Rae still here, still queer, trans & non-binary RN
@UMassWalker
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Unsure about my next SoMe platform. My kids say I am “kind, cute...& big” queer, trans, probably a dragon. Tweets own. They/Them
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I told y'all this was going to be a theme:
Inclusive design isn't enough! Redistribute the POWER
Dr. Rachel (Rae) Walker
@UMassWalker
is an associate professor at
@UMAnursing
, with research focused on nursing invention, design justice, and machine learning.
Read their piece, “Inclusive design isn’t enough! Redistribute power”
#PrideInSTEM
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Do you know a 'squeaky wheel'?
Someone-often an 'only'- who reliably brings up issues or challenges power in institutional spaces, so much so that you & your colleagues don't raise them proactively because you *just know* [squeaky wheel] will bring them up?
Hear me out: Stop.
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Does anyone else feel compelled to clean their house before leaving on a trip?
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Stop off-loading the labor of accountability and speaking truth to power to the persons who always always always carry that mantle.
Its unfair. Its exhausting. Its a recipe for forcing the very folks most likely to help catalyze change OUT.
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And the bystanderism of the same people having to speak up, time after time, while the overwhelming majority of folks sit & spectate from the sidelines is wrong.
Folks don't need your private DMs & whispered agreement *after* the meeting has ended
They need you in the ring, now
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@RheaBoydMD
Thank you Dr. Boyd. My nursing college made it required reading for prelicensure students last year but I have shared these recommendations with the Dean so we can make a change.
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Not me texting the latest omicron updates & safety recommendations to my entire family - among so many things I hate how COVID has turned me into the equivalent of an almost perpetual epidemiological Debbie Downer
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Note who the government is stepping in to help here. Not the nurses who’ve been chronically underpaid & exploited for decades. They’re acting because shareholders & corporations that own health systems complained this is hurting their bottom line. What an FU to RNs everywhere.
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I’m sorry but how is MDs asking the husband of a pregnant person on a ventilator due to COVID-19, “Which life should we save if we can only save one?” ethical?
Like, how is that even a question - and why tf would the husband get to make that call?!??
I hate it here.
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Hi from a trans professor of nursing who binds & uses gender-affirming care, talks (& sometimes even dances!) in public, reads books about critical history & racism, supports abortion access, has given birth twice, parents & uses public bathrooms
#TransDayOfVisibility
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Any conversation about DEI facilitated by white people that begins with the admonishment to keep commentary "positive" & "be civil" is a RED FLAG
I experienced this earlier this week in a forum where no doubt the intentions were good but white folks cannot demand these things
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1/Shared by one I respect:"You enjoy connection at the expense of our isolation. Your wants are always more important than our needs. When you choose to gamble with your own health, you only take into consideration ur own risks & never the risks of others"
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For the record: Should I miraculously find myself pregnant again sometime in the future, & I end up on a ventilator/life support, and an MD asks my partner this question my unequivocal answer is: Me. The fully formed adult human who happens to be pregnant. Save me. Save my life.
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Nurse scientist here (we study "healing")
Lots of talk by GOP folks today, that the "nation is crying out for healing!"
FWIW-
in the realm of wound care, nurses know-
you cannot heal while there is a ragingly active infection.
And just covering it up
Can lead to sepsis,
Death
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Not me crying because a pediatrician's office had an open vial with extra 5-12 y/o COVID doses that were gonna be wasted when they saw my query about vaccinations.
First doses for the children are in & this mom is overwhelmed with gratitude for nurses, mRNA tech & science. 😭
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If you’re a nurse
Who recently left direct care
Or is about to leave...
Thank you
for being
You are valid
You are still a nurse
The untenable conditions of this pandemic
the pain & suffering
are NOT your fault
To paraphrase
Sometimes we must leave
so that we can continue
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Pap smears should not be painful & traumatic.
Significant pain during Pap smears is not “normal”.
Full stop.
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For anyone spouting “intl students studying online this fall should jUSt gO hOME!” I invite you to immediately sell your house, it’s contents & your car, yank your young children from their schools, bid farewell to your friends & neighbors, & pay $15K to fly 18hrs in a pandemic.
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5 yrs ago I kissed my infant & 2-yr-old goodbye & started my 1st fac job in a brand new place as an
@UMassAmherst
Asst Prof. I was excited & completely terrified
Today I was promoted to Associate Prof with tenure
This was a team effort. THANK YOU doesn't even begin to cover it
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1/ Breakthrough COVID is still COVID.
