Nurse Casey's Story: 85th Nurse To Ever Hold All Five Emergency Nursing Certifications (with Casey Green, BSN, RN, CCRN-CMC, CTRN, CFRN, CEN, TCRN, CPEN, CNRN, NRP)

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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, welcome to the Ask Nurse Alice podcast. This show we talk about anything and everything nursing and healthcare related.

[00:00:54] I'm your host, Alice Benjamin, clinical nurse specialist, family nurse practitioner, and chief nursing officer at Nurse.org. Now today's topic I'm going to jump into is about nursing certifications. Now, many of us have them. Some of us don't and that's okay as well.

[00:01:08] And people are working on them. And we know that nursing certifications are, they serve an important role in nursing, right? They help to establish and acknowledge nurses for demonstrating a basic knowledge and expertise in a certain specialty area.

[00:01:26] And you know, research will show that nurses who have nursing specialty certifications in particular areas tend to lend to better patient outcomes, better patient experiences, and a whole host of other things. And so, so I myself, I have five certifications. I have adult health for my CNS.

[00:01:41] I have family for nurse practitioner. And then I have my CCRN, critical care registered nurse. I have CN, certified emergency nursing, and cardiovascular board certified. So that's five. That's those are the areas in which I play in and work in and enjoy.

[00:01:55] And those are the areas that I'm growing and thriving. And so it makes sense to have those. Now, there are however, so many other nursing specialties out there. And especially if you're a nurse who's working in these areas

[00:02:08] to be able to get that nursing certification in that specialty area is a great accomplishment. And so I'm going to introduce a nurse who has made great accomplishments. She is the 85th nurse ever to attain the milestone of holding all five emergency nursing certifications from BCEN,

[00:02:25] which is the board of certification for emergency nursing. I want you to please welcome to the show, Casey Green. Hi, Casey. Hello. Thanks for having me. Thanks so much for being here on the show now, Casey.

[00:02:38] Well, first off, the first question we always ask people is why nursing? Like what was your calling to nursing and how did you fall into it? Like some some people have. So I think for me, like nursing runs, it skips a generation of my family.

[00:02:52] So like I'm a nurse, my mom is not she squeamish. My grandma was a nurse. Her mom, nope, squeamish next generation on. So I think for me, I grew up like with my grandma and kind of like she had me give her her insulin when I was little.

[00:03:09] And she got me this gigantic book, like medical book. And it was like a kid's book, but it has all the proper terminology. And I just carry that thing around with me wherever I went. And then as I just started to like grow older, it was like,

[00:03:25] I kind of noticed when people when people had emergencies, I would run toward them and not away. And I got a nursing scholarship and it just kind of from there, like that's kind of like why nursing. And I initially want to be a trauma surgeon.

[00:03:41] And then the longer that I was in nursing and just kind of getting that patient interaction, I realized that that was the thing for me. Oh, good. That's we love hearing why people fell into nursing. So it sounds like it was in your, it was in your bloodline

[00:03:56] to become a nurse and a natural calling. Yeah. And it's kind of funny because now my family, we have a curio cabinet and it's like the only thing because a lot of my family members have passed away.

[00:04:08] So it's like the only thing I have that like is like the big like traditional thing for our family. And so there's an actual certificate from the 1918 pandemic from my great, great, great grandmother who was a nurse. And then my grandma was alive during tuberculosis

[00:04:28] so she has her certificate. And then during COVID, I was like, all right, third generation. So I have my little COVID certificate that I did like training for COVID right next to them. So it's nice to like have, even though they're not here

[00:04:44] and they can't see the journey. And apparently my mom's family has said that I have followed in their footsteps with like the kind of nursing that they did. So it's like even though I don't have it, it's nice to still have that traditional piece.

[00:04:57] So I feel like it was just always a part of me was going to be a nurse. Oh, wow. That's amazing. And that's going to be such a valuable asset for generations to come as I'm sure they'll continue into nursing.

[00:05:10] But now, Casey, you have to tell me though, you have become the 85th nurse ever for this milestone of all five emergency nursing certifications. Now I have one. I have my CEN. You have all five. So I'm sure a lot of listeners are listening in like,

[00:05:26] man, I'm working on just getting one. Let alone all of these other certifications. So can you tell us more about your journey in nursing as far as, obviously you're in emergency trauma type of world here, but how did you go about your work experience

[00:05:44] and acquiring these different certifications? Yeah. So critical care is kind of my jam. That's my thing. I really like being a critical care nurse. And for me, it's like critical care means more than ICU. You know, you can be an interventional radiology.

