Bullying and Incivility in Nursing with Dr. Phyllis Quinlan

[00:00] Michelle: If you've been listening to the podcast for a while, you've heard me say that we would be discussing bullying. And I'm happy to report that after over 65 episodes, I'm finally doing that, and I'm not only talking about it, I'm talking to the expert about it. My guest, Dr. Phyllis Quinlan, a Ph.D. prepared nurse, literally wrote the book on bullying and chronic incivility in nursing. With a combined 45 years as a nurse educator, legal nurse consultant, and executive coach. And having experienced bullying herself, she is well equipped for the difficult conversation and has some insightful solutions to end it. She's also a businesswoman, or in her words, a businesswoman who also happens to be a nurse. She's the founder and CEO of MFW Consultants and takes pride in taking care of the caregivers by using her expertise as a legal nurse consultant to defend those in the profession. And let's talk about emotional intelligence for a moment. Dr. Quinlan defines this for adults as the secret sauce to success in your personal and professional life. Well,  Dr. Quinlan's emotional intelligence score must be off the charts, this was truly one of the best conversations. In the five-minute snippet: Move over, Barack.
Well, good morning, Phyllis. Welcome to the podcast.
[01:51] Phyllis: Good morning, Michelle. Lovely to be here.
[01:55] Michelle: It's lovely to have you. I have been looking since I started the podcast for an expert in bullying, and I've heard you speak on several podcasts, and you just have so much to offer me in terms of learning. I need to learn more about that and my audience. So I'm really excited for you to be here today.
[02:22] Phyllis: Thank you. I welcome the opportunity to raise everybody's awareness on this subject.
[02:28] Michelle: Certainly a topic for discussion. So I've said this many times that every great nurse got their start somewhere. So give us a little bit of your backstory.
[02:43] Phyllis: Sure. Well, I was an undiagnosed Dyslexic in high school, going back to when Dyslexia or attention deficit was absolutely unknown. So I struggled in high school with certain subjects and really didn't come into my own until my senior year of high school. But when I spoke to my guidance counselor, know about what I wanted to do and I shared with her, I'm thinking about nursing, I'm thinking about college and all of this, I didn't get a whole lot of support. I pretty much got the look like Phyllis, that's a bridge too far. But I was determined, so I struggled and took the SATS five or six times until I got an acceptable grade to get into a college. And then I thought I would ease my way into it. I was very much taken in by psychology, so I started studying psychology with the thoughts of going into social work because more than likely, nursing was going to be a bridge too far for me. But something magical happened when I went to college. It all made sense. There was a way of teaching, or maybe self-teaching in college that was far more in alignment with my learning challenge than anything in high school was. So I decided to leave the program that I was in and move into a program where I could study psychology and sociology with the thoughts of going into psychiatric social work. And I graduated with a dual degree both in Psych and sociology and then really decided, well, instead of going on for my Master's, should I give nursing a try? Should I go back and see if I can do those sciences? And sure enough, I went back to the school I originally had graduated from and just needed to complete the nursing piece, which I was at this point far more successful in being able to do. So, again, I thought I was going to enter the caring profession as the greatest psychiatric nurse in the world and wound up never working in a psychiatric facility. I actually interned for a short period of time. I think I was a psychiatric social worker for about 20 minutes. And then I went back to nursing with the whole idea of becoming a psychiatric nurse until I got rotated through critical care and emergency trauma. And that turned out to be my passion and my love. I never looked back because as you can imagine in those venues, you use your psychology and sociology every day. So having the three baccalaureate degrees when I was told I probably couldn't graduate college was quite self-satisfying and just really a go to show you that you never let anybody tell you what your limitations or your abilities are. You find out for yourself. So I did have my initial career in critical care, and emergency trauma, and then right around the 90s, when managed care hit, there was a real need to go into subacute care, rehab, and long-term care facilities to come up to speed because we were now discharging patients far sicker and quicker. And those venues, although they were accepting patients, the staff was not really prepared for what they were going to see. And those facilities really turned into medical-surgical hospitals. So I found myself in education, training that staff to be able to accept and safely care for those patients. And then the rest of my 45-year career has been a combination of various clinical areas administration, teaching, practicing, and of course, consulting. I started my company, MFW Consultants, back in 1994 as a Me, Myself and I operation. And I am happy to share with you that my company now will I'm going to celebrate my 30th anniversary next year, which is pretty incredible for me, myself, and I operation.
[06:35] Michelle: That is fantastic. First of all, I love hearing the stories of how my guests get into nursing because it's so varied and it's not linear, right? It's not always linear. It's not always like in high school or in grade school. I knew I wanted to be a nurse and I started on that journey. And sometimes it's like we don't have that in mind at all. Like yourself, you were thinking more of social work and psychology and then ended up going down this road and being a fantastic nurse. So thank you for sharing that. I really love your story.
[07:18] Phyllis: Thank you.
[07:19] Michelle: So let's talk about your company and wow, congratulations on 30 years and doing that solo. There is a definite learning curve, and especially man in 1994, we did not have all the resources that we have today, right?
[07:36] Phyllis: No, that is true. Everything was done by mail. There was no email, at least I didn't have access to, I didn't have a company computer or anything like that set up. It was lick the envelope, send it out, put a prayer on it, and hopefully, you get some business. But I took advantage. I always had half a business mind. And what I saw, especially when managed care came in the well into, I guess, managed care hit around 1990, 91, 92, 93. And I am in the state of New York and we found ourselves in a situation in my full-time job at the time where we were cross-training the world because nobody wanted to lay off anybody. But there were certain things like medical, and surgical areas that were not going to be staffed as fully and completely as they had historically and people really needed to be cross-trained in telemetry, emergency trauma, things of that nature, and critical care. So at the time, I was in education at a facility or an organization here in New York, and it really came to light that there was tremendous amounts of money to cross-train. There was money from various labor unions, and there was money from the governor, but there was a real lack of people to train the classes. So we had all this money and not enough trainers. And the businesswoman in me saw an opportunity, otherwise known as a gap, all right, we have this, we don't have that. How can I fill that gap and start a company? So when I started MFW Consultants in 1994, it was to cross-train and become an independent cross-trainer, developing programs, PowerPoints, and different things I could cross-train from to meet a growing need. And that lasted for approximately six years. Probably brought me closer to 1998, 99. And of course, all the cross-training was completed at that point. But one of the things about being successful as a nurse entrepreneur is that you have to approach entrepreneurship or business as the next great specialty you're getting yourself involved in, which means you need to study, you need to think about, do I need a banker? What kind of incorporations are available to me in the United States incorporation laws, how do I do a business plan, how do I do a marketing plan? And you need to lean into business and entrepreneurship as if you were studying for critical care or certification in emergency nursing. So I did do that. One of the things that you also have to develop is a mindset that you cannot be a nurse who happens to be a businesswoman. You have to develop the mindset of a businesswoman who happens to be a nurse. And in doing so, you start to think more in a business-like manner. So when I saw the revenue starting to taper off from cross-training because the market was being saturated, I needed to look for the next big thing. And that's how I decided to go into legal nurse consulting.
[10:35] Michelle: Well, that's quite a journey. And I'd say you're a bit of a visionary, seeing a gap and seeing a need and wanting to fill that need and then educating yourself on how best to do that. So I think that's a beautiful thing. And I remember the exact time that you're talking about. I was about eight, or nine years into my career when that happened. And the organization that I was working for, we did a thing called Work Transformation. Yeah. And it kind of upended everything. We're going to teach the nurses. We're going to cross-train them to be phlebotomists, so nurses will do their own phlebotomy. Instead of calling the lab, we had to do, oh, gosh, a bit of everything. I think even Housekeeping was in there. So it was a tumultuous time. I know our institution and other institutions were sort of following suit and doing the same thing, kind of condensing resources. And I know that the nurses were not very happy. We tried that for about a year, a year and a half at our institution, and then that went by the wayside, and we went a different route. But let's talk about the services that you provide at MFW Consultants. Can you talk about what you do there?
[12:06] Phyllis: Sure. So legal nurse consulting is a very big piece of what I do. I specialize in defense. The marketing line for my company is I take care of caregivers. That's my mission, that's my purpose. So that said, it was a no-brainer for me to approach legal nurse consulting from the standpoint of defense. I wanted to make sure that I offered my attorney clients the best possible insight on how the work that was done either by individual practitioners or organizations comported with best practices and standards of care. So I have been a legal nurse consultant for 18 years now. I've done hundreds of cases and really have learned a lot about not just legal nurse consulting, but how work is done and how some of the gaps in documentation and different things where I can then offer those insights as a consultant to various organizations who might be struggling with how to improve practice. Or they know they have good practice, but they're not capturing it in a manner that showcases a defensive practice. And I'm sure you understand, and most of us really, we hate to document on the defensive. We hate to do CYA kind of documentation. But it is really important to be able to have documentation tools that really showcase the work that's being done, the progress that's being done, the interprofessional collaboration on a patient's care that's being done in order to minimize risk and improve clinical outcomes.
[13:51] Michelle: Yeah, I think legal nurse consulting is such an intriguing specialty in the profession, and I had the pleasure of interviewing two legal nurse consultants on the podcast, and I learned so much from them. And again, I just think, as I told Leah, one of my guests, man, if I had known this was out there years ago, I probably would have gone into legal nurse consulting because it's just such an intriguing specialty.