“mild” COVID is still COVID.
Fully vaxxed with COVID is still COVID.
They may not lead to hospitalization or death, but they can still:
*spread COVID
*require intense symptom support & prolonged recovery
*lead to “long COVID” in some cases
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U.S. health care truly hates pregnant and birthing people. It’s like folks aren’t even seen as human.
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Omg this thread is doing some numbers
Don’t be a bystander
Practice
#DesignJustice
And support Black birth workers & reproductive health advocates including my UMass colleague
@LucindaCantyPhD
’s Lucinda’s House baby shower fundraiser:
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Nursing school should be free.
The federal government should underwrite the next generation of nurses.
No loan forgiveness, just PAY FOR IT.
Pay clinical preceptors stipends too.
If they can afford our military & ICE, & tax cuts for billionaires, they can afford this.
Full stop.
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My favorite self-care tip for nurses is spelled u-n-i-o-n
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My campus just announced, summarily, lifting of all masking requirements at 7am tomorrow morning save for health care spaces and on busses.
I feel angry & betrayed & other things I can’t share on here.
The ableism abounds. Absolutely astounding abdication of inclusivity.
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A reminder to PhD students forming dissertation plans: if you’re planning to study an issue that *primarily impacts communities you don’t belong to* & you haven’t already engaged those communities as *the experts* to define the research questions & design…STOP. Go do that 1st.
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Amplifying this as the latest variant (originating in NY!) surges & we roll right into another year of no mask mandates, no systematic testing, no air quality/ventilation policies, no vax requirements, etc while institutions/workplaces/schools insist on in-person gatherings...
The study shows increased likelihood of hospitalization, cardiovascular effects, blood disorders, diabetes, fatigue, kidney damage, mental health effects, musculoskeletal damage, neurological deficits, and pulmonary damage with each COVID-19 infection
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1/ On boundaries: Nurses frequently prop up unsustainable & violent systems because our proximity to need & to crisis, especially among fellow persons experiencing precarity & suffering, compels us to say yes to having our boundaries violated, over & over & over again.
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Someone said my Twitter feed showed a clear disdain for nursing and...this broke my heart.
I critically analyze & seek to transform nursing because I love nursing.
And because I believe nursing can (& must!) be more inclusive/affirming/ accessible and anti-racist.
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3/"Abled supremacy means that many of you mistakenly think that if you do get COVID and if you end up with long COVID, that the state will take care of you or that your community will. You believe this because you do not know about the lived reality of disability in this country"
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If we see a dip in nursing school admissions in coming years, the problem was not overly negative headlines about nurse exploitation & moral injury
It will be because folks with power to change these violent realities refused accountability, gaslit & fought transformation
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Recently someone in a position of authority told me, “At this point folks are just talking like we’re all gonna get COVID at some point…” and NO.
No I do not accept that. Not as a parent of unvaxxed kids <12. Not as a nurse. Not as someone who knows we can (& should) do better.
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WTF are nursing pgms dictating what *color* mask a student may wear? Since when did the uniform police GAF about whether your mask is white, red, or pink with purple spots as long as you’re wearing it & protecting others?
This is the most absurd dress code policy I’ve heard yet.
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The Dean of our College of Nursing just sent an all-school email about the election with multiple linked resources for emotional and psychological support, counseling, trauma & mutual aid.
I love this.
I have never seen this.
Please normalize this across all of nursing.
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I reject the implicit assertion in the new AACN Essentials launch video that new nurses are burning out because they haven’t learned how to deal with conflict
Have you considered that perhaps this generation of
#nurses
simply refuses to put up with exploitive, toxic workplaces?
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Imagine…a nursing school that provided *childcare* for its students
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COVID is airborne. I’ll be offering a remote option for lectures because I cannot imagine forcing folks with unvaxxed children (ineligible for vaccination <12) & others (immunosuppressed etc) to expose themselves to an airborne virus in an interior classroom with no windows.
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Nursing education can be so violent that students seeking the ability to simply miss a class because of the loss or injury of a loved one, or serious health issue, or child emergency, feel compelled to disclose & apologize for their own trauma.
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For the record, if you're a nursing school & you are PENALIZING students who've been exposed to COVID-19 for self-quarantining & keeping fellow students/staff/patients safe(r)...
You're not practicing nursing. You are making a mockery of public health, science & nursing ethics.