[00:05:59] You can be in the CAF lab. You can be in the PACU, in the emergency department, in trauma and transport. So for me, and I also have a CCRN and the cardiac medicine certification. So I have seven, hopefully eight. I take the stroke certification like next week.

[00:06:19] And that's more just to push myself to actually be a student of neuro nursing. But for me, I knew that I wanted to get certified in something because every strong nurse that I knew when I was a baby nurse, they were certified. They were so smart.

[00:06:36] And they would just be effortless in being able to speak like pathophys and speak to the providers. And they just knew all this knowledge. And when I would ask them, they said, oh, when I studied for my certification, I had knowledge and I built on that knowledge.

[00:06:51] And the beautiful thing about certifications, it's not your hospital, what you do in your ED. It opens up your mind because it's what every nurse does, what every ICU nurse does, not just your ICU. And I actually was unsuccessful the first time

[00:07:06] I took the CEM because I was thinking about, oh, we do this in Baltimore. Oh, in my hospital, we do this. This is our patient population. And you have to paint the wide brush stroke of it's across the specialty. So I worked in emergency nursing.

[00:07:24] I work in ICU now. And I worked in ICU then. And I also do transport nursing. So for me, it was getting the certs that matter to my specialties. And I think that's the pitfall a lot of people think.

[00:07:37] Oh, I have to get the same certifications as Casey. And you don't. You have to find there's like 130 something. And I sit down with people and help them find the thing for them. But there's a certification for every type of nursing, I promise.

[00:07:52] So you just get the certification that goes with whatever your specialty is. But for me, it's critical care. That's my thing. I think that's important. You touch on a lot of good things here. One thing that I'll touch upon, sometimes it's beef,

[00:08:06] that there's emergency nursing and there's critical care nursing. And as someone myself, I started step down. But then I worked in ICU for a long period of time. Then I transitioned to emergency room nursing. And I did critical care transport.

[00:08:21] And so I think, well, I know both areas are extremely important. But they also kind of have their expertise and their thing. I don't think that anyone is better. They just have their expertise. And I think that's been the beef so long between those areas.

[00:08:35] But for what the work that you're doing when it comes to even when you're doing your CCRN or you're doing your CEN, I think there is a nice overlap. There's like a sweet spot where they overlap. And in your journey, can you tell us

[00:08:49] about that overlap with where you found critical care and emergency nursing meeting in the middle? So for me, I feel like the middle ground is transport nursing. It is the perfect, I could do that all day long. Transport nursing is my favorite

[00:09:09] of the critical care specialties that I've worked in because you do get that like the emergency, like oh, you're not just stuck with one person for 12 hours. You go and you take people. And then the independence and like you, I think a lot of people get in transport

[00:09:24] and they don't realize that critical care ground and flight transport, you are the person. You are making these individualized decisions. You are practicing at the top, the highest part of your scope in nursing. And you have to be able to make those individual decisions

[00:09:41] and not second guess yourself. Just make them sick with them, move on. And then also be okay with the fact that your patient could crash on you in the middle of your transport and being kind of like comfortable, like safe enough that they can leave

[00:09:56] but understand that they could become very ill. And I've had the unlikely thing of a patient coding in transport. And that was very difficult because you realize very quickly that you don't have all the resources, but I had an EMS background too, which helped.

[00:10:12] So if you're interested in transport, like become an EMT, you know, you don't have to become a paramedic. You can become an EMT just so you understand, you know what it's like to work in that team dynamic that's a lot smaller than having a doctor

[00:10:24] and respiratory like that's you in the paramedic and the EMT. So I think transport is the perfect blend of those two for me. And then for me, it was kind of interesting because I think a lot of nurses think, oh, ED and ICU, they're the same thing.

[00:10:39] They're very similar, but they're very different in the fact that like somebody comes into the ER and we wanna make them better enough that they can leave either go home, go to the bed search unit or go to ICU. Like we've done the emergency care.