[14:29] Phyllis: Yeah, I find it very rewarding. I find it part of my mission and purpose to take care of the caregiver or the caregiver organization and really showcase the great work that was done, the great care that was rendered. And this doesn't mean that I don't have empathy and compassion for the plaintiff, which is either a patient and or a family. It's just that you can't play for both teams. And I've chosen my team, and I hope I represent them well.
[14:58] Michelle: One of the things that I really took away because we hear this as we're growing up in nursing, we've heard it many times if you didn't document it, you didn't do it.
[15:12] Phyllis: That is the truth. However, it doesn't have to be literal. We have a lot of documentation tools, and anybody who signed off on a MAR, a treatment record, or a flow sheet knows that you probably sign your signature or your initials hundreds of times in a particular shift. So the art of doing defense is to be able to say, well, yes, it's not documented here where you're looking for it, but it's documented over here, and there it is, and it's undeniable. So it's really knowing your medical records. It's really knowing how people document where you can find validation that care was rendered in an appropriate manner.
[15:52] Michelle: And like today, we have really complex electronic medical records where there are so many different places documenting the same. I was discussing this with Leah that I got called on a deposition and my only deposition in my career and, you know, I'm sitting there, and this was before any type of electronic medical records, and I'm trying to read my scribble my handwriting, and it was pretty embarrassing. Well, one of the other hats that you wear is you're an executive coach and a keynote speaker. And so talk about who you're speaking to, who is your audience.
[16:43] Phyllis: Sure. So as I shared with you over 45 years, I've had various experiences, not only clinically and in an administrative capacity, but I would say probably 50% of my experience is in education. And I'm sure everybody can identify with the idea that if you as a staff person have something you want to discuss, more than likely you're going to go to your educator as opposed to your administrator. Unfortunately, administrators sometimes represent crime and punishment, and educators are a little bit softer, and gentler in their approach and maybe in their guidance. So I started to realize I was doing an awful lot of coaching, but it was unofficial, it was part of my education role. And when I started my company, and again, now I'm looking for the next market or a different market in order to increase revenue in my company. I said, Well, I think I have some really great coaching skills. So I started coaching in a very conventional manner. I would do resumes, I would do cover letters, I would talk about master's programs. Is it time for a baccalaureate? Where are you going? Is it time to try a leadership program? Just very conventional types of coaching questions that my clients would ask. And then one fine day, I got a phone call from someone who said, you have to help me find a job in nursing where I don't take care of patients. So my immediate thought went to, oh, this person is probably either surviving a chronic illness, perhaps cancer, or maybe they had an ergonomic injury. And I said, well, give me an idea, just a little bit of an idea as to what's your physical capacity and stamina, and then we can talk about maybe some options. And she laughed at me and she said, oh, I'm as healthy as a horse. I just don't want to take care of patients, and I really don't want to work with nurses and doctors anymore. So now I thought I had a crank call, and I'm like, so I'm asking a couple of more questions, and then finally realized I had my first client who was suffering from caregiver fatigue or burnout. And I was fascinated by it. And working with this person made me realize I had more studying to do. And I really leaned in and kind of entrenched myself in those things that were known at the time about burnout, about caregiver fatigue, empathy, fatigue, whatever they want to call it. But nonetheless, this is a person who's really lost their sense of connection to mission and purpose. And I started to specialize in that particular role. So my coaching grew not just from conventional coaching, but also then learning how to work with someone from a body, mind and spirit capacity as a professional coach and then became certified by the International Coaching Federation. And I've been lucky enough to have a variety of clients in a variety of situations. I'm going to say 90% of my clients are nurses in various capacities. Some of them are brand new to the profession, some of them are 20-year veterans, some are educators, some are new to leadership, and many of them are in executive capacities. I usually start that relationship one one-on-one, and then the relationship may grow where I get invited to come to the organization and perhaps do a leadership retreat or some sort of presentation over several hours or several days, but it's really been very rewarding. And then I came to the attention of the American Association of Perioperative Nurses AORN eleven years ago. And I have been AORN's internal professional career coach for the last eleven years. And it's been quite an honor. And I've spoken with hundreds of perioperative nurses across the country. Then back in 2021, I was also invited to be the career coach, and internal coach for the American Nurses Association here in New York State, the New York State chapter. So it's wonderful to be able to speak to colleagues across the country and in some cases internationally.
[20:50] Michelle: Those are some really high honors. And I'd like to go into a little bit more detail because I had some questions about your work with the AORN. How did that come about? How did that relationship come about? Was there a particular reason why the organization reached out to you and asked for your coaching? Talk about that.
[21:13] Phyllis: Back in guess it was 2011, because I started with AORN in 2012, I was doing a program, an online program called Nurse Success TV. And Nurse Success TV was a 15-minute online program created for nurses to talk about nursing subjects. But the program itself was only 15 minutes long and it was formatted so that a nurse could listen to the program while she was drinking the average cup of coffee. So it was one of those things they could tune in on a break. And I had a 90-second spot in every episode of Nurse Success TV where the program was called Ask Dr. Phyllis, and it was 90 seconds of coaching. So people would email in questions and I would do 90 seconds of coaching around their questions. So we had one or two years of that program, which was lovely, and apparently, that was AORN or representatives of the National AORN organization based in Denver had listened to a couple of the programs and said, we'd like to talk to this Dr. Phyllis. A representative reached out to me and said, so we have an idea that we'd like to offer coaching as a benefit for membership and that, you know, there's a lot of different conventional benefits out there. But we also know that our nurses, certainly burnout, were starting to come to bubble up to the forefront. People were starting to acknowledge that burnout was indeed legitimate and existed, and we'd like them to be able to have a resource that they can contact. But we'd like to float a test balloon if you will. We'd like to bring you out to an AORN Expo, which at the time was in San Diego, California. We'd like to set you up in a room and invite people, schedule people to come and speak to you, and see if there's really any appetite for this. Or are we just going to be disappointed? Because by and large, professional caregivers will not seek care for themselves. They will certainly do everything they can for a stranger or someone else, but they don't necessarily buy into self-care, let alone speaking about feelings and maybe even challenges. So I was just intrigued with the whole idea of, let's test this, let's see what happens. So I was out there for essentially three days, which was, I guess it boiled down to the better part of 20 hours over three days. And I coached over 60 people in those 20 hours. We did 15 and 20-minute little sessions, and sometimes it was a group, and sometimes it was two people, perhaps a student and their teacher or preceptor. The success was astounding. I was fascinated by it, AORN was captivated by it, and they were like, okay, I think we have something here. So here's what we'd like to do. We'd like to offer your coaching services to members as an added value to our membership. And when they'll get 90 minutes of free coaching with you when they join AORN, and when they renew, they'll get an additional 90 minutes of coaching with you every time they re-up their membership. And then we'd like you to come to every Expo, and we will set you up with a booth and you can do onsite coaching. And I've been doing that. Now, this year or 2024 will be my 11th year with AORN, and I've traveled all over the country, and usually during their Expos, I will coach, on average 30 to 40 maybe, plus nurses in various things. And it's just very exciting to see nurses start to care about themselves, to ask questions about themselves, to have a little bit more of a self-awareness that they can't give from a half-empty cup, that they really need to care for themselves first so that they have things to offer others. And it's been a process, certainly, it was a little awkward, like anything in the beginning, until we found a groove, and then people just started coming and talking and taking advantage of their free membership benefit, and then in some cases, following up with me professionally afterward.
[25:26] Michelle: Well, that's an absolutely fantastic service, and it sounds like a much-needed service. And I love the format. I love when you were talking about Ask Dr. Phyllis, because I'm a big fan of I grew up when we actually read newspapers, and I remember every Sunday, like, grabbing the paper and reading The Ann Landers. I loved it. I loved that format of people writing in and asking questions and her giving advice, but could we replicate that program? It feels like every professional organization needs something like that.
[26:12] Phyllis: I couldn't agree with you more. And just a big shout out to the American Nurses Association of New York State. They are replicating that program. I've been with them now since 2021. I was just upstate in Verona, New York, at their annual convention, state convention. And even though I was only there 48 hours or essentially 16 hours, I was able to coach 16 individuals on site. And some will follow up with me and some may not. But at least they stopped by and said, I think I might need this, or help me understand what coaching is and is not, and let's see if this is something I can benefit from. So I love the fact that we're starting to and this was remember, for AORN, it was all pre-COVID, for ANA, it's post-COVID. But we're starting to get more comfortable with understanding that what we do as a collective profession is so very challenging. And if you're not taking really good care of yourself, it can be absolutely draining. So there's a need now to really take care of yourself first and never see that as being selfish, but seeing that as essential to being a professional caregiver who offers themselves to others.
[27:30] Michelle: Well, again, that's just a fantastic service. And if we could replicate that everywhere, I think we'd be so much better off as a profession. So let's switch gears a little bit because there's one thing that I was very interested in, and that's your book, Bringing Shadow Behavior Into the Light of Day. And so talk about how this came to be, and then we'll delve into some more specific questions about bullying and incivility.
[28:06] Phyllis: So, first of all, I want to thank you for giving me an opportunity to raise awareness about this subject, because as you can imagine, when it comes to aberrant behavior or disruptive behavior in the workplace, people are reluctant to address this or bring it into the light of day. It might be whispered about, it might be regrettable, but we're not necessarily showcasing it as aberrant and destructive and then doing something about it. So, again, a big nod to AORN. Back in 2015 or 16, I was asked to join what they call their Nurse Executive Leadership Series. So they were doing Nurse Executive Leadership Series around the country, essentially ten cities across the United States where you would have director level and above two executive levels participating in these programs across the country, full-day programs across the country. And I guess based on some of my feedback to AORN about subjects that the nurses or their members were talking about, which was really creating healthy work environments and sustaining these things, and, of course, some other concerns that were coming up around the idea of bullying and instability. I was asked to do this program around the country, a full-day program addressing the issues of bullying and incivility. And unfortunately, I had enough to offer to make a full day program, as you can imagine. So the book came out of the ten-city tour that I did and I wrote that book the following year, over the following year to kind of really bring to light what is going on.