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It should come as no surprise that in a profession dominated by ww seeking adjacency to power by proving themselves worthy within cisheteronormative white Christian patriarchy, there would be an unhealthy obsession with “rules”, etiquette & the optics (vs. impacts) of behavior.
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Nurse educators who roll their eyes & claim “oppression” when asked to respect pronouns or to acknowledge women are not the only folks who can get pregnant/birth:
I’m an NB parent, my pronouns are they/them, I’ve given birth twice (& breastfed!) and you said that to my face.
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Forcing nurses to purchase self-help books written by rich white men appropriating the cultures & religious traditions of people of color that tell you to “stop catastrophizing” & “things probably aren’t as bad as you’re making them out to be” is peak white pandemic gaslighting.
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When nursing programs refuse to support folks who are chronically ill, disabled, and/or immunocompromised to attend lecture remotely & do skills labs/clinicals in environments designed to reduce harm (😷💉🧪 ventilation), they maintain discrimination & ableism in the profession.
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At this stage of the pandemic, asking a huge class of nursing students to each find a nurse they don't necessarily already have a relationship with & interview them for mentoring advice (for a class assignment with no compensation for the RN's time/labor/trauma) seems...unwise.
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F*ck everyone actively trying to make life harder & more violent for trans people right now, including white cis women who complain about being “erased” and complicit bystanders in academe and the health professions watching the violence unfold in real time & not saying a word
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WHY. DO. NURSING. CONFERENCES. KEEP. CLAIMING. TO. ADDRESS. STRUCTURAL. RACISM. AND. INJUSTICES. WHILE. ONLY. HIRING. WHITE. CIS. NON-DISABLED. AMERICAN. KEYNOTE. AND. ENDNOTE. SPEAKERS. AND. ALL-WHITE. CONFERENCE. ORGANIZING. TEAMS?!
STOP IT AND PASS THE MIC ALREADY.
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Can someone remind me why hospitals force caregivers (& patients) to pick up post-op Rx only *after* surgeries instead of at least a small quantity of this stuff being provided *in advance* thereby avoiding unnecessary errands immediately following discharge?
#annoyed
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Too often in nursing ed I hear faculty ponder how to make new nurses more “resilient” & “good at conflict resolution”, as if nurses leaving the floor was a problem with new nurses, rather than these nurses seeing their labor conditions and refusing to be exploited, abused, gaslit
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Stuff I’ve posted lately may seem harsh. I want to be clear- I don’t hate nursing. I love my profession.
And because I love it, & the people in it, I’m going to be critical.
I’m going to challenge any doctrine that puts nurses & *especially* nursing students in harm’s way.
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If your solution for nurse ‘burnout’ is telling *nurses* to do “X” more (X=sleep more, exercise more, practice gratitude more, meditate more), while doing *nothing* to actually shift material conditions & power, then you & your intervention are part of the problem.
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Got notification of an abstract accepted for presentation: 😃
The conference is in-person: 😧
In a city where ICUs are full due to COVID: 🥴
And a state that passed multiple anti-trans laws this year: 🤬
Yeah no.
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If you could get rid of one potentially confusing & completely unnecessary symbol of white heteropatriarchy in healthcare that causes acute anxiety for some patients while also serving as a vector for harmful pathogens, what would it be and why the white coat?
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Its 2020 & I can no longer understand why folx are spending 30mins on ZOOM reading from a Powerpoint.
Please record your presentations. Make slides & transcript available BEFORE the meeting. Take 5 mins to recap at the top then use the other 25 minutes to ENGAGE in discussion.
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It’s May 3rd 2021 & I’ve officially seen more discussion from nursing organizations and in faculty forums about whether tattoos are “professional” than I have action to abolish state-sanctioned violence including police murders, voter disenfranchisement & anti-trans legislation.
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I am of the belief that if a qualified nurse in their 80s, who has accumulated a lifetime of lived experience & expertise, wants to enroll in a nursing PhD program to produce new knowledge, & there’s a mentoring match that’s consensual, they should be supported to do so.
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Sometimes I look at the massive amounts ($1M, $10M, $50M+) awarded by Federal funders to academic researchers at PWIs studying “health disparities” & think…imagine what communities already doing the work could do with that…
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Last night in a dim parking lot I watched a guy wearing a beer can hat named “
#1
Dad” rip off his shirt to reveal a trans flag painted on his chest, then arm-wrestle a tall femme in a trucker cap & overalls with the moniker Champagne Hitchhiker to raise funds for abortion access
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He said “transgender”.