[00:10:54] We have stabilized them. They will continue to be stabilized in the ICU. And the ICU when patients crump, it's not good. It's like we've missed something. And I think when I first moved to the ICU from the ED, I would just that idea escaped me.

[00:11:10] Like I didn't understand it. And it seems silly, like you obviously, yeah, you don't want them to get worse, but in the ICU I work in now, it's very high acuity. So the patients are very sick when they come up and they just, you know,

[00:11:24] we take a lot of patients upgrade on the floor and we have very sick patients in our ICU. So people do code a lot in our ICU, but it's because they're sick. And I think understanding that like the chaos

[00:11:38] is not as exciting in the ICU as it is in the ED. Like chaos in the ICU is like bad. You're like, what did I miss? What things went wrong? And then in transport chaos, like sick, sick, sick, your tight training drips is like fun.

[00:11:53] But like chaos in transport is also bad because you're like, oh gosh, should we have not had taken this person? So it's a lot. And you just have to be, my favorite thing about transport is really being comfortable with being called

[00:12:05] and told, hey, you have a pregnant patient or hey, you have a pediatric patient. Hey, you have a patient that's, you know, is on a balloon pump and needs cardiac surgery. So the variety and like the what's gonna happen next is what I love about transport.

[00:12:21] I don't currently work in transport because I'm trying to go to nursing and anesthesia schools. So they do not accept transport, which kind of is a bummer because it's very, I feel like I practice very at the top of my scope as a transport nurse

[00:12:35] and I become a lot better with independent decisions and just, you know, you have to sit in those decisions when you make them and not like dwell on them. And I think that's the good part about transport. Yes, transport. And for those of you who are listening

[00:12:49] who may be interested in transport, like Casey was saying, this is an area where you really are gonna be practicing to the top of their scope of practice because you are, you're it, you're it in whether you're doing ground transport, air transport.

[00:13:06] You are the practitioner that's with the patient. And so when I first went into transport, I kind of struggled a little bit because it was like, okay, they're sick. They're like, they're really sick, but they're so sick that if I don't take them,

[00:13:21] to this higher level of care, they're gonna die. But they also run the risk of dying while I take them. So that was what was going on in my head. I'm like, okay, well, Lord, I don't want nobody to die,

[00:13:31] but if somebody's gonna die, let's at least try to get there, like in the door. And so that's something you really have to be prepared. So Casey, it makes sense that as you mentioned earlier, it's more than what I do at my hospital or my unit,

[00:13:44] but studying for your certifications really kind of opens you up to standards of practice, benchmark practice across the nation in other similar areas, how they diagnose, treat or manage patients. So tell us a little bit about that journey too, because we're so busy as nurses

[00:14:01] actually practicing and doing the care. Many of us will have a natural curiosity to wanna learn more, but to make the decision to study for a certification, that can be stressful. So walk us through your process as to, you know what, how you decided

[00:14:16] which certification you were gonna take and how you prepared for it. So I had this idea, this is right before COVID happened. I was like, I'm gonna take all of them in one year. I mean, it's hitting all. And then COVID happened and I was like, okay,

[00:14:29] well, I'm just trying to hang on for dear life during all this. It really like, I just worked a lot during COVID and then I thought the next year, I was like, you know, I'm gonna do it this year.

[00:14:39] And so I started with, I knew that I wanted to do CCRN. So the critical care registered nurse exam from critical care nurses association. And I wanted to do that. And at the time, I wanted to just do the transport nurse certification.

[00:14:56] I had heard of like the super SAR, you know, the super certified BCEN because I worked in emergency nursing, like people that have all five. And I was like, that was cool back before COVID. But then I was like, let me focus on these two.

[00:15:09] So I wanted to transport because at that time it was like less than 200 nurses had the transport nursing certification. I think I was like 177 or something to have that. And there was only 3000 nurses that had flight nurse that certification. So I was like, I want something that's obscure

[00:15:29] that I do in transport so that I stay it out when I applied to nursing anesthesia school. And I want, you know, letters behind my name because it's kind of like, and you have letters. So when people see letters, they already know what you do.