[00:00] Michelle: If you've been listening to the podcast for a while, you've heard me say that we would be discussing bullying. And I'm happy to report that after over 65 episodes, I'm finally doing that, and I'm not only talking about it, I'm talking to the expert about it. My guest, Dr. Phyllis Quinlan, a PhD prepared nurse, literally wrote the book on bullying and chronic incivility in nursing. With a combined 45 years as a nurse educator, legal nurse consultant, and executive coach. And having experienced bullying herself, she is well equipped for the difficult conversation and has some insightful solutions to end it. She's also a businesswoman, or in her words, a businesswoman who also happens to be a nurse. She's the founder and CEO of MFW Consultants and takes pride in taking care of the caregivers by using her expertise as a legal nurse consultant to defend those in the profession. And let's talk about emotional intelligence for a moment. Dr. Quinlan defines this for adults as the secret sauce to success in your personal and professional life. While Dr. Quinlan's emotional intelligence score must be off the charts, this was truly one of the best conversations in the five minute snippet. Move over, Barack. Here is Dr. Phyllis Quinton. You're listening to the conversing nurse podcast. I'm Michelle, your host, and this is where together we explore the nursing profession one conversation at a time. Well, good morning, Phyllis. Welcome to the podcast.
[01:51] Phyllis: Good morning, Michelle. Lovely to be here.
[01:55] Michelle: It's lovely to have you. I have been looking since I started the podcast for an expert in bullying, and I've heard you speak on several podcasts, and you just have so much to offer myself in terms of learning. I need to learn more about that and my audience. So I'm really excited for you to be here today.
[02:22] Phyllis: Thank you. I'm welcoming the opportunity to raise everybody's awareness on this subject.
[02:28] Michelle: Certainly a topic for discussion. So I've said this many times that every great nurse got their start somewhere. So give us a little bit of your backstory.
[02:43] Phyllis: Sure. Well, I was an undiagnosed Dyslexic in high school, going back to when Dyslexia or attention deficit was absolutely unknown. So I struggled in high school with certain subjects and really didn't come into my own until my senior year of high school. But when I spoke to my guidance counselor, know about what I wanted to do and I shared with her, I'm thinking about nursing, I'm thinking about college and all of this, I didn't get a whole lot of support. I pretty much got the look like Phyllis. That's a bridge too far. But I was determined, so I struggled and took the SATS five or six times until I got an acceptable grade to get into a college. And then I thought I would ease my way into it. I was very much taken in by psychology, so I started studying psychology with the thoughts of going into social work because more than likely, nursing was going to be a bridge too far for me. But something magical happened when I went to college. It all made sense. There was a way of teaching, or maybe self teaching in college that was far more in alignment with my learning challenge than anything in high school was. So I decided to leave the program that I was in and move into a program where I could study psychology and sociology with the thoughts of going into psychiatric social work. And I graduated with a dual degree both in Psych and sociology, and then really decided, well, instead of going on for my Master's, should I give nursing a try? Should I go back and see if I can do those sciences? And sure enough, I went back to the school I originally had graduated from and just needed to complete the nursing piece, which I was at this point far more successful in being able to do. So, again, I thought I was going to enter the caring profession as the greatest psychiatric nurse in the world and wound up never working in a psychiatric facility. I actually interned for a short period of time. I think I was a psychiatric social worker for about 20 minutes. And then I went back to nursing with the whole idea of becoming a psychiatric nurse until I got rotated through critical care and emergency trauma. And that turned out to be my passion and my love. I never looked back because as you can imagine in those venues, you use your psychology and sociology every day. So having the three baccalaureate degrees when I was told I probably couldn't graduate college was quite self satisfying and just really a go to show you that you never let anybody tell you what your limitations or your abilities are. You find out for yourself. So I did have my initial career in critical care, emergency trauma, and then right around the 90s, when managed care hit, there was a real need to go into for the subacute care, rehab and long term care facilities to come up to speed because we were now discharging patients far sicker and quicker. And those venues, although they were accepting patients, the staff was not really prepared for what they were going to see. And those facilities really turned into medical surgical hospitals. So I found myself in education, training that staff to be able to accept and safely care for those patients. And then the rest of my 45 year career has been a combination of various clinical areas administration, teaching, practicing, and of course, consulting. I started my company, MFW Consultants, back in 1994 as a Me, Myself and I operation. And I am happy to share with you that my company now will I'm going to celebrate my 30th anniversary next year, which is pretty incredible for a me, myself and I operation.
[06:35] Michelle: That is fantastic. First of all, I love hearing the stories of how my guests get into nursing because it's so varied and it's not linear, right? It's not always linear. It's not always like in high school or in grade school. I knew I wanted to be a nurse and I started on that journey. And sometimes it's like we don't have that in mind at all. Like yourself, you were thinking more of social work and psychology and then ended up going down this road and being a fantastic nurse. So thank you for sharing that. I really love your story.
[07:18] Phyllis: Thank you.
[07:19] Michelle: So let's talk about your company and wow, congratulations on 30 years and doing that solo. There is a definite learning curve, and especially man in 1994, we did not have all the resources that we have today, right?
[07:36] Phyllis: No, that is true. Everything was done by mail. There was no email, at least I didn't have access to, I didn't have company computer or anything like that set up. It was lick the envelope, send it out, put a prayer on it, hopefully you get some business. But I took advantage. I always had half a business mind. And what I saw, especially when managed care came in the well into, I guess, managed care hit around 1990, 219, 93. And I am in the state of New York and we found ourselves in a situation in my full time job at the time where we were cross training the world because nobody wanted to lay off anybody. But there were certain things like medical, surgical areas that were not going to be staffed as fully and completely as they had historically and that people really needed to be cross trained into telemetry, emergency trauma, things of that nature, critical care. So at the time I was in education at a facility or an organization here in New York, and it really came to light that there was tremendous amounts of money to cross train. There was money from various labor unions, there was money from the governor, but there was a real lack of people to train the classes. So we had all this money and not enough trainers. And the businesswoman in me saw an opportunity, or otherwise known as a gap, all right, we have this, we don't have that. How can I fill that gap and start a company? So when I started MFW Consultants in 1994, it was to cross train and become an independent cross trainer, developing programs, PowerPoints, different things I could cross train from to meet a growing need. And that lasted for approximately six years. Probably brought me closer to 1990, 819, 99. And of course, all the cross training was completed at that point. But one of the things of being successful as a nurse entrepreneur is that you have to approach entrepreneurship or business as the next great specialty you're getting yourself involved in, which means you need to study, you need to think about, do I need a banker? What kind of incorporations are available to me in the United States incorporation laws, how do I do a business plan, how do I do a marketing plan? And you need to lean into business and entrepreneurship as if you were studying for critical care or certification in emergency nursing. So I did do that. And one of the things that you also have to develop is a mindset that you cannot be a nurse who happens to be a businesswoman. You have to develop a mindset of a businesswoman who happens to be a nurse. And in doing so, you start to think more in a business like manner. So when I saw the revenue starting to taper off from cross training because the market was being saturated, I needed to look for the next big thing. And that's how I decided to go into legal nurse consulting.
[10:35] Michelle: Well, that's quite a journey. And I'd say you're a bit of a visionary, seeing a gap and seeing a need and wanting to fill that need and then educating yourself on how best to do that. So I think that's a beautiful thing. And I remember the exact time that you're talking about. I was about eight, nine years into my career when that happened. And the organization that I was working for, we did a thing called Work Transformation. Yeah. And it kind of upended everything. We're going to teach the nurses. We're going to cross train them to be phlebotomists, so nurses will do their own phlebotomy. Instead of calling the lab, we had to do, oh, gosh, a bit of everything. I think even Housekeeping was in there. So it was a tumultuous time. I know at our institution and other institutions were sort of following suit and doing the same thing, kind of condensing resources. And I know that the nurses were not very happy. We tried that for about a year, a year and a half at our institution, and then that went by the wayside, and we went a different route. But let's talk about the services that you provide at MFW Consultants. Can you talk about what you do there?
[12:06] Phyllis: Sure. So legal nurse consulting is a very big piece of what I do. I specialize in defense. The marketing line for my company is I take care of caregivers. That's my mission, that's my purpose. So that said, it absolutely was a no brainer for me to approach legal nurse consulting from the standpoint of defense. I wanted to make sure that I offered my attorney clients the best possible insight on how the work that was done either by individual practitioners or organizations really comported with best practice and standards of care. So I will have been a legal nurse consultant for 18 years now. And I've done hundreds of cases and really have learned a lot about not just legal nurse consulting, but how work is done and how some of the gaps in documentation and different things where I can then offer those insights as a consultant to various organizations who might be struggling with how to improve practice. Or they know they have good practice, but they're not capturing it in a manner that showcases a defensive practice. And I'm sure you understand, and most of us really, we hate to document on the defensive. We hate to do CYA kind of documentation. But it is really important to be able to have documentation tools that really showcase the work that's being done, the progress that's being done, the interprofessional collaboration on a patient's care that's being done in order to minimize risk and improve clinical outcomes.
