How To Care For Sexual Assault and Human Trafficking Victims as a Nurse

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[00:00:29] You're listening to Ask Nurse Alice presented by Nurse.org where Alice Benjamin combines no nonsense advice with thought-provoking interviews. Hi friends and welcome to the Ask Nurse Alice podcast. The show where we talk about anything and everything nursing and healthcare related.

[00:00:55] I'm your host, Alice Benjamin, clinical nurse specialist, family nurse practitioner, and chief nursing officer at Nurse.org. Now guys, we have a very interesting and delightful guest that's going to be coming on.

[00:01:07] And I have to say how serendipitous this is because we book interviews and we kind of have an idea of what we're going to talk about. And lo and behold, this past week when I worked, it was like the ideal experience

[00:01:19] for me to appreciate our guests even way more. And let me tell you what I mean. So like this past week, I am an emergency room nurse practitioner. I've not seen it all and heard it all guys, although some of y'all think so. I haven't.

[00:01:34] And we had, I had a young gentleman come in and I feel like he's like early 20s and he'd been smoking and drinking with some friends, fell asleep and then he woke up and he didn't feel the same. He's like, you know what?

[00:01:49] I feel like I was sexually assaulted. Like there are parts of my body that don't feel the same. I've not done anything. And he came to the emergency room to get examined because he felt that he'd been sexually assaulted.

[00:02:01] Now I'm going to be honest, I am so used to like heart attacks and strokes and stabbings and traumas and stuff like that. This is not a situation that I knew every, you know, it wasn't intuitive

[00:02:14] to me as far as what I needed to do some basic things. Yes, but everything no, because it just pulled in a whole another world of how do you manage people who've been sexually assaulted? Getting police involved, law enforcement, reports, you know, not tampering

[00:02:29] with potential evidence and a whole bunch of other things. And we worked through it, but at this point I had realized, oh my gosh, I am talking to Leah very soon. And like this is the perfect scenario for her to walk me through

[00:02:41] because she's the expert in this. And so and you guys know her, you guys know her lover. She's off the clock on social media. Like you guys follow her. I know you do. But I want you guys to please welcome to the show. We have Leah Helmbrett.

[00:02:53] She is a forensic nurse examiner. She's been a nurse for over 14 years. I mean, she's traveled. She's done so many things. She's even worked on the opposite end as a recruiter. And during pandemic, she came back to us guys like, you know, she was

[00:03:05] recruited, but she came back. Leah is a forensic nurse examiner and forensic nurse examiner. So please welcome her to the show. Leah, thanks for joining us. Hi, thank you for having me. Okay. So I know I kind of teed up this conversation and people are like,

[00:03:19] oh, let's get into it. But first I always like to ask all of our guests, you know, why nursing? And what was your journey? You know, honestly, mine, I'm sure people are like, oh, I wanted to help people and this is what I've always wanted to do.

[00:03:32] Honestly, I had no idea. I, my dad was a physician and I used to, he would take me to the hospital to make rounds with him sometimes. And if an emergency came up, he had me sit at the nurses station for the longest time.

[00:03:47] I thought nurses just played games and ate candy because that's what they would do with me while my dad was in with this other emergency. And when I got to college, I really didn't know what I wanted to do.

[00:03:59] And so it was almost like a hurry up and choose something. So I was like, okay, well, let me try this. And I had absolutely no idea what I was in for. But, you know, getting into it and starting in the nursing

[00:04:14] field definitely was hard and it's been hard. But it's probably one of the most flexible and great careers that I could have chosen. So I was just like very lucky that way, that it's something that I happened to fall into. Oh good. And you know what?

[00:04:31] I think people who've been practicing nursing for a while, when you can still say that you love it and this is what you want to do, they're like, you, like, that's great. You know, because sometimes nursing can be really hard, guys.

[00:04:40] There are several times I'm like, oh, is this really? I don't know about this life. Like it's really, it's really tough. But I'm glad that even, you know, all these years into it, you're still glad that you're working in this profession, happy to be working in this profession.

