Celebrating Nurse Practitioners

Hesham A. Hassaballa: This is Healthcare Musings. I'm your host, Dr. Hashem Hasabala. Welcome to Healthcare Musings, everybody. Happy to have you with me. November eighth to fourteenth is National Nurse Practitioner Week. And I gotta say, something that has always frustrated me is when one of my ICU nursing colleagues comes to me and asks for a letter of recommendation. And it's not because I Don't like writing letters of recommendation for colleagues. I do it for you know, medical students and I do it for residents, and and I'm so happy to do it for ICU nursing colleagues. the reason I get frustrated is because now I know that there's another great ICU nurse that is advancing his or her career. and it's great. And It's just one less great ICU nurse that is going to be at the bedside taking care of patients in the ICU. and that always frustrates me because you know i i I hate to lose a good ICU nurse because I in my opinion, and it's biased, and I admit it, ICU nurses are the best all around. I mean, I watch them in awe and still have survivors' guilt of what they did. And the sacrifices that they made during COVID and how they refuse to let a patient die alone in the ICU, risking their own health and well-being in their lives. And I will never forget that. I'll always be in awe. and I'll always have their back. And so I get sad because it's another ICU nurse that is gone from the bedside and the patients lose, and I lose as a critical care doctor. And the patients gain. in fact there was an ICU nurse that I worked with. I loved working with her. She became an MP and we hired her in our practice. and she continues to do wonderfully as an ICU MP. So that always gets me sad and I am you know wanting to celebrate nurse practitioners, especially critical care nurse practitioners, and we have a ton of them At Sound Critical Care in my group, and they're phenomenal. They're fantastic. And I think many of them were ICU nurses, some were not. And I think their experiences of being nurses at the bedside just make them better clinicians. And I work with so many. fantastic. I know that there are some physicians who are hostile to nurse practitioners and and and APPs. we are not, I am not. I I work with them. we believe, and I believe and them working at the top of their license. the ones that we ask to join our family at Sound Critical Care are the best of the best. And I would not lose a moment of sleep if any one of our nurse practitioners at Sound Critical Care took care of one of my family members in the ICU. They're fantastic. I work with them on site. I work with them as a teleintensivist. They're amazing. And I just want to highlight and celebrate them this week. They are part of the healthcare team. They do amazing work across the country, and in our practice and in other practices. and y you know, we can't hold out one bad example and generalize it just just to the j group at large and say all all APPs are like this. just like physicians. There are physicians who are fantastic and are physicians who are less so, less than fantastic. And the same thing with nurse practitioners. There are ones that are great and I believe we have amazing ones in our practice. and there are others that are not so great and we can't generalize just as j j just like physicians. and at the same time, I work with many a nurse practitioner who would run circles around many physicians that I have come into contact with. So, you know, they're not all the same. and so Happy National Nurse Practitioners Week. We celebrate you. We thank you for all the wonderful work that you do taking care of patients and at their most vulnerable, at their sickest. Like I like I'll say it again, we have the best of the best in our practice and we seek out the best and the best. and thank you for all the thro for for all that you do. And while I will never say no and I will support any nursing colleague in the ICU who comes to me for a letter of recommendation to advance their career. And I don't begrudge them for it. And I'm happy for them that they're advancing their career. And I try to recruit as many of them as possible. And at the same time, there I can't help but but feel a little twinge of sadness because that's just one less amazing ICU nurse to take care of. patients in the ICU and work alongside me in the ICU and that's part of being the the the selfish part of me and at the same time I can never begrudge them for wanting to advance their career just like I want to advance my career. Thank you to all those nurse practitioners out there, especially the ones at Sound Critical Care for all that you do. we cannot appreciate you enough. thanks everyone for your time and attention. And I'll see you next time on Healthcare Musings. Thanks for listening. Healthcare Musings is a production of FaithfulWord Media. Sign up at drhasabala.com to get every episode delivered directly to your inbox. And please don't forget to give the show a five-star review. Thanks so much.