[13:51] Michelle: Yeah, I think the legal nurse consulting is such an intriguing specialty in the profession, and I had the pleasure of interviewing two legal nurse consultants on the podcast, and I learned so much from them. And again, I just think, as I told Leah, one of my guests, man, if I had known this was out there years ago, I probably would have gone into legal nurse consulting because it's just such an intriguing specialty.
[14:29] Phyllis: Yeah, I find it very rewarding. I find it part of my mission and purpose to take care of the caregiver or the caregiver organization and really showcase the great work that was done, the great care that was rendered. And this doesn't mean that I don't have empathy and compassion for the plaintiff, which is either a patient and or a family. It's just that you can't play for both teams. And I've chosen my team, and I hope I represent them well.
[14:58] Michelle: One of the things that I really took away because we hear this as we're growing up in nursing, we've heard it many times if you didn't document it, you didn't do it.
[15:12] Phyllis: That is the truth. However, it doesn't have to be literal. We have a lot of documentation tools, and anybody who signed off on a MAR, a treatment record or a flow sheet knows that you probably sign your signature or your initials hundreds of times in a particular shift. So the art of doing defense is to be able to say, well, yes, it's not documented here where you're looking for it, but it's documented over here, and there it is, and it's undeniable. So it's really knowing your medical records. It's really knowing how people document where you can find validation that care was rendered in an appropriate manner.
[15:52] Michelle: And like today, we have really complex electronic medical records where there are so many different places documenting the same. Know, I was discussing this with Leah that I got called on a deposition and my only deposition in my and, you know, I'm sitting there, and this was before any type of electronic medical records, and I'm trying to read my scribble my handwriting, and it was pretty embarrassing. Well, one of the other hats that you wear is you're an executive coach and a keynote speaker. And so talk about who you're speaking to, who is your audience.
[16:43] Phyllis: Sure. So as I shared with you over 45 years, I've had various experiences, not only clinically and in an administrative capacity, but I would say probably 50% of my experience is in education. And I'm sure everybody can identify with the idea that if you as a staff person have something you want to discuss, more than likely you're going to go to your educator as opposed to your administrator. Unfortunately, administrators sometimes represent crime and punishment, and educators are a little bit softer, and gentler me in their approach and maybe in their guidance. So I started to realize I was doing an awful lot of coaching, but it was unofficial, it was part of my education role. And when I started my company, and again, now I'm looking for the next market or a different market in order to increase revenue in my company. I said, Well, I think I have some really great coaching skills. So I started coaching in a very conventional manner. I would do resumes, I would do cover letters, I would talk about master's programs. Is it time for a baccalaureate? Where are you going? Is it time to try a leadership program? Just very conventional types of coaching questions that my clients would ask. And then one fine day, I got a phone call from someone who said, you have to help me find a job in nursing where I don't take care of patients. So my immediate thought went to, oh, this person is probably either surviving a chronic illness, perhaps cancer, or maybe they had an ergonomic injury. And I said, well, give me an idea, just a little bit of an idea as to what's your physical capacity and stamina, and then we can talk about maybe some options. And she laughed at me and she said, oh, I'm as healthy as a horse. I just don't want to take care of patients, and I really don't want to work with nurses and doctors anymore. So now I thought I had a crank call, and I'm like, so I'm asking a couple of more questions, and then finally realized I had my first client who was suffering from caregiver fatigue or burnout. And I was fascinated by it. And working with this person made me realize I had more studying to do. And I really leaned in and kind of entrenched myself in those things that were known at the time about burnout, about caregiver fatigue, empathy, fatigue, whatever they want to call it. But nonetheless, this is a person who's really lost their sense of connection to mission and purpose. And I started to specialize in that particular role. So my coaching grew not just from conventional coaching, but also then learning how to work with someone from a body, mind and spirit capacity as a professional coach and then became certified by the International Coaching Federation. And I've been lucky enough to have a variety of clients in a variety of situations. I'm going to say 90% of my clients are nurses in various capacities. Some of them are brand new to the profession, some of them are 20-year veterans, some are educators, some are new to leadership, and many of them are in executive capacities. And I usually start that relationship one one-on-one, and then the relationship may grow where I get invited to come to the organization and perhaps do a leadership retreat or some sort of presentation over several hours or several days, but it's really been very rewarding. And then I came to the attention of the American Association of Perioperative Nurses AORN eleven years ago. And I have been AORN's internal professional career coach for the last eleven years. And it's been quite an honor. And I've spoken with hundreds of perioperative nurses across the country. Then back in 2021, I was also invited to be the career coach, and internal coach for the American Nurses Association here in New York State, the New York State chapter. So it's wonderful to be able to speak to colleagues across the country and in some cases internationally.
[20:50] Michelle: Those are some really high honors. And I'd like to go in a little bit more detail because I had some questions about your work with the AORN. How did that come about? How did that relationship come about? Was there a particular reason why the organization reached out to you and asked for your coaching? Talk about that.
[21:13] Phyllis: Back in guess it was 2011, because I started with AORN in 2012, I was doing a program, an online program called Nurse Success TV. And Nurse Success TV was a 15-minute online program created for nurses to talk about nursing subjects. But the program itself was only 15 minutes long and it was formatted so that a nurse could listen to the program while she was drinking the average cup of coffee. So it was one of those things they could tune in on a break. And I had a 92nd spot in every episode of Nurse Success TV where the program Ask Dr. Phyllis, and it was 90 seconds of coaching. So people would email in questions and I would do 90 seconds of coaching around their questions. So we had one or two years of that program, which was lovely, and apparently that was AORN or representatives of the National AORN organization based in Denver had listened to a couple of the programs and said, we'd like to talk to this Dr. Phyllis. A representative reached out to me and said, so we have an idea that we'd like to offer coaching as a benefit for membership and that, you know, there's a lot of different conventional benefits out there. But we also know that our nurses, certainly burnout, were starting to come to bubble up to the forefront. People were starting to acknowledge that burnout was indeed legitimate and existed, and we'd like them to be able to have a resource that they can contact. But we'd like to float a test balloon if you will. We'd like to bring you out to an AORN Expo, which at the time was in San Diego, California. We'd like to set you up in a room and invite people, schedule people to come and speak to you, and see if there's really any appetite for this. Or are we just going to be disappointed? Because by and large, professional caregivers will not seek care for themselves. They will certainly do everything they can for a stranger or someone else, but they don't necessarily buy into self-care, let alone speaking about feelings and maybe even challenges. So I was just intrigued with the whole idea of, let's test this, let's see what happens. So I was out there for essentially three days, which was, I guess boiled down to the better part of 20 hours over three days. And I coached over 60 people in those 20 hours. We did 15 and 20-minute little sessions, and sometimes it was a group, and sometimes it was two people, perhaps a student and their teacher or preceptor. The success was astounding. I was fascinated by it, AORN was captivated by it, and they were like, okay, I think we have something here. So here's what we'd like to do. We'd like to offer your coaching services to members as an added value to our membership. And when they'll get 90 minutes of free coaching with you when they join AORN, and when they renew, they'll get an additional 90 minutes of coaching with you every time they re-up their membership. And then we'd like you to come to every Expo, and we will set you up with a booth and you can do onsite coaching. And I've been doing that. Now, this year or 2024 will be my 11th year with AORN, and I've traveled all over the country, and usually during their Expos, I will coach, on average 30 to 40 maybe, plus nurses in various things. And it's just very exciting to see nurses start to care about themselves, to ask questions about themselves, to have a little bit more of a self-awareness that they can't give from a half-empty cup, that they really need to care for themselves first so that they have things to offer others. And it's been a process, certainly, it was a little awkward, like anything in the beginning, until we found a groove, and then people just started coming and talking and taking advantage of their free membership benefit, and then in some cases, following up with me professionally afterward.
[25:26] Michelle: Well, that's an absolutely fantastic service, and it sounds like a much-needed service. And I love the format. I love when you were talking about Ask Dr. Phyllis, because I'm a big fan of I grew up when we actually read newspapers, and I remember every Sunday, like, grabbing the paper and reading The Ann Landers. I loved it. I loved that format of people writing in and asking questions and her giving advice, but could we replicate that program? It feels like every professional organization needs something like that.
[26:12] Phyllis: I couldn't agree with you more. And just a big shout out to the American Nurses Association of New York State. They are replicating that program. I've been with them since 2021. I was just upstate in Verona, New York, at their annual convention, state convention. And even though I was only there 48 hours or essentially 16 hours, I was able to coach 16 individuals on site. And some will follow up with me and some may not. But at least they stopped by and said, I think I might need this, or help me understand what coaching is and is not, and let's see if this is something I can benefit from. So I love the fact that we're starting to and this was remember, for AORN, it was all pre-COVID, for Ana, it's post-COVID. But we're starting to get more comfortable with understanding that what we do as a collective profession is so very challenging. And if you're not taking really good care of yourself, it can be absolutely draining. So there's a need now to really take care of yourself first and never see that as being selfish, but seeing that as essential to being a professional caregiver who offers themselves to.
[27:30] Michelle: Others, well, again, that's just a fantastic service. And if we could replicate that everywhere, I think we'd be so much better off as a profession. So let's switch gears a little bit, because there's one thing that I was very interested in, and that's your book, Bringing Shadow Behavior Into the Light of Day. And so talk about how this came to be, and then we'll delve into some more specific questions about bullying and incivility.