[00:04:55] And I know you did travel nursing for a while. So you've traveled, you've seen a lot of things, been in a lot of places. You've even been on the end of recruiting some of us at some point. So like, you know all the ins and outs.

[00:05:06] But I have to say you are work currently in a very interesting unique role that not many nurses can say that they've worked in like myself. Oh, I worked in ICU, I worked in ER, mid-surg, I floated.

[00:05:19] The work that you do is not any work that people just kind of float in and float out of. So if you can, can you tell us a little bit more about what your current role is and what it is that you do?

[00:05:30] I am a forensic nurse examiner and a sexual assault nurse examiner. And so basically what I do is I work with patients who have been affected by domestic violence, strangulation, sexual assault and human sex trafficking. So what happens is someone will come into the emergency

[00:05:48] room looking for help, medical attention. And then I get called in if they need a certain criteria and I do all of the evidence collection. I listen to what happened, you know, what was done to these patients. And then from there that helps to drive my exam

[00:06:07] in determining where I could find potential DNA. And then after that, we make sure that we can give them any prophylactic medications that they might need. Let's say if they were sexually assaulted and they need the morning after pill, right? Pregnancy prevention, HIV prevention, STD,

[00:06:25] prophylaxis, then we have standing orders and we can order that. And then as well as providing post-trauma resources because we know that the trauma doesn't just stop there right after getting this exam done, right? There's a whole road ahead of them.

[00:06:41] So on top of that, making sure that they know their reporting options because just to have one of these exams done does not mean that you have to talk to the police if you are not ready to because there's only a certain time limit

[00:06:56] to where you can collect evidence as opposed to a time limit to when you can report to police. Wow. OK, so guys, when Leah was saying that I was in my head playing back like, oh, what did we do? In the emergency room?

[00:07:11] And listen, you don't know what you don't know, right? I think and I'm not going to say that they don't teach us in nursing school, but I was thinking back. I was like, did I really get all this in nursing? I don't think that I did.

[00:07:22] I don't really think that I did. And even in your onboarding, in the onboarding to ER, I know when you take the CEN, which is the special certification for emergency room nurse, there is some mention of this. But I think what Leah just said in that quick little

[00:07:37] one minute sound bite, I was like, oh, a lot. I learned a lot there. And Leah, the work that you're doing is so important. And I'm just going to share some stats that I got, guys.

[00:07:45] And Leah, you'll tell me if this is a website to go to or not. I hope it is. I went to the RAIN website, which is the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network. They are the nation's largest anti-sexual violence organization. And according to that website, it said

[00:08:00] every 68 seconds, another American is sexually assaulted. One out of every six American women who has been a victim of an attempted or completed. And they use the word rape here. But guys, I really want to caution us with that word because that can be triggering.

[00:08:15] OK, we don't want to trigger anyone's trauma. So I think the word sexual assault is more appropriate. And then it said about 3% of American men, that's one in every 33 have experienced, attempted or contemplated sexual assault in their lifetime. So those are things that we're always

[00:08:31] that we talk about readily in health care. Because when we think of health care, oh, your diabetes, your high blood pressure, cholesterol, you know what's your BMI. But we have to recognize that unfortunately these things happen and we definitely need to bring in specialists

[00:08:49] to educate us as to what we're supposed to do in these scenarios. Because as you mentioned, it sounds like there's some timeframes and things that we need to be considerate about. And let me ask terminology. Oftentimes we say, oh, we got to send someone to a start facility.

[00:09:04] That's what I kept hearing in the instance that I the example that I described earlier about when I went to work that Friday, people are saying, oh, we need to transfer the patient to a start center. Is that correct?

[00:09:15] Or do we like find is there someone like yourself who comes to our hospitals? So I wish, you know, my if I could have one wish, I would wish that well, I wish that there wasn't sexual assault and human traffic into massive violence.

[00:09:30] But I wish that we were in all hospitals. But we're not right. We're unfortunately not. And so I think I had first heard start. Start is different depending on where you are. I know in California, I believe it's called SART,

[00:09:46] which is the first time I had heard that a while ago. Everywhere else pretty much it's going to be a sane SA and E sexual assault nurse examiner. And then a SART is actually a group of people consisting of a sane nurse, advocates,

[00:10:03] a prosecutor, police officers to actually go over a case like specific cases on was there a break in the system? How can we do things better? And just like trying to make this whole process better. So in other places, that's what a SART is.