[00:15:43] They're like, okay, so your emergency, oh, you do transport. Sometimes I get people that are like, I have no clue what that sort is, but for the most part, like people see the letters and there's an understanding that you've,

[00:15:54] you know, you're like a student of nursing at that point. So I knew I wanted to do that. And then I passed the CCRN. I had taken my paramedic certification first and I said, well, if I pass that, I'll take, you know, CCRN.

[00:16:09] It was nice cause it helped me study for CCRN. And what I did was I studied while I was at work. I was really realistic in how I studied. So like, if you're going to take a certification, don't think like, I'm going to study four times a week.

[00:16:21] If you work three days a week and you have that side gig that you know, that you like to make that money, don't think that you're going to study. And then I never counted work time as study time because it doesn't, that's not guaranteed.

[00:16:35] So if it's like dead on your unit, you have a time, you can pull out your book and study. And the nice thing is like, I'm an assistant nurse manager now. So people can't bring their computers and stuff. But I'm like, if you're studying like for a certification,

[00:16:49] bring it out, like let's talk about it. Let's go find something in the unit that's whatever you're studying this week. So I think that that's helpful too. Like go find the patient that you're studying on and like take that what you're reading and apply it to them.

[00:17:04] And then I just kind of started after I took that test, I signed up for CTRN and CFRN because they were very similar. I took them both in one week. Don't do that, don't do that. And then I ended up taking four of the tests in April.

[00:17:20] So by the end of April, I had four more certifications. Don't do that either. I didn't even realize I did it. I was just like, okay, I passed that one. Let's see if I can pass this one. Let's see if I can pass this one.

[00:17:32] Don't do that though. That was insane. I literally like would work and then I would, I work night shift too. So on night shift, like I would take my tests during the day. So I would like sleep and like take them on my day,

[00:17:44] the one day like off, don't do that though. And then I let a lot of time go between them. So really like the, my only tip is like just, you know figure out which one you want to take and then just be realistic that you're studying

[00:17:57] and like working because you work but then think about all the TikTok videos you consume when you're at work and all the things like you can find somebody who does like, you know questions on Instagram or TikTok or something. So you can, if that's how you learn best

[00:18:13] you can find that information and just watch nursing like TikTok videos on top of it. But you just have to be realistic and higher studying and then like the people that are negative we just shut them out. So if you, somebody is on a unit, like,

[00:18:26] if that were there, shut them up. Because the thing too is like for me after I took certifications, I learned a lot but then I was looking at what we were doing at my hospital. I was like, okay but if the textbook says

[00:18:38] that we should do things this way and like everybody seems to be practicing this way and there's research on it why aren't we doing it this way? And so it was a lot of like questioning like, you know why do we use this drug as the first line

[00:18:51] if everybody says that this is the best first line? So it was a lot of after I took it there was a lot of things I learned that I was like, oh I haven't been doing that right at all. Or wow, if I would have known that

[00:19:02] it would have made my life with this disease process a lot easier. So I think that that was really helpful. And then whatever you do, just make sure that you use one or two study materials. You don't need 85. You don't need to spend all your money

[00:19:18] on a review courses and things. Just grab a book, grab a friend and then if you don't know something, you know look it up online and add to whatever you're studying. Like if you're using a textbook, write notes in the margins.

[00:19:32] I did that for my book, I have it work right now but I just wrote all in the margins things to help me understand it in my way. And I use a literation for everything. So that helped me. Well you brought up a lot of great points.

[00:19:45] So the first one is the naysayers. Okay so you'll have some nurses Casey and some of them will think like I'm a great ICU nurse I'm a great emergency room nurse. I don't need a certification to demonstrate that or prove that they'll say those type of things

[00:20:00] and they'll say well why should I spend money on a certification if it doesn't make an impact with how much money I make? So like what are your, what would you say to that nurse who believes in those statements? For me it never like,

[00:20:16] I've had people ask me too like, oh how much more money do you make? And I'm like none. So some places will pay you like $1 or two more for certs but they don't pay me $8 more. They just pay me a dollar.

[00:20:29] So I think like part of the practice is understanding that like you, the continuing education stuff that you do it benefits your patients but also you like so if you become certified you know it brings it, you're more likely to climb the clinical ladder if you're certified.