[28:06] Phyllis: So, first of all, I want to thank you for giving me an opportunity to raise awareness about this subject, because as you can imagine, when it comes to aberrant behavior or disruptive behavior in the workplace, people are reluctant to address this or bring it into the light of day. It might be whispered about, it might be regrettable, but we're not necessarily showcasing it as aberrant and destructive and then doing something about it. So, again, a big nod to AORN. Back in 2015 or 16, I was asked to join what they call their Nurse Executive Leadership Series. So they were doing Nurse Executive Leadership Series around the country, essentially ten cities across the United States where you would have director level and above two executive levels participating in these programs across the country, full-day programs across the country. And I guess based on some of my feedback to AORN about subjects that the nurses or their members were talking about, which was really creating healthy work environments and sustaining these things, and, of course, some other concerns that were coming up around the idea of bullying and instability. I was asked to do this program around the country, a full-day program addressing the issues of bullying and instability. And unfortunately, I had enough to offer to make a full-day program, as you can imagine. So the book came out of the ten-city tour that I did and I wrote that book the following year, over the following year to kind of really bring to light what is going on. But essentially the leadership mandate for the 21st century is really creating and sustaining a healthy work environment. We are asking nurses to take better care of themselves and we're asking all individuals, quite honestly, to honor their mental health issues or their body, mind and spirit issues. But then we're also asking them many times to go back and work in toxic environments and it just doesn't make any sense and it's not a sustainable model. You can't ask the person to do all the work. The organization must do its fair share of the work to create a sense of a healthy work environment inside and out. The individual practitioner is responsible for their inner emotional intelligence, resilience, and sense of well-being, granted. But the organization is definitely responsible for showcasing and spotlighting any kind of toxicity or any type of aberrant behaviors that are distracting practitioners, increasing the chances of error, that are pulling the sand out underneath the good work they're doing on their own resilience and sense of well-being. So you're not only asking the practitioners to take good care of themselves, but you're offering them a work environment that supports that. So that is really the crux of the book. And I came at it from here's an issue and the first thing we need to do is understand it and we have to have some assessment criteria. I broke the two disruptive behaviors down to chronic incivility, which is the most common disruptive behavior, and then bullying, which is fortunately the least common destructive behavior or disruptive behavior. But probably even though it's the least common, it's the most destructive. So interestingly enough, when I asked the AORN leaders, and nursing leaders around the country, how many of your staff do you honestly believe show up every day ready, willing, and able to do world-class care and act in a team-like manner? Essentially they said 85% of my staff shows up like that. And that was a really wonderful number to hear. And then what about the other 15%? So when we talked about that, that was the 15% that would include all of the disruptive behaviors. And we broke it down to chronic incivility. And let's just kind of define that. Chronic instability is the behavior engaged by someone who is challenged in comporting with professional behavior or even has great self-awareness. They have very low emotional intelligence. So this is the person, if they call out sick, you know you're going to have a better day. You know who I mean, right? I mean, everybody can kind of somebody's. Face just popped into your mind's eye. If that person calls out, I'm going to have a much better day, even if I'm working short. What we decided was of the 15%, how large was the issue of chronic incivility? And they felt that that was two-thirds. So 10%, so to speak. Of that, 15% or two-thirds were going to be engaging in chronic incivility, which then of course left the smaller proportion, that 5% of the remaining 15% to be those who engaged in bullying and incivility. So my question became that if we had a 5% spike in something that was nerve sensitive, whether that was falls with injury pressure injuries, medication errors, or things of that nature, would we not have a plan in place in an hour to address that sudden spike in that nerve sensitive indicator? And of course, everybody agreed. And then the question then became, why are we not addressing effectively disruptive behavior? That may be the underpinning of distraction, mindset and focus, which could lead, of course, to error or other issues. And it was really a very engaging conversation across the country with some very, very important and very effective nurse leaders. But what we realized now is that we didn't know how to really assess them. So it's important to understand again that chronically uncivil individual has low emotional intelligence, can never get their work done, and can't come to work on time. When they do, it's always about their personal self. They're just annoying, annoying, draining, annoying. And again, you'd have a better day if they weren't at work. But the person that really is concerning to me is the person who's engaging in bullying. In order to understand bullying well, you have to understand that the person who is abusive has at their core a narcissistic personality. And then it becomes imperative to understand and really understand not just the definition of narcissism, but what makes a narcissist a narcissist and how do they communicate and how would you get your arms around this kind of disruptive behavior. So the important thing to understand is that right from the get-go, you cannot address bullying and or incivility on your own. If you don't have buy-in on addressing disruptive behavior in your unit or your department from Management, Executive Leadership and Human Resources, don't try, don't try to address it. If you try to address it on your own, I promise you it will not go well for you. You more than likely will be portrayed as the actual person being the bully. And it can blow up in your facing and it cost you your job and or your reputation. So it's discouraging if you have an organization that does not want to deal with this situation effectively. But I am really very almost begging you, don't go there unless you have complete support and buy-in from Executive Leadership and Human Resources. Because when someone who is a narcissist is engaging in bullying behavior. They use pardon me, various forms of what I call disruptive communication in order to sidestep accountability and responsibility. So the two biggest forms of disruptive or dysfunctional communication would be plausible deniability and gaslighting. So plausible deniability is simply lying to somebody's face by saying well it's not me, it's you. It's not me, it's you. You misunderstood. You did this. Why are you picking on me? Why are you making me a victim? And you can see how they can turn the tables on you very quickly if people don't understand exactly what's going on. Gaslighting is very similar. Gaslighting is you're just really undermining the confidence and the competence of an individual and doing it in a very self-serving abusive manner and portraying someone very very differently from what they actually are. So if people are unaware of how narcissists work and how narcissists communicate and there isn't a shared mindset that we have to be aware of these benchmarks that will be met as we are trying to put our arms around this disruptive behavior it can go badly for the person who's raised that issue. It's also important to understand that you can work with someone who's chronically uncivil. If you have the time, the resources and the inclination to pour a lot of time and money and resources into this person. You can raise somebody's emotional intelligence. You can have them turn around and comport themselves in a far more professional way and be a real value to the team. But it's going to take an awful lot and I don't know what kind of resources individual organizations have. The only way that you can deal with a bully is to document, document, document. Because a bully will never change. A narcissist will never see the need for them to change. It's the world that has to change to accommodate them. They will tell you what you want to hear. If they're in a tight situation they may say something like you're right I got to do this. I'll have to be more mindful. But what they are trying to do is buy time to get out of an awkward situation. They have no intent to actually comply with any action plan or improvement plan that you put out there. So it's something that the organization really has to understand that if you don't actually see sustainable change and this is sustainable change in someone who's acting in an abusive manner the only plan you should craft for them is a plan to the door because they're never going to change if you think they are. And this is part of the problem. And we think as professional caregivers we could cure a rainy day. We think we'll just put a little bit more time and effort into this person and the sun will shine and the angels will sing and they'll see the light and I'm here to tell you that's never going to happen. You're getting played for a fool if you think that indeed it's going to happen. You have to truly be very emphatic about your documentation, very emphatic about any performance improvement plans or action plans, and then really showcase. The person is just not able to sustain their piece of the agreement and then do that in such a way that they either exit the facility on their own or you have to have them exit the facility. And that will withstand scrutinization by arbitration and or wrongful termination.
[39:59] Michelle: Well, I really appreciate you defining those two,  chronic incivility and bullying. And I was chuckling when you were talking about how it's going to be a better day if this person calls out sick because we've all been there, right? We've all worked with those toxic people that just suck the life out of the unit. And working in this profession for 36 years, I've seen a lot of it over and over again. And the other thing that I have seen is the, I don't know if the word is apathy or just an inability to stop it, from the organization. And so we've all heard if we have kids in school, you hear many times that they have a zero-tolerance policy on this or that. And again, if you've had kids in school and you've known of things that kids did in the class, and that's a zero-tolerance event, and this child's going to be suspended or expelled, and then it doesn't happen, and it's like, yeah, right, you don't really have a zero-tolerance policy. And I think a lot of institutions, they say, we have zero tolerance for bullying, and then they tolerate it.