[00:10:21] But I guess it's called different everywhere you go. So a lot of hospitals in, let's say rural areas, they don't won't have anyone to come out there. And collect evidence, right? Or the closest person is going to be hours away.

[00:10:38] And so sometimes you can find a sane either in the emergency room or they are at advocacy centers. But in the instance that there is nothing even close, it's going to be up to that emergency room nurse to collect that evidence.

[00:10:55] And a lot of the times they've never done it before. And maybe there's like some book with dust on it. Some in the corner that has instructions on how to do it. But it's very nerve wrecking, right? If you've never done it before,

[00:11:10] because there is certain ways to collect the evidence even when it comes down to swabbing and that I can get into later on. But yeah, I mean, we're either in advocacy group centers. We can be at police stations. We can be in emergency rooms.

[00:11:28] It just depends on who is opening up positions for that. And wanting to actually put the money into hiring that position. Because unfortunately, we don't really bring in that much revenue. Hospitals are our corporations. OK, so I oh gosh,

[00:11:45] kind of pivot a little bit to the money, but I won't pivot. But I know that in health care, there are sort of things that are very expensive. But these if you're needing someone to come in because of a sexual assault or trauma or human trafficking,

[00:12:01] that is needed, guys. It's kind of like one of those high flow, excuse me, high acuity low flow things doesn't happen all the time. But when it does happen, it needs to happen.

[00:12:12] So Leah, I'm sure you and people who do your type of work are well worth your dollars because when it hits home, right? When it's you, when it's your friend, it's your family, like, I want this and this and that.

[00:12:20] And then to be told, like, well, it's not really in the budget. So we got to do that. Like no, that's not acceptable. And I have to say this now, I've never had to collect evidence. But I read about it when I was doing my C.N.

[00:12:33] certification and guys, it sounded, it seemed really tedious and you had to do a certain way you didn't want to contaminate evidence. Like you got to put stuff like in a brown, is it a brown paper bag? Like, I don't know.

[00:12:45] There were just because it goes into storage. And if you put it in plastic and it's wet, then it's a higher chance of growing mold on it as opposed to a paper bag. Why do we learn this stuff?

[00:12:58] Like where are we going to learn this stuff from Leah? Like we need people like yourselves who are very knowledgeable to raise awareness. Now, I know it's a very sensitive topic guys. It's very emotional. It's very sensitive.

[00:13:11] It's, you know, we hate that we even have to have this type of special to work, right? Like as Leah said, we wish this didn't even exist. We wish this didn't happen. But if it were to happen, we as healthcare providers need to be very knowledgeable about it.

[00:13:27] Now, before I get kind of further into some of the things that we should know and do at the bedside, I need to ask Leah, how did you get into this? Where does one go if this is the type of work that you want to do? Yeah.

[00:13:39] So a lot of states will have programs and it really varies, right? So in my state where I'm from, I took the Colorado SANE Safe Program, which is actually government funded. So it is a free program and it's open to anybody with an RN, but it is more

[00:13:59] geared towards Colorado law because in each state, you're going to have different laws, different reporting options. And so it was really great because it's all online self-paced didactic. And then afterwards you go down to Colorado Springs and you do a two

[00:14:16] day clinical and then after that, then you can start working as you get a certificate. So you're not certified, right? You have to take a national exam for that. But then you get a certificate to practice as a SANE, F&E SANE.

[00:14:34] And then from there, you can start looking for jobs. And then that's a whole other thing on like what are hospitals requiring in order to work as a SANE. But that's somewhere to start. You can also check with the Academy of Forensic Nursing and the

[00:14:49] International Association of Forensic Nurses. Both can be helpful in helping you find a program in your area that also includes clinicals because that's going to be the tough part. You have to find a place to actually do clinicals.