[00:20:47] You're more likely to put in promotional things if you're certified. You're more likely to be present on the unit and get involved with things if you're certified. Those things in turn like climbing the clinical ladder leads to more money and things but I think at some point too

[00:21:02] being a student of like your practice and not just coming to work, work and go home and it's hard. Like I'm not gonna sugar coat it and say nursing is the best thing ever all the time. COVID you know the only thing that kept me

[00:21:16] in the profession during COVID was looking was studying for certification because it's just so hard when everything that you learn gets tossed out the window especially if you're new and you're like oh I'm reading about best practice and we're using trash bags for PPE.

[00:21:32] So it's hard when you're trying to get yourself together but for me I thought of like if I was the best nurse that I could be what can I do? And it was like be certified. And then that translates you're just more comfortable talking to patients like

[00:21:47] and I'm fine with talking to patients, providers. Like if you already are like I've been a nurse for eight years become certified. It also does things to you on the back end like critical care Casey wouldn't be a thing without certification.

[00:22:01] So it opens up doors to new opportunities as well because a lot of positions look for people to be certified but if you're not interested in this whatever bedside say you have your CCRN and you wanna be a device rep. Okay that makes you more marketable for that.

[00:22:15] So it helps you also like open up doors and opportunities for other things. Now Casey you also mentioned you're an assistant nurse manager. So I imagine that you got a lot of nurses in your respective areas that are probably consulting you about getting a certification.

[00:22:30] Sometimes leadership they will say, oh yeah we want nurses to have our certification your certifications but they don't always make it easy for nurses to have the time off to study or to take the test or reschedule a test to do those things.

[00:22:45] So what do you do on your unit to make it easier for nurses? So the first thing is we so I'm a certification ambassador for critical care nurses association ACM and I think that's like crucial because also like right now, sorry to my leadership team

[00:23:04] I'm the only leadership person in our ICU that actually has their CCRN. So it's hard sometimes to sorry if you're listening it's sometimes very hard to push certification when the leadership is not certified but I pushed our manager to become certified but it's, I think that the thing

[00:23:28] is that people see the letters behind my name and there's two reactions to see like, this girl's awful like she's probably miserable energy and then they meet me and they're like oh you're so much nicer than I thought you were gonna be and I'm like okay.

[00:23:41] But there's also the people who are like I want that and for me I was like I want that when I was a baby nurse. So when I see like nurses on the unit that they come up and they'll, and the nice thing too

[00:23:52] is that because I have certifications that we're like I wanna be certified what should I do? And I had the wonderful opportunity to write for the CCRN to be an item writer. So sorry if the questions are hard but I had the opportunity to do that

[00:24:07] so it was really nice because I could tell them like these are the resources that we use when we item writes this is like, you know, this is the Bible this is the study book this is where you should be like

[00:24:18] these are, this is where you should get your information from. And I think sometimes leadership is not supportive. I mean my leader when I was a bedside nurse was the actual opposite of supportive. Like if I made a test date she would put me on that day.

[00:24:32] So like working that night it was awful or I had a manager who told me that I shouldn't take it she was not gonna put me through the review class because she didn't think I was gonna pass. And I was like, mm.

[00:24:43] So then when I didn't work there anymore because of it my coworker that like adored me she every time I passed the certification she would take, she would be like, oh my God look at what Casey did. So for me it's like I'm super supportive of people

[00:24:57] like, oh your test is this day and you need this day off or like, oh your test is coming up and you want two days off. Yeah let's look and see what we can do with the schedule. Oh, you know when people have downtime

[00:25:08] they'll, you know people come up to me when I'm working in the office and not on the floor and they'll say, oh you know I was like I'm in a stuck spot here can you make it make sense? And we sit down and like explain it.

[00:25:21] You know I pull out a box of goodies I keep like little things people donate like all over the hospital donate to my like I just gigantic box on our unit and it's just like a box that people can put expired meds

[00:25:33] and stuff in because they know at like the dead of night I'll grab stuff out of the box and they're like we're gonna do an impromptu education session come on by. So I think having that on the unit is helpful

[00:25:46] because you know night shift like I'm a night shift leader too which is nice cause you know night shift is always the forgotten people in the hospital. So it's like nice people have moved to night shift cause they're like oh you're so supportive and I think that's important

[00:25:59] it's like supporting people on their journey and not you know I don't like date keeping anything like I'll tell people like I'll be their verifier for their hours I'll do this I can the gaming permission assigned for people when they make the agreement