[41:31] Phyllis: Yeah, it's very confusing. And what I find is we as professional caregivers, really don't know enough about behavior, let alone aberrant behavior, unless you're one of our colleagues who specialize in behavioral health. Perhaps this is my degree in sociology and psychology and my initial desire to be a psychiatric social worker coming to the forefront, but I'm far more comfortable in discussing aberrant behavior than perhaps an average person in the nursing field who doesn't specialize in behavioral health. This is really something that we have to address. We have to get comfortable in talking about this, and we have to be far more serious and understand the nature of bullying and the effects of chronic instability instead of just saying to the individuals, well, for crying out loud, can't you just all get along? Can't you just work it out yourselves? I don't want to babysit. I don't want to do this. I have far bigger fish to fry. Just work it out among yourselves. And that really demonstrates the misunderstanding of a healthy workplace environment. It really is an abdication, as I said, of the 21st-century leadership imperative to create and sustain a healthy work environment. But it's really, to me, showcasing that you don't understand these behaviors, therefore you are reluctant to engage in them because they can be hot topics again. That's why there has to be a coordinated effort between management, executive leadership, and human resources. But here's the thing. Post-COVID, we found a very big reluctance in the collective caregiving professions and even outside of the caregiving professions to go back to things like they were. And one of the biggest challenges I was hearing across the country is everybody still wants to work remotely, nobody wants to come back. And again, this was in healthcare and in nonhealthcare venues. And when I started talking to people about this, what I was asking is, well, what's the pushback? What are you hearing? Well, they're asking me, does this still exist? Is this how we're going to do things? Is this person still working there? Is this person still in a leadership role? People were making their decisions or they were sharing their reluctance to come back and reenter the workplace proper based on working conditions and the people they were working with. So what I realized here is that people were more than willing to leave their conventional jobs and try something new, not so much on being fed up with the practice of nursing or professional caregiving, but very reluctant to go back into toxic work environments. And that was really a big piece of people coming back. A lot of nurses were talked about because they were going to go into travel nursing, and quite honestly, it was almost, in some cases, the only option some people had. So when I speak to travel nurses, there are really three categories here. There is the young nurse who said, oh my god, the planet nearly shut down and I haven't seen Hawaii yet. I'm going to travel, and I'm going to travel for a little while, and at least while I'm young, I'm single, I'm able to do that. And before the planet shuts down from the next big thing, that was one group of nurses. There was another group of nurses who were feeling very abandoned by their organizations. They felt that they were on the forefront and maybe leadership was not as visible as they had hoped they would be. They didn't feel that same sense of support, and they were reluctant to go back into these toxic situations. So they decided, I'll travel because you can do anything for 13 weeks, and if I don't like it, I'm going to leave in 13 weeks and no harm, no foul. And then there was another group of nurses who I think are really underrepresented in the sense that while they might have been working towards COVID their spouses and significant others weren't. Many family businesses crashed and burned. A lot of people were laid off, and furloughed, and there were some really hard economic times so that these nurses found themselves in order to make ends meet, they were burning through college funds and retirement funds, and now there was an opportunity to make pretty incredible money via travel, nursing. And quite honestly, they didn't feel that they had any other choice but to do that in order to put money back into the college funds and retirement funds that they had been living on during COVID So we're at a time now where we as leaders have to listen more to what the rank and file the staff is actually saying that they need. And by and large, everybody's more than willing to do a good day's work and take care and offer world-class care to their patients, but they can't do it swimming upstream. We have to create healthy work environments that address communication, collaboration, meaningful recognition, and disruptive behaviors in order to support these folks. Because the people who have gone through COVID, I know a lot of people want to say, all the nurses are burnt out. That's not what I'm hearing. Michelle, when I ask a nurse, tell me one thing you learned about COVID What did you learn about yourself when you know the two and a half years, three years of COVID And they say, well, first of all, I'm stronger than I ever thought I could be. That's not the language of burnout. That's the language of empowerment. And I think it's really important to understand that. Yes, there were some people who certainly suffered some post-traumatic stress through COVID, especially if there was loss of family, loss of finance, loss of identity, all of that. But the majority of nurses I've spoken to really went through something that at the other end, they came out not with post-traumatic stress, but post-event growth. They are now far more capable and empowered and feel a sense of accomplishment more so than they've ever really recognized in themselves before, which means you cannot put them back into that same workplace. You're going to have to lead them differently. You're going to have to create better work environments. You're going to have to support that growth or you're going to bleed talent. And I think that's the crossroads that we as leaders for the 21st century in healthcare are at right now.
[48:19] Michelle: I like how you use the word empowerment because it has a different connotation than the word that we were hearing from our organization through COVID and post-COVID, which was resilience. And I always thought that word was beautiful until it became used so much as we were drowning, as we were not recovering well, as we were suffering in our physical and our mental health, we kept hearing, but you're so resilient, you're so resilient. And so that became kind of a bad word for me. But I like how you changed it to empowered.
[49:08] Phyllis: Yeah. So what I'm hearing from the nurses across the country and others not just nurses, but other professional caregivers, is they've reached a point. COVID caused people to do a lot of introspective work, which, of course, is the beginning of emotional intelligence work. Really starting to get very quiet with yourself and understanding. Some self-awareness issues, of course, some self-management issues. And also where you might be going wrong. In other words, have you been feeding the beast? Are you part of the problem by virtue of trying to be the good person who always stands and delivers regardless of what's going on? And a little bit of that suck it up buttercup attitude that I cut my teeth on when I was starting nursing back then but we realize now that people are far too educated, far too knowledgeable, and now post-COVID far more competent and confident in what they can and cannot do, but also have a lot more discernment about what they will and will not put up with. So there's a little bit of I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore. Underneath the surface, people aren't really just rebelling openly, but they're not going to comply or recreate the same situations. They very much want leadership to work with. They're more than willing to work on their sense of well-being, their sense of resilience, if you will, but not in lieu of leaders doing what they need to do in order to address all the issues that create or work up into a healthy work environment. Systems have to work better, relationships have to be built stronger. We have to deal with disruptive behavior. We cannot turn a blind eye on that anymore. We can't ask people to take care of all of the complicated issues that go into the collective caring professions as well as the documentation, the technical issues, and do all these things. People are just not willing to perpetuate the dysfunction that was any longer. But they're very willing to partner with leaders to create a healthier work environment that can sustain a real model of world-class care.
[51:41] Michelle: Well, you hit the nail on the head and I love that you have so much insight and are so good at communicating that. And you talk several times and you've talked in your speaking events about emotional intelligence. So what is emotional intelligence? And if we don't have it, how can we grow in it and how can we foster it in others?
[52:13] Phyllis: So, not to be too flip about it, but emotional intelligence in adults is the secret sauce to success in your personal and your professional life. The recipe or the equation for success, as I was coming up was get good academic preparation, and really have some good clinical skills. Get a certification in your clinical specialty, too. Couldn't hurt. And you're going to have a successful career. And we have found that that's just not enough. That really you do need academic preparation. You do need very good honed clinical skills. I do believe in the clinical certifications. I have three of them. I drank all the Kool Aid, got a doctorate, all of it. I did all of that. But it really wasn't until I leaned in to developing myself. When I leaned in and realized that I was engaging in habitual behaviors that were no longer serving me. In fact, they were self-sabotaging that I spent so much time developing my academic credentials and my clinical skills that I didn't really take a look at how I was being triggered to act or behave or say things in a manner that I would regret in 15 or 20 minutes. And once you decide that you're going to embark on a journey to really face some of these demons and I often say to my coaching clients, when you start on a journey of emotional intelligence, it's going to feel like you're chewing on glass, which is, quite honestly, the worst marketing pitch for anything or any profession. Yeah, come work with me and chew on glass. Okay, I'll sign up twice for that. But really, no professional adult wants to actually take a look at where there's still a gap, where there's still a need. They want to really focus in on their strengths and maybe do things to make them stronger, which is why many of us didn't get one clinical certification. We got two, maybe more. And we were missing the bigger picture in saying that really who we are. The brand of who we are is a combination of not just our academic knowledge and our skills, but our character and the sense of self and the ability to manage our sense of self in a way that makes it easy for people to communicate with us. It makes it easy to work in teams, and it actually is the only way to develop your leadership skills because you have no business saying you can lead others if you cannot lead yourself.
[54:53] Michelle: Well, that was very succinctly said. And wow, this has been such an eye opening conversation, and you definitely have to come back on the show because we have so much more to talk about.
[55:09] Phyllis: Oh, I'd love to.
[55:10] Michelle: Do you have any final thoughts today that you would like to leave our listeners with?
[55:17] Phyllis: I would like to, first of all, just express my sincere thanks and pride to our collective caring professions. You saved the planet. Don't ever forget that. You're among the most generous people on the planet. Don't ever forget that. But I also want to reach out to my leadership colleagues and say, please lean in to the imperative of leadership in the 21st century by creating and sustaining healthy workplaces and make sure you're including the effective management of disruptive behaviors in that initiative.
[56:01] Michelle: Lean in. That is something that I would love to see. That's something that I'm going to do. I'm going to learn more about this. Thank you so much, Phyllis, for coming on today and sharing your perspective, your insights, and your humor. I definitely have been chuckling all the way through. Where can we find you?
[56:27] Phyllis: I think the easiest way to find me, Michelle, is on LinkedIn. So it's @Phyllis Quinlan. And I would welcome anybody to send me an invitation to connect on LinkedIn. You can go to my website, M as in Michael, F as in Frank, W as in William MFWconsultants.com. And of course, you can reach me via email. MFWconsultants@gmail.com.
[56:56] Michelle: Beautiful. I will include all of those in the show notes so that people can reach out. And again, thank you so much, Phyllis, for being here. I really appreciate it. You've brought so much value today to me and to my audience. So thank you again.
[57:13] Phyllis: My pleasure.
[57:14] Michelle: Well, you know, at the end, we do the five-minute snippet, and it's just five minutes of fun. It's a chance for my audience to see your off-duty side when you're not being a speaker, a legal nurse consultant, and a CEO. So are you ready to play?
[57:35] Phyllis: Sure.
[57:36] Michelle: Okay, here we go. If you had a magic wand and could change anything, what would you change?
[57:50] Phyllis: In myself?
[57:52] Michelle: Anything.
[57:58] Phyllis: I would change our ability to communicate well with one another.
[58:03] Michelle: Wow. I want to give you a magic wand. Let's do it. Okay. Here's a would you rather,  would you rather do a dramatic poetry reading in front of your neighbors or a tap dance routine?
[58:19] Phyllis: I probably would be better at the tap dance routine, having taken that for a couple of years as a child.
[58:25] Michelle: Oh, wow. That would be something I'd love to see. If you were in charge, what three items would you have in the office vending machine?