[00:15:06] Right now with the Academy of Forensic Nursing, if you want to become a member, they are having a 20% discount on memberships. If you use Spring 23 code to sign up. And they're really great too, because every Wednesday they have a webinar

[00:15:23] that also includes CEUs, continuing education, which you'll need, right? And in order to sit for an exam, a national exam. And so it's really great to... They have so many different educational options and opportunities. So that's a place to start, three places to start.

[00:15:46] Leah, what are some of the most common mistakes or oversights that we as nurses make? How do we drop the ball most often when it comes to completing the service or getting these resources to the patient?

[00:15:59] I think most of it is just putting our own judgments in front of healthcare. Right? So let's take that patient that you had that came in and they just like felt away, but they had been drinking and doing drugs.

[00:16:14] And so some people, like let's start with some people might not feel comfortable even talking about sexual assault or domestic violence. And so we'll stick them in a room and we'll kind of just like to tow around them

[00:16:26] instead of just going forward and just saying, hey, I'm so sorry that this happened to you. You know, if they don't know what actually happened or if they do, I'm so sorry somebody did this to you, right? Actually putting the blame on someone other than them

[00:16:42] because it really doesn't matter if they were drunk, if they were high, what they were wearing, what time of day or night. It's never OK to sexually assault somebody. And and that's why we say it's always good to start by believing

[00:16:57] because as in health care, our judgments on this, our opinions on what we think happened to them means nothing. It doesn't mean anything. And so if we go in by starting by believing and being supportive instead

[00:17:15] of kind of whispering like, oh, they must be lying or oh, I can't believe they were doing this or that it makes them the patient feel more comfortable to open up to us to seek help in the future, to tell their friends

[00:17:31] if it were to ever happen to their friends or family. Hey, I went here and I was very well supported. Right. And that's what we want is we want people to come forward and get help. And this doesn't always end up with a guilty sentence in court.

[00:17:46] Right. What it does, well, our main goal as health care workers is to make sure that they are getting the proper health care. So that's getting those prophylactic medications. That's getting those trauma resources. Right. We're not the police. We're not investigators.

[00:18:04] And so I think the biggest issue and the biggest obstacle that we have in health care is just getting over our own biases. You hit the nail on the head with that one because a lot of my coworkers

[00:18:15] like the triage nurse and some other folks are like, oh, he was what do you expect him when you're doing drugs? Like nothing probably happened. He's probably hallucinating. Like there were there was a lot of judgments circling around there.

[00:18:27] And so when I went and I and I had the conversation with the gentleman I let in there with believing because even still, even if even if someone is living a lifestyle that you would not lead doesn't mean

[00:18:38] that they deserve to be assaulted or even, you know, even the perception. If you thought if you even thought somebody had assaulted your friend, your daughter or someone you'd know, you'd be upset. You'd want services. And Lee, I think you raise awareness too.

[00:18:54] I think many of us are maybe I'll use myself as an example. I thought of that immediate moment. It didn't dawn on me. Oh, I got, you know, the post like, do they need him? And this was a gentleman.

[00:19:07] So maybe not in this case, but would someone need a morning after appeal? Are there prophylaxis that they may need for STDs or some other communicable disease? Like I'll be honest in the ER. It's like repatching your emergency and encouraging you to go to

[00:19:20] your your provider or to a specialist. So it's not always on the top of my mind. So I'm so glad that you mentioned that. And just on just to kind of inject their interject there, you know, what

[00:19:34] better person to assault and get away with it than someone who is high or drunk or has mental health issues or somebody who is most likely to not be believed. Right. So that's where we need to start is by holding back our own biases

[00:19:54] as health care workers and just being present there with our patients and letting them know that they are supported. Right. And I'll just kind of segue into something else, because Leah, you're also doing some work with, and I'll talk more about the group

[00:20:08] of the work you're doing, but with raising awareness to you make trafficking and what they may look like. I'll be honest. I don't always, I don't necessarily know what that looks like. I think I might know some, probably some obvious, obvious signs,

[00:20:22] but the subtle signs, I probably, I would probably miss them. Not because I don't care about them, but just because I may not be as aware. So can you talk to us a little bit about the work that you're doing around human trafficking?