[00:26:13] that they will take their certification and we'll pay for it. You know I'll reach out to people and see you know if there's a review session because they need they wanna do one you know I'll reach out to the people that I know that do them

[00:26:25] and you know see if they can squeeze them in to stuff you have to like back up what you're saying so if I'm on like you know social media and self saying certification you have to be that same person when you're like a leader on the unit

[00:26:37] and when I was a bedside nurse still I was our certification ambassador on the unit and I was pushing people and you know the same like I don't wanna do it and it's like then they would I would talk to them about stuff like well how do you

[00:26:49] how are you so like calm and I'm like well because I've studied it so now like when I see them practice it's not as scary and some of our new grads like I'm like the chillest ICU nurse like we're coding people

[00:27:01] and I'm like I just like try to anticipate the meds that we need and I try to anticipate like oh well we're gonna anticipate this person I need to grab these meds or do you want this med and it's like how are you thinking 80 steps ahead

[00:27:14] it's like well because I've learned the knowledge and now I'm putting it into the practice so if you don't have supportive people in your unit and you're listening like that's not my manager you always have me so you know you can reach out

[00:27:26] like and especially like if your leadership is not supportive of certification you know keep it to the chest take your tests and you know there's a lot of people who don't like certification because they don't see the worth in it or they have not passed a test

[00:27:43] just sometimes that's what I wanted to ask you next so like what if you are someone cause some people don't they'll say I'm studying for it but they don't want to tell you when their test date is and sometimes it's because they've taken right

[00:27:57] so like they've taken it and maybe they've not passed they don't want anyone to know and they may feel really discouraged so what are some words you have for people who maybe have taken a certification test didn't pass it and are considering maybe not considering taking it again

[00:28:10] what advice would you give them? So I failed the CEN by one point I was too new I was like maybe like nine months my precept was like I think you could do it in the ED like a year of bedside nursing like Med Search Telly before that

[00:28:26] and I was like I think I can do it and I didn't pass it by a point but I really again I was focused on my patient population at work and not the emergency department population and I was like there's pediatrics on this

[00:28:40] it's an adult it's a CEN why but I worked in a mixed ED where we saw kids and I was like why are the kids that they haven't touched for that so I think for me I really like sat in that like oh my God I failed

[00:28:56] I'm the worst ERR nurse ever like people are certified or like I would look at people and like comparison is the thief of joy so like don't compare yourself to people you're your own person and if you don't pass it the first time it's very similar to people

[00:29:10] who don't pass the NCLEX the first time it doesn't mean that you're not a bad nurse it just means that you just need to go back and look over things again I mean maybe there's a spot that you maybe missed every question

[00:29:23] like I remember when I took the CEN you failed by one point but like if it's a point that fails you you missed a lot more questions than you know than that so it's kind of like sitting in that and realizing that like I needed to go back

[00:29:35] and study that section more and I wasn't prepared to take it and the second time I like crushed it and I was like this is my test but just get back up and take it again you know study and just take it again

[00:29:48] like you can take them over and over again so if you take it like three times you don't pass reach out to somebody really like you know share your score with somebody who's certified and ask people I think there's a lot of like really weird

[00:30:00] gatekeeping with certification sometimes like people don't wanna share their success with them and I'll just tell people like what I used this I did this do that do that there's I have made a TikTok video about how I studied because that's what I get asked the most

[00:30:16] how did I study and it's just having the discipline and focus like you have the discipline in practice you have to have the discipline to sit down and study and take the time and just think of like you're investing all this time

[00:30:29] in for the day that your patient has that where they present with that and you're the only person on the unit who knows what it is and what to do and what a feeling that is so I had self-subsub obscure

[00:30:42] I mean I read it when I was studying for certification I'd never seen it before and then when I saw it I was like I know exactly what this is I know exactly how to treat it I might need somebody to help me with like

[00:30:52] I don't know how to administer the medication I can look that up on Wibbendcott but I know exactly what I'm doing because I had studied it so that moment when you're like okay oh okay I studied you kind of like you study for a nursing school

[00:31:07] you should kind of have the idea like you are always going to be a student of your specialty because the moment that you think you're good it's like the rug comes out and you're like I'm dumb so that's just kind of the idea

