family nurse practitioner.

Yeah.

Trust your your schooling.

Do research the schools you want to take.

Look at their licensing exam stats.

So that’s in B.

C.

, that’s the Oskees We have three schools, two, well, technically we have four because we kind of count Athabasca two, the schools have way better rates of passing that licensing exam.

Trust your training.

You might you don’t need to know everything.

I couldn’t tell you what the doses for most antibiotics are, but I know which one to pick.

When I make that diagnosis.

And so you don’t have to know anything, everything you have to know, something you don’t don’t have to know everything.

The critical thinking piece and just really it’s about being with people.

I can’t stress enough that if you think you know all the answers and that you’re going to tell patients what to do.

But that’s not what health care should be at all in any health care profession.

Our job is to help people find their own answers and be patient centered.

So.

That’s excellent.

Is there anything that I haven’t asked you that you would like to share with the people listening to this right now?

Don’t feel like just because a school wants you to be finished in four years or two years or three years is how you have to do it.

I have graduated from every single thing I’ve ever done late graduated high school a year late because I went to Germany.

I graduated from from my undergraduate nursing degree a semester late because I had to take a time out.

Just there was some bullying going on with one of my instructors and I.

But again and then my master’s degree, I am.

This is my claim to fame.

I I’m the last graduate of the first cohort, so it took me five full years.

three other classes started after me that graduated before me, but I’m I’m kick ass what I do.

I love what I do.

I get paid very well to do what I do.

I’m surrounded by an amazing team of colleagues in both of my clinics.

Just because someone says you have to do your schooling in this much time, I don’t think that for some people that’s important.

But that wasn’t the case for me.

Everything was a bit off the schedule, but it’s also it was those life lessons I was learning.

While I wasn’t on time per say that have really helped shape me into into who I am, no matter what you decide for your career.

Your personal life, your family life.

You got to work to live, not live, to work, even though I love my job.

It’s when I come home at the end and this is where I do struggle a bit is I because I deal with a lot of suffering to not take that on and feel that it’s my responsibility to fix that for someone has been a really hard lesson.

If you’re thinking of going into nursing, that is going to be one of the hardest things I think that you might come up against is feeling that you are responsible for someone else’s choices and someone else’s else’s help.

We are not many people that tend to go into nursing that that’s who we’re caregivers.

But really knowing, you know?

Where you start and your patient or client starts is important, but that is life outside of work that matters.

We got to, you know, I’m lucky and I think about my aunt Nancy, who’s a nurse as well.

And she’s said often that her and I in particular are so blessed to get paid a lot of good money to do something we love.

We’re so passionate about our work.

And she too, she’s like her nursing job is pretty crazy.

It’s our family, like, it’s our real.

It’s our life outside of work that we really have to to focus on.

So but for you, high school students out there, you know, I see what school school’s important.

I learn more.

Being at school, living in residence, going to beer gardens, partying, those things are what taught me more about life.

A lot of those lessons I didn’t learn on the books at school, so I just keep an open mind.

My patients don’t care that I didn’t get an A in biology because I’m I’m a safe space for them, and I’ve been told that I thank you for hearing me is what people often will say to me.

Can’t really learn that at school you got to find that in yourself.

Well, you’ve given us such excellent advice through our time together.

Thank you for making time for us today.

My pleasure.

I’ve really enjoyed this.

It’s helped me really look at why, why I got into this and why I’m going to stay.