[00:20:31] Because I'm, although I wish this weren't the case, I'm going to say I'm pretty sure nurses who are listening to this someone at some point in their nursing clinicals or their profession has probably encountered someone experiencing human trafficking and we didn't know it. Yes.

[00:20:48] So we are currently right now working with the Academy of Forensic Nursing to even start as early as middle school in educating about human trafficking, because it is very prevalent in our own country. I think when people think of human trafficking, they think of maybe

[00:21:06] like the movie Taken with Liam Neeson and that's not really the case, right? 42% of traffickers are actually going to be parents of child trafficking. So they're going to be people that we know, they're going to be boyfriends,

[00:21:22] they're going to be friends of family, they're going to be the uncle, someone within the family. And so people who come into the emergency room who are in trafficking, they're not going to fall out, come right out and say that they're in

[00:21:37] trafficking because most often they're with their trafficker. They're not never allowed to go anywhere alone. Sometimes they're being taken across state lines, so maybe they don't know where they are, they won't have access to their own identification.

[00:21:52] Whenever you ask them a question, their trafficker is going to speak for them. And it's very hard to get them alone. But on top of that, even if you do manage to get them alone and ask them, many of them aren't going to come forward.

[00:22:09] And I think it was really well written by this former pimp who wrote a book. He got out of the pimp business and he wrote a book and he said, you take away everything that they have and only give them what they need.

[00:22:25] You, the pimp are the cause and solution to all of their problems. You give them the poison and then sell them the cure. So they basically have total control over these patients, over their victims. And so it's really difficult because you can be sitting there as the nurse

[00:22:46] and be like, I know they're in trafficking. I know it, right? This doesn't feel right. But if they won't say anything and they're not ready to get help, there's not much you can do. And even if we were to get people out of, let's say, these human trafficking

[00:23:05] situations or domestic violence situations that doesn't promise them complete safety. It doesn't promise them, you know, we're not promising them this brand new life. Right? Like of, oh, we'll give you a place to live and we'll give you all of the funding you need.

[00:23:22] Like that's not what we do here in the US, right? So it's very, very difficult. But what I would suggest is if you are able to get them alone, right? Let's say, oh, we need to get you into, you know, to have this test done

[00:23:39] and somehow get them away from their trafficker. You can say if they say, no, I'm not in trafficking, you say, OK, you know, we're actually just trying to spread this information. So if you just happen to know somebody who is here's a number

[00:23:53] for a national or like the state trafficking hotline, right? If you ever know anybody that needs help. And so that way you can it's kind of like saying, like, I know, but and still giving them some resources for help.

[00:24:09] But, you know, that's really the most you can do. And it's still if someone does deny it or is like very standoffish when you even mention it, that's again, hold your biases to yourself because it's not as easy as just getting up and being like, yep,

[00:24:26] I'm in trafficking. Help me take me out of this, right? Because they literally have nothing to their name. Wow. Now let me ask this. Let's say you are taking care of someone. And guys, I know we're I might be putting a heavy emphasis on the ER,

[00:24:40] but I think that's because just many times our first point of contact to the health care system. But this could you might find this out later once there maybe in your in your unit or maybe they're visiting your clinic or something.

[00:24:52] I don't know. But, Lea, what do we do if someone says help? Are we identified? And they say, I need help, but I'm afraid. Like, what do we as nurses do? Like, do I just because most people will tell the charge nurse, OK,

[00:25:05] well, what if you are the chargers or what if there's no charges in the round? Or what? You know, like this person has opened themselves up. We have a probably a narrow window of time to really help this person into safety. What do we do?

[00:25:18] Yeah, so safety, that is the number one priority. And so within these hospital systems or in your community, you know, just making sure that secretly, right, with their permission because they're asking for help, right? So you don't do this if they're not asking for help.

[00:25:36] But if they are asking for help, you contact your local police department. You notify hospital security, right? You make sure that there's going to be a lockdown. You know that they know the situation, that there is a very dangerous situation that's going on.

[00:25:51] You contact the local human trafficking hotline and see if they can send an advocate out. You know, there's a ton of things that can get the ball rolling with that. And the number one thing is to get that person away from their trafficker and in a safe location.