[00:31:20] I think that's important you say that so there's just so much in healthcare there's so much in nursing so guys no one's ever gonna know it all I'm a believer of I don't need to know everything but I need to know where to look it up

[00:31:31] right and so but I think with continued exposure continuing professional development one day that information is gonna stick like think about it how many times did you have to review how do beta blockers work and then one day you just knew it and you knew all of them

[00:31:46] and so it's gonna stick one day but I think the continuing exposure is helpful and that's it helps with not only like knowledge retention but then the critical thinking and the synthesis of all of this stuff together because that's really what it's about

[00:31:59] you can study and learn all these things but how do you actually apply it in your specific clinical scenario so I think that's one of the great things about certifications and I love how like the impromptu classes the TikToks like there's so many different ways

[00:32:13] you can study and prepare for these type of things and Casey you have studied and prepared for several of a nursing certification so kudos to you hats off to you love the alphabets behind the name and guys it's actually it's more than just letters behind your name

[00:32:28] but Casey has clearly demonstrated that she has clinical expertise, clinical knowledge she's contributed to her professional nursing organizations so Casey before we let you go you have wonderful tips and tools and things that you can help all of our audience members with

[00:32:43] so tell us what do you have and where can we find you? I'm on Instagram, Critical Care Casey there I do questions and like little this or that it's like little things to keep people like entertained in the practice so little teaching points and tips

[00:32:58] they're kind of random but like I have highlights and you can like look at different things across them and then LinkedIn is where I'm more like professional but more of like my thoughts on nursing and just like tips in leadership and like nursing tips there as well

[00:33:16] and then I have a Twitter account I'm a bad millennial I'm a bad content creator but I have a website too you can always email me to at criticalcarecacyatgmail.com usually I meet with people I was gonna charge people but then I just feel like that's not organic

[00:33:34] and you know that's not really what I'm here for I'm here just to help people and I found support to get where I was to get where I was to I found people that were willing to help me get here so I wanna help other people get here

[00:33:49] and they didn't charge me for anything so you know there's people out there that wanna help you and I kind of like am like the middleman who helps you like find those people or I'm your cheerleader so find me on Instagram, on LinkedIn my website or email me

[00:34:06] I think that's important that you are such a giver of knowledge and such a supporter freely and yes there are people who wanna charge and guys I understand the component of that but I have to say some of my best teachers

[00:34:20] were those who were just giving up knowledge because people do use knowledge as a gatekeeper and as a way to kind of suppress I don't think suppress someone's growth but to keep themselves elevated if I will say cause knowledge is power

[00:34:32] but guys in this world of what we do with nursing and healthcare we need to be sharing cause I need my colleagues, my coworkers to be able to take care of their patients in the best way possible

[00:34:42] cause if not I'm gonna get pulled in there to do that and then who knows they may be taking care of your loved one or your friend or even you so we really gotta support each other in that way so Casey thank you so much for sharing that

[00:34:51] you guys make sure to follow Casey and I also wanna say shout out to nurse.org for allowing me to do this podcast the Ask Nurse Alice podcast is presented by nurse.org so make sure to check out their website tons of great information

[00:35:03] and if you wanna know more information about Casey as well we'll definitely have an article showcasing all of her talents and accomplishments cause we're so proud of our nurses and I'm so glad that nurse.org is here as a support a friend of nursing

[00:35:15] because we need more cheerleaders we always told like what goes wrong but rarely ever do we celebrate so thanks nurse.org for all the great celebration and guys this is a great podcast if you are considering getting your nursing certification or maybe you didn't pass it

[00:35:31] you need a little pick me up need a little advice this is the episode so share this with your classmates your college, your coworkers your manager, your unit practice counsel your teachers and your classmates at school because this is the episode that keeps giving

[00:35:45] and guys if you could please like share comment to leave a review cause that's how we grow the podcast so if we get this out to more nurses and if you would like to make a recommendation I have a comment about the podcast

[00:35:57] you can email me at nurse Alice at nurse.org we'll love to get your feedback we'll love to get your comments and say hey maybe even have you on as a guest so guys I'm nurse Alice thanks so much for tuning in

[00:36:07] until next time please make a good choices be kind to one another and live well my friends thanks for listening to Ask Nurse Alice visit nurse.org for nursing career education and community resources