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Seriously why is almost every health equity/health disparities/SDOH-oriented research center directed by folks who have never *once* identified themselves as part of the communities they ostensibly study & whose narratives they relentlessly define through the lens of the ‘other’?
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@rebeccaraesmith
I’m not a woman, but I do rely on certain brands of women’s sports bras as binders, because they tend to be far more breathable & comfortable than most binders I find on the market. For this purpose I have to remove the foam pads. Same for all swimwear. Please keep this option.
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Honestly one of the greatest catalysts for so-called
#innovation
in my field would be teaching nurses that “following orders” doesn’t equal being right & sometimes you need to not only disobey but smash the whole damn system. Folx who’d struggle most with this: nurse educators.
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Its up: "Dear Nursing Education,If We Can’t Even Acknowledge the Institutional Racism Apparent in Our Policies…How Will We Do the Harder Work?"
With THANKS to accountability partners
@mclemoremr
@drannamvaldez
@Dr_Whomever
@jdillardwright
@Montalvo501
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Today is my 40th birthday.
Overwhelmed in many ways, including by gratitude for the privilege of seeing 40, the many folx who’ve become family both here & far away, and all those nursing the community & working for a more just & equitable world.
We cannot go back.
#NewFutures
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Dear academic PIs with large Federal grants: I beg you, as a PhD Prgm Director, don't just fund your own salaries, WRITE Graduate Student roles into your budgets so they can also be paid while gaining experience. Institutions taking 60% indirects but NO funded RAs? Its not right.
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Petition to cancel weekdays for the the rest of this month & extend the weekend to 2022.
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SubTweet: There’s a particular brand of
#MedTwitter
more interested in punching down at clinical partners they see as lesser (NPs, PAs, students) than punching up at a violent system that relentlessly exploits their labor
If you’re punching down, you’re part of the problem
Stop
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I have begun looking up the CVs
of academic leaders who insist
that in order to conduct high-quality research
nursing PhD grads must do a postdoc
And discovering many of those leaders
never did a postdoc
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Hi.
If you are disabled, immunocompromised or otherwise "high risk" for COVID, or sharing space with someone who is, and you are distressed by continued insistence by others to "normalize" COVID, embrace "endemic" COVID, "learn to live with" COVID, F2F mandates, etc
I see you.
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2/ "Abled entitlement ensures your risk assessment will always be, “if I get sick, I will be able to recover OK. My family will be OK. My children will be OK.”
Never, “Will they be OK? Will their children be OK? Will their family be OK?..."
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For those somehow not already aware of this, Dr. Monica McLemore is a national fucking treasure.
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Nursing: We are ALL scientists
Also: Only PhDs can do science!
Nursing: And you need to maintain clinical practice
Also: But 1st a postdoc is req'd
Nursing: Faculty shortage!
Also: Faculty jobs are scarce & competitive
Nursing: We need you! DEI!
Also: Here's a 50% paycut
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When the diversity committee misgenders your intro, 2 minutes in, while reading the very bio you were asked to provide...& never acknowledges it, even after you write your pronouns next to your name like you always do.
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What I’m getting from essential workers like retail, nurses/HCWs, disabled folks, Black & Brown communities...the problem isn’t whether the CDC’s science behind mask guidance is “sound”, it’s the impacts: widespread abdication by states of any mandate to protect these communities
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I agree RNs should be paid (& well!) to be nurses. And I take news of MDs getting bonuses to work nursing shifts as more than evidence of patriarchy.
Can you think of another time US hospitals, under capitalism, have done this?
Acute care is collapsing. Markets won’t save us.
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I love nursing.
I love my job.
It’s an honor to serve my community as a scientist and public university professor.
And it is because of this love that I ask critical questions, & keep pushing for us to do better.
Critical reflexivity isn’t a bad thing, it’s a sign of caring.
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Today a really smart PhD student reminded me that theory should never be taught absent it’s historical (& therefore social) context.
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We're working on plans for an Associate Degree-to-PhD track here at the UMass Amherst PhD Program.
Likely beginning recruitment next year & ideally starting with a cohort of folks doing it together. Initial stages would be fully online.
If this is of interest, drop me a line!
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4/ ..."Interdependence is ultimately about “we,” instead of “me.” It understands that we are bound together, by virtue of existing on this planet. Interdependence is generative and grounded in care for one another."
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Academic nursing: We have a problem.
Yet another talented colleague just resigned to take a job outside academe or the TT.