[00:26:10] Wow. I had a flashback of a time of a patient who she was a younger lady like early 20s, she'd already had like five kids. She was there pregnant again in the emergency room. And every time we would ask her a question,

[00:26:23] she did look over to the guy to answer for her. He answered everything whenever we needed something he had it like, oh, here's this or here's that. So when you said those things, I'm like, oh, shoot, that was happening back then.

[00:26:35] And there was something we wanted to do something for her, but it required. I think like a hospital admission, it was something about her current pregnancy and she'd be better suited for admission. He didn't want her to be admitted. And I just remember like, sure,

[00:26:49] him having a conversation with our shoes, getting scared. He's like, he has the gun, he has a gun. And I was like, whoa, like, and I remember the, you know, contacting hospital security, they called the police, police came and like that, like he left.

[00:27:06] It was just it was the whole world when it was like near shift change guys. So I end up, you know, I don't I need to finish the whole story. But I just remember that was scary.

[00:27:14] It was scary for me as a nurse too, because I wanted to help. I didn't know what was going on, but I could see the fear in her face. And I was worried about putting her in more danger.

[00:27:26] But when, you know, when she said, oh, he has a gun, he has a gun. I took that as an I need help. She didn't come out and say I need help.

[00:27:32] But she said he has a gun and I was like, oh, shit, we all need help right now. So is there anything like you mentioned calling security and police like is there anything else? Like are there community resources that we should have on deck

[00:27:46] that make sure we have this? And I'm saying this guys, probably a whole bunch of hospital policies need to be updated after this interview. But like, tell us what are those things that we should also have in place? So one, we know what to do.

[00:27:58] And then if any if anyone's listening that has input to a policy to help make sure that this is in place for the next person to follow, what would those things be? Yeah, I mean, I think having a policy right on certain steps to take

[00:28:14] if somebody if anybody ends up in the situation to where they suspect a potential patient have a patient have potentially being in any kind of danger with trafficking or even an abuse, right? Domestic violence, abusive situation.

[00:28:33] And we have, you know, at my hospital, I'm at a very large hospital. So we have social workers as well. But just having that person that you know you can go to and that is fully

[00:28:46] trained in this, which I that's why I think even if you aren't going to be a forensic nurse or anything, even just like taking these modules, education courses through the AFN or even going through and just listening to the online, diodactic portion of the Colorado

[00:29:06] Sainsafe program just to get a better understanding of how to even just talk to these patients, right? But also I think hospitals should also be implementing resource information just in like generalized areas, right? Because sometimes it's really hard to get somebody alone.

[00:29:25] We know that one of the most common places that someone in these situations can be alone is sitting on a toilet, right? So if we can right now, that's what we're working on in my hospital right now is in every single bathroom stall, in every single

[00:29:43] patient room in, you know, all over the hospital, hospital in clinics is to have a QR code that goes to our website that has safe houses and all kinds of resources, trauma resources and advocacy groups so that they can save that information and then be able

[00:30:08] to reach out later when they're in a better situation to actually ask for help. Maybe if they were able to get away. Also having on there that letting them know the hospital is a safe place to come if you need help.

[00:30:22] And that's why it's also so important that we start by believing everybody that comes forward, right? Because one of the big things that either traffickers or abusers will say is no one's going to believe you. Nobody cares about you.

[00:30:38] You are nothing and we need to make sure that they know that that's not true if they come to the hospital asking for help. I agree. Oh my gosh. Thanks so much for that. This has been a really good and informative interview. It was a great conversation.

[00:30:52] But I was like, I need to see you for this guy learned a whole bunch of stuff in this because this was really great. Yeah. And I do have one more walking wise. It's a built building an anti trafficking school culture that

[00:31:05] is going to be going live on the Academy of Forensic Nursing website. It's one of their webinars on June 14th from noon to one Eastern Standard Time. It is free to members and I believe it's $25 for anyone who wants to take it. It was created.