[58:38] Phyllis: Coffee, which is probably the least,  water to give you an option. And maybe something along the lines of aromatherapy, like an aromatherapy wand or inhaler so that maybe you'll take a drink of water. You might need some coffee, but you can also relax a little bit with a little aromatherapy.
[59:00] Michelle: I absolutely love that, and I have not heard that before, but that would be very beneficial. I would love to work in your office. Would you rather host an awards show or interview celebrities on the red carpet?
[59:15] Phyllis: Oh, I would rather interview,  I would like to get to know the celebrities and try to figure out a little bit about how they tick and why are they here.  To celebrate what achievement?
[59:28] Michelle: Well, you'd be great at it. You're an excellent communicator and an excellent speaker. What is one thing people buy that you think is a total waste of money?
[59:42] Phyllis: Cigarettes.
[59:45] Michelle: That's a good one. Absolutely. Would you rather be a famous fashion designer of baby clothing or pet accessories?
[59:54] Phyllis: Oh, baby clothing.
[59:56] Michelle: So cute, right? I never realized how cute the little boy clothes are. Oh, my gosh, they're making them so darling today. Okay, what was the most memorable class you've taken in college?
[01:00:13] Phyllis: I think the one that comes to mind is really comparative theologies or religious studies where I was able to, you know, step outside of the, you know, the conventional Christian background that I was brought up in and start to embrace the philosophy, the thinking, and the feelings of comparative religious studies. I thought that really helped me define myself as a citizen of the planet, not just an individual who happened to be living in New York State in the USA.
[01:00:53] Michelle: I think that would be a fascinating class. Would you rather be a contestant on a game show that tests your mental abilities or your physical strength?
[01:01:04] Phyllis: Well, I can't walk and chew gum, so I'm going to say mental abilities.
[01:01:09] Michelle: Oh, my gosh. I love that. You have a very high EI.
[01:01:15] Phyllis: EQ.
[01:01:16] Michelle: Emotional. I don't even know what I'm saying.
[01:01:19] Phyllis: Emotional quotient.
[01:01:20] Michelle: Yes, you do. So that would be great. Is there anyone you'd like to trade places with for a day?
[01:01:29] Phyllis: I would like to trade places with former President Obama. Just for a day. Not on a really tough day. Like anything to do with special ops or anything like that. But I think it would be absolutely fascinating to see the other side of how the world works and how the role of the United States interfaces in the larger picture of international communication and cooperation.
[01:02:02] Michelle: I'm right with you, Phyllis. I think that would be so fun and just oh, my gosh, what a learning experience to see what a president does. Just a day in the life of a president. Man, that'd be great. Okay, last one. Would you rather represent celebrities as their publicist or their lawyer?
[01:02:31] Phyllis: I'm probably better at marketing. I'll do the publicist thing.
[01:02:36] Michelle: I totally thought that you were going to say lawyer just because you're a legal nurse consultant.
[01:02:42] Phyllis: Well, remember, as a legal nurse consultant, you are the expert in nursing, not in law.
[01:02:48] Michelle: True. Yes. That's what Leah told me. They don't really want you to have a background in law. They don't prefer that. Well, this has been super fun, and we found out a little bit about your off duty side and gosh, thanks again, Phyllis. You've brought so much information and you have educated us, inspired us and just entertained us. So thank you so much. I appreciate it.
[01:03:14] Phyllis: I enjoyed every minute. Thank you.
[01:03:16] Michelle: You have a wonderful rest of your day.

 
these benchmarks that will be met as we are trying to put our arms around this disruptive behavior it can go badly for the person who's raised that issue. It's also important to understand that you can work with someone who's chronically uncivil. If you have the time, the resources and the inclination to pour a lot of time and money and resources into this person. You can raise somebody's emotional intelligence. You can have them turn around and comport themselves in a far more professional way and be a real value to the team. But it's going to take an awful lot and I don't know what kind of resources individual organizations have. The only way that you can deal with a bully is to document, document, document. Because a bully will never change. A narcissist will never see the need for them to change. It's the world that has to change to accommodate them. They will tell you what you want to hear. If they're in a tight situation they may say something like you're right I got to do this. I'll have to be more mindful. But what they are trying to do is buy time to get out of an awkward situation. They have no intent to actually comply with any action plan or improvement plan that you put out there. So it's something that the organization really has to understand that if you don't actually see sustainable change and this is sustainable change in someone who's acting in an abusive manner the only plan you should craft for them is a plan to the door because they're never going to change if you think they are. And this is part of the problem. And we think as professional caregivers we could cure a rainy day. We think we'll just put a little bit more time and effort into this person and the sun will shine and the angels will sing and they'll see the light and I'm here to tell you that's never going to happen. You're getting played for a fool if you think that indeed it's going to happen. You have to truly be very emphatic about your documentation, very emphatic about any performance improvement plans or action plans, and then really showcase. The person is just not able to sustain their piece of the agreement and then do that in such a way that they either exit the facility on their own or you have to have them exit the facility. And that will withstand scrutinization by arbitration and or wrongful termination.
[39:59] Michelle: Folks, well, I really appreciate you defining those two chronic incivility and bullying. And I was chuckling when you were talking about it's going to be a better day if this person calls out sick, because we've all been there, right? We've all worked with those toxic people that just suck the life out of the unit. And working in this profession for 36 years, I've seen a lot of it over and over again. And the other thing that I have seen is the I don't know if the word is apathy or just an inability to stop it from the organization. And so we've all heard if we have kids in school, you hear many times that they have a zero tolerance policy on this or that. And again, if you've had kids in school and you've known of things that kids did in the class, and that's a zero tolerance event, and this child's going to be suspended or expelled, and then it doesn't happen, and it's like, yeah, right, you don't really have a zero tolerance policy. And I think a lot of institutions, they say, we have zero tolerance for bullying, and then they tolerate it.
[41:31] Phyllis: Yeah, it's very confusing. And what I find is we as professional caregivers, really don't know enough about behavior, let alone aberrant behavior, unless you're one of our colleagues that specialize in behavioral health. And perhaps this is my degree in sociology and psychology and my initial desire to be a psychiatric social worker coming to the forefront, but I'm far more comfortable in discussing aberrant behavior than perhaps an average person in the nursing field that doesn't specialize in behavioral health. This is really something that we have to address. We have to get comfortable in talking about this, and we have to be far more serious and understand the nature of bullying and the effects of chronic instability instead of just saying to the individuals, well, for crying out loud, can't you just all get along? Can't you just work it out yourselves? I don't want to babysit. I don't want to do this. I have far more bigger fish to fry. Just work it out among yourselves. And that really demonstrates the misunderstanding of a healthy workplace environment. It really is an abdication, as I said, of the 21st century leadership imperative to create and sustain a healthy work environment. But it's really, to me, showcasing that you don't understand these behaviors, therefore you are reluctant to engage in them because they can be hot topics again. That's why there has to be a coordinated effort between management, executive leadership, and human resources. But here's the thing. Post COVID, we found a very big reluctance in the collective caregiving professions and even outside of the caregiving professions to go back to things like they were. And one of the biggest challenges I was hearing across the country is everybody still wants to work remote, nobody wants to come back. And again, this was in healthcare and in non healthcare venues. And when I started talking to people about this, what I was asking is, well, what's the pushback? What are you hearing? Well, they're asking me, does this still exist? Is this how we're going to do things? Is this person still working there? Is this person still in a leadership role? And people were making their decisions or they were sharing their reluctance to come back and reenter the workplace proper based on working conditions and people they were working with. So what I realized here is that people were more than willing to leave their conventional jobs and try something new, not so much on being fed up with the practice of nursing or professional caregiving, but very reluctant to go back into toxic work environments. And that was really a big piece of people coming back. A lot of nurses were talked about because they were going to go into travel nursing, and quite honestly, it was almost, in some cases, the only option some people had. So when I speak to travel nurses, there are really three categories here. There is the young nurse who said, oh my god, the planet nearly shut down and I haven't seen hawai yet. I'm going to travel, and I'm going to travel until for a little while, and at least while I'm young, I'm single, I'm able to do that. And before the planet shuts down from the next big thing, that was one group of nurses. There was another group of nurses that were like, feeling very abandoned by their organizations. They 

felt that they were on the forefront and maybe leadership was not as visible as they had hoped they would be. They didn't feel that same sense of support, and they were reluctant to go back into these toxic situations. So they decided, I'll travel because you can do anything for 13 weeks, and if I don't like it, I'm going to leave in 13 weeks and no harm, no foul. And then there was another group of nurses who I think are really underrepresented in the sense that while they might have been working towards COVID their spouses and significant others weren't. Many family businesses crashed and burned. A lot of people were laid off furloughed, and there were some really hard economic times so that these nurses found themselves in order to make ends meet, they were burning through college funds and retirement funds, and now there was an opportunity to make pretty incredible money via travel, nursing. And quite honestly, they didn't feel that they had any other choice but to do that in order to put money back into the college funds and retirement funds that they had been living on during COVID So we're at a time now where we as leaders have to listen more to what the rank and file the staff is actually saying that they need. And by and large, everybody's more than willing to do a good day's work and take care and offer world class care to their patients, but they can't do it swimming upstream. We have to create these healthy work environments that address communication, collaboration, meaningful recognition, disruptive behaviors in order to support these folks. Because the people who have went through COVID, I know a lot of people want to say, all the nurses are burnt out. That's not what I'm hearing. Michelle, when I ask a nurse, tell me one thing you learned about COVID What did you learn about yourself when you know the two and a half years, three years of COVID And they say, well, first of all, I'm stronger than I ever thought I could be. That's not the language of burnout. That's the language of empowerment. And I think it's really important to understand that. Yes, there were some people who certainly suffered some post traumatic stress through COVID, especially if there was loss of family, loss of finance, loss of identity, all of that. But the majority of nurses I've spoken to really went through something that at the other end, they came out not with post traumatic stress, but post event growth. They are now far more capable and empowered and feel a sense of accomplishment more so than they've ever really recognized in themselves before, which means you cannot put them back into that same workplace. You're going to have to lead them differently. You're going to have to create better work environments. You're going to have to support that growth or you're going to bleed talent. And I think that's the crossroads that we as leaders for the 21st century in healthcare are at right now.