As have MOST of my age/career stage peers.
Many leave because they’re tired of being gaslighted, aggressed, sidelined, silenced.
They know their worth.
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I say this as someone who was deeply engaged with & well-versed in scripture in my prior life (personally & academically): You DO realize Jesus would be on the side of trans women, BLM, land back, the Poor People's campaign, the environmental justice movement & migrants, right?
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Students are not “low risk” for
#COVID19
. Some are immunocompromised. Some live with chronic respiratory conditions. Some are stage IV cancer survivors. Some live with a household member who experiences vulnerability.
You just don’t know & it’s also none of your business.
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I keep arguing that students should never be forced (or coerced!) to touch or examine each other
And I keep getting told that
“this is just the way it is”
And...NO
No it isn’t
This is a choice educators & administrators choose to make
Over & over
Make a different choice
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Nursing school but it’s free, open-access, trauma-informed, accessible, designed with & for folks pushed to the margins by whiteness/white feminist politics of nursing, & facilitated by those whose lived experience = expertise
Also very, very queer & no onlys
Can it be done?
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Are you a college prof who wants to address institutionalized racism, transmisia, colonialism & other -isms but don't have authority to hire or a budget?
You can still work on:
a. Your Syllabus
b. Your Evaluation Strategies
c. Student Handbooks
d. Any document labeled "Policy"
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What are Robert’s Rules, if not the 145-yr-old ideas of a dead white male military officer grandson of a Southern plantation owner on how to run an effective church meeting in an era when only landed white male colonizers were allowed to speak or make decisions, persevering?
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Broke down tonight as I reflected on all the new smart passionate colleagues with big ideas who’ve been chased out of academic nursing by folx so deeply threatened by them & so invested in maintaining the status quo & their power in the system that they will defend it at any cost
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1/A bit about me: I was born in TX, I'm white & I grew up in a strictly conservative Christian evangelical household. We attended church 3x/week. Women & girls were not allowed to speak in church, or to address male members of the congregation without permission from the elders.
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To everyone who in the last few wks has been made to feel like a 'Chicken Little' by a partner, colleague, community member or Admin because of your advocacy to enact more aggressive measures to slow the spread & severity of Covid-19:
I see you. Thank you for your advocacy.
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Same goes for nurses & nursing.
As a nurse & a fellow human, I’m opposed to state-sanctioned violence against oppressed peoples, apartheid & ethnic cleansing
We physicians definitely aren’t talking about the genocide in Palestine enough. Our colleagues who are Palestinian in America need to not feel alone.
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WHAT IF...we imagined a new future where a nurse could be a perfectly GOOD nurse & NOT work in a "fast-paced" hospital setting like an ICU?
WHAT IF the NCLEX & our curricula are so ableist we've made it impossible for anyone but folx who fit a *hyperspecific mold* to succeed?
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Speaking only to my fellow white academics: its on us to break the cycle of all-white panels. *When you get an invite* to speak at an event first ASK who else will be on stage. If the answer isn't satisfactory, REFUSE to participate and (if you have their permission) refer folks.
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PSA for my fellow nurse educators:
Nursing education does not have to be adversarial.
Pass it on.
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It’s Pride🏳️🌈&on top of EVERYTHING ELSE incl systemic racism& white supremacy the current Admin just rolled back
#transgender
health protections in the ACA in the midst of a f*cking pandemic &as I haven’t seen any nursing org statements I’m showing up here to say BURN IT wITH FIRE
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COVID is surging & Delta variant is on the rise.
Folks are exhausted, overwhelmed, stressed.
If you’re lecturing this fall, consider scanning your syllabi for:
*punitive attendance policies
*deductions for “late” work
*timed exams
*tardiness penalties
Highlight text
Hit 🚮
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Lived experience is also expertise.
Lived experience is also expertise.
Lived experience is also expertise.
Lived experience is also expertise.
Lived experience is also expertise.
Lived experience is also expertise.
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All this talk about lack of nursing faculty & shortages but when are we gonna talk about how boards of nursing have hamstrung pgms by enforcing exquisitely narrow definitions re: what “counts” as a clinical placement?
Nurses’ scope of practice is so much more than acute care…
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I've noticed an unprecedented number of graduate nursing students withdrawing, deferring, and/or pausing their academic journeys for the upcoming semester.
Has anyone else seen a trend?
Folks are so tired & have so many demands on them.
I fully support decisions to pause.
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