[00:31:23] This module system was created by Carla Hyman, who's actually not in health care. She's an entrepreneur and it's really great. She's created this whole module system to educate schools. So we'll start with school nurses and then go to school staff like teachers and principals and then go to

[00:31:44] parents and try to educate parents on human trafficking and then eventually educate the students on human trafficking and who's the safe adult because we need to remember that like you had said before, just in the United States, somebody is sexually assaulted every 68 seconds.

[00:32:03] But every nine minutes that person is a child. Right? So this happens so often within any community. It can affect anybody. Human trafficking, you know, they reach out to those who can be manipulated the most. That's children, right? That's people in our foster system.

[00:32:25] And so I think this CEU module webinar that's going to be June 14th is going to be a very, very important one. And if you have kids, you don't have to be a nurse to go, right? I think it'd be a really interesting one to sit in

[00:32:40] on and then reach out to your schools and say, Hey, how can we implement this into our schools? I think this is a really great thing for our schools. And it can be formulated to that specific school, you know, working with the principals and the school

[00:32:56] system on what they would like their students to know and their teachers and school counselors and school nurses to know and how to identify these kids. I think this is so important guys. And especially, you know, whether you have kids

[00:33:11] or whether you're like your super auntie or super uncle, you know, most of us have some child in our family and we want the best for them. So we want the people who we, you know, we trust them with our teachers in school.

[00:33:23] They spend just like, look y'all, we spend most of our time at work. They spend kids spend most of our time at school. So we want the people who are caring for our kids to really be informed and aware of this as well.

[00:33:32] And I'm pretty sure there'll be, there's the opportunity for that education to also go out to kids to raise awareness so they can look out for one another and discourage these type of things from happening with our youth. I think that's really important.

[00:33:45] Oh my gosh, tons of great information. Leah, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate you guys. You have to check out Leah, follow her on social media. As a matter of fact, Leah, tell the folks where they can follow you learn more about you and

[00:33:58] all those types of good things. Yes. So on TikTok and on Instagram, I am off the clock nurse and then I also have a website that I haven't really updated recently, but it's more toward, that's more towards travel nursing stuff. And that's off the clock nurse dot com.

[00:34:16] She's for her to be off the clock. She stays on the clock guys with all of these other things. Don't let the name fool you. She stays busy, but we love it because and I love it that they're like there's so many awesome nurses out there.

[00:34:27] That's one of the coolest things about the show. I get to talk to all of the cool people. And even if I have an interview, that's not to say you're not cold. Just FYI. But I'm just saying the people that we fall

[00:34:36] on social media, we get to have like a deeper conversation, look at what they're working on. And we learn so much in the process. Guys, this is the show where we talk about anything and everything nursing and health care related.

[00:34:46] So I think this show actually kind of doubles stuff that I need to know. I'm a mom. I need to know this for my children, but I also need to know this as a provider for people in the community.

[00:34:55] So Leah, thank you so much for all the work, great work that you're doing. Keep it up. I'm sure you're inspiring. You've inspired the future generation of saying nurses to come because now they know where to go. And you know who to go to for a mentor, guys.

[00:35:09] Slide into her DMs. OK, slide into them. And then also shout out to nurse.org. Thanks so much to them. They are great family and friends of nurses. They support us in so many different ways. If you haven't already, make sure to visit nurse.org.

[00:35:22] Follow them on social as well. Everything from nursing school, scholarships, what it's like being, you know, a nursing student, NCLEX, new grad. Every stage in your nursing life and career. Nurse.org is there for you. So thanks. Shout out to them.

[00:35:37] And guys, if you'd love to know what your comments and thoughts are on this show, we would like to know I'd like to know. So please send us your comments, leave your ratings and reviews on your favorite podcast platform wherever you're streaming this.

[00:35:48] And then you can also email me at nursealexatnurse.org and check this out. You can also send us a voicemail or you can text us at 725-910-9676. Let us know what you think. And if you have an idea for a show, we'd

[00:36:00] love to hear that as well. And I'm Nurse Alice. So follow me on social at Ask Nurse Alice. And then until next time, guys, please, please, please make good choices. Be kind to one another and live well, my friends. Thanks for listening to Ask Nurse Alice.

[00:36:13] Visit nurse.org for nursing career, education and community resources.