[48:19] Michelle: I like how you use the word empowerment because it has a different connotation than the word that we were hearing from our organization through COVID and post COVID, which was resilience. And I always thought that word was beautiful until it became used. So much as we were drowning, as we were not recovering well, as we were suffering in our physical and our mental health, we kept hearing, but you're so resilient, you're so resilient. And so that became kind of a bad word for me. But I like how you changed it to empowered.
[49:08] Phyllis: Yeah. So what I'm hearing from the nurses across the country and others not just nurses, but other professional caregivers, is they've reached a point. COVID caused people to do a lot of introspective work, which, of course, is the beginnings. Of emotional intelligence work. Really starting to get very quiet with yourself and understanding. Some self awareness issues, of course, some self management issues. And also where you might be going wrong. In other words, have you been feeding the beast? Are you part of the problem by virtue of trying to be the good person who always stands and delivers regardless of what's going on? And a little bit of that suck it up buttercup attitude that I cut my teeth on when I was starting nursing back in the we realize now that people are far too educated, far too knowledgeable, and now post. COVID far more competent and confident in what they can and cannot do, but also have a lot more discernment about what they will and will not put up with. So there's a little bit of I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore. Underneath the surface, people aren't really just rebelling openly, but they're not going to comply or recreate the same situations. They very much want leadership to work with. They're more than willing to work on their sense of well being, their sense of resilience, if you will, but not in lieu of leaders doing what they need to do in order to address all the issues that create or work up into a healthy work environment. Systems have to work better, relationships have to be built stronger. We have to deal with disruptive behavior. We cannot turn a blind eye on that anymore. We can't ask people to take care of all of the complicated issues that go into the collective caring professions as well as the documentation, the technical issues, and do all these things. People are just not willing to perpetuate the dysfunction that was any longer. But they're very willing to partner with leaders to create a healthier work environment that can sustain a real model of world class care.
[51:41] Michelle: Well, you hit the nail on the head and I love that you have so much insight and are so good at communicating that. And you talk several times and you've talked in your speaking events about emotional intelligence. So what is emotional intelligence? And if we don't have it, how can we grow in it and how can we foster it in others?
[52:13] Phyllis: So, not to be too flip about it, but emotional intelligence in adults is the secret sauce to success in your personal and your professional life. The recipe or the equation for success, as I was coming up was get good academic preparation, really have some really good clinical skills. Get a certification in your clinical specialty, too. Couldn't hurt. And you're going to have a successful career. And we have found that that's just not enough. That really you do need academic preparation. You do need very good honed clinical skills. I do believe 

in the clinical certifications. I have three of them. I drank all the Kool Aid, got a doctorate, all of it. I did all of that. But it really wasn't until I leaned in to developing myself. When I leaned in and realized that I was engaging in habitual behaviors that were no longer serving me. In fact, they were self sabotaging that I spent so much time developing my academic credentials and my clinical skills that I didn't really take a look at how I was being triggered to act or behave or say things in a manner that I would regret in 15 or 20 minutes. And once you decide that you're going to embark on a journey to really face some of these demons and I often say to my coaching clients, when you start on a journey of emotional intelligence, it's going to feel like you're chewing on glass, which is, quite honestly, the worst marketing pitch for anything or any profession. Yeah, come work with me and chew on glass. Okay, I'll sign up twice for that. But really, no professional adult wants to actually take a look at where there's still a gap, where there's still a need. They want to really focus in on their strengths and maybe do things to make them stronger, which is why many of us didn't get one clinical certification. We got two, maybe more. And we were missing the bigger picture in saying that really who we are. The brand of who we are is a combination of not just our academic knowledge and our skills, but the character and the sense of self and the ability to manage our sense of self in a way that makes it easy for people to communicate with us. It makes it easy to work in teams, and it actually is the only way to develop your leadership skills because you have no business saying you can lead others if you cannot lead yourself.
[54:53] Michelle: Well, that was very succinctly said. And wow, this has been such an eye opening conversation, and you definitely have to come back on the show because we have so much more to talk about.
[55:09] Phyllis: Oh, I'd love to.
[55:10] Michelle: Do you have any final thoughts today that you would like to leave our listeners with?
[55:17] Phyllis: I would like to, first of all, just express my sincere thanks and pride to our collective caring professions. You saved the planet. Don't ever forget that. You're among the most generous people on the planet. Don't ever forget that. But I also want to reach out to my leadership colleagues and say, please lean in to the imperative of leadership in the 21st century by creating and sustaining healthy workplaces and make sure you're including the effective management of disruptive behaviors in that initiative.
[56:01] Michelle: Lean in. That is something that I would love to see. That's something that I'm going to do. I'm going to learn more about this. And thank you so much, Phyllis, for coming on today and sharing your perspective, your insights, your humor. I definitely have been chuckling all the way through. Where can we find you?
[56:27] Phyllis: I think the easiest way to find me, Michelle, is on LinkedIn. So it's Phyllis Quinlan. And Know would welcome anybody to send me an invitation to connect on LinkedIn. You can go to my website, M as in Michael, f as in Frank, w as in William Mfwconsultants.com. And of course, you can reach me via email. Mfwconsultants@gmail.com.
[56:56] Michelle: Beautiful. I will include all of those in the show notes so that people can reach out. And again, thank you so much, Phyllis, for being here. I really appreciate it. You've brought so much value today to me and to my audience. So thank you again.
[57:13] Phyllis: My pleasure.
[57:14] Michelle: Well, you know, at the end, we do the five minute snippet, and it's just five minutes of fun. It's a chance for my audience to see your off duty side when you're not being a speaker and a legal nurse consultant and a CEO. So are you ready to play?
[57:35] Phyllis: Sure.
[57:36] Michelle: Okay, here we go. If you had a magic wand and could change anything, what would you change.
[57:50] Phyllis: In? Myself?
[57:52] Michelle: Anything. Oh.
[57:58] Phyllis: I would change our ability to communicate well with one another.
[58:03] Michelle: Wow. I want to give you a magic wand. Let's do it. Okay. Here's a would you rather would you rather do a dramatic poetry reading in front of your neighbors or a tap dance routine?
[58:19] Phyllis: I probably would be better at the tap dance routine, having taken that for a couple of years as a child.
[58:25] Michelle: Oh, wow. That would be something I'd love to see. If you were in charge, what three items would you have in the office? Vending machine.
[58:38] Phyllis: Coffee, which is probably the least water to give you an option. And maybe something along the lines of aromatherapy, like an aromatherapy wand or inhaler so that maybe you'll take a drink of water. You might need some coffee, but you can also relax a little bit with a little aromatherapy.
[59:00] Michelle: I absolutely love that, and I have not heard that before, but that would be very beneficial. I would love to work in your office. Would you rather host an awards show or interview celebrities on the red carpet?
[59:15] Phyllis: Oh, I would rather interview I would like to get to know the celebrities and try to figure out a little bit about how they tick and why are they here? To celebrate what? Achievement?
[59:28] Michelle: Well, you'd be great at it. You're an excellent communicator and an excellent speaker. What is one thing people buy that you think is a total waste of money?
[59:42] Phyllis: Cigarettes.
[59:45] Michelle: That's a good one. Absolutely. Would you rather be a famous fashion designer of baby clothing or pet accessories?
[59:54] Phyllis: Oh, baby clothing.
[59:56] Michelle: So cute, right? I never realized how cute the little boy clothes are. Oh, my gosh, they're making them so darling today. Okay, what was the most memorable class you've taken in college?
[01:00:13] Phyllis: I think the one that comes to mind is really comparative theologies or religious studies where I was able to, you know, step outside of the, you know, the conventional Christian background that I was brought up in and start to embrace the philosophy, the thinking, and the feelings of comparative religious studies. I thought that really helped me define myself as a citizen of the planet, not just an individual who happened to be living in New York State in the USA.
[01:00:53] Michelle: I think that would be a fascinating class. Would you rather be a contestant on a game show that tests your mental abilities or your physical strength?
[01:01:04] Phyllis: Well, I can't walk and chew gum, so I'm going to say mental abilities.
[01:01:09] Michelle: Oh, my gosh. I love that. We have a very high EI.
[01:01:15] Phyllis: EQ.
[01:01:16] Michelle: Emotional. I don't even know what I'm saying.
[01:01:19] Phyllis: Emotional quotient.
[01:01:20] Michelle: Yes, you do. So that would be great. Is there anyone you'd like to trade places with for a day?
[01:01:29] Phyllis: I would like to trade places with former President Obama. Just for a day. Not on a really tough day. Like anything to do with special ops or anything like that. But I think it would be absolutely fascinating to see the other side of how the world works and how the role of the United States interfaces in the larger picture of international communication and cooperation.
[01:02:02] Michelle: I'm right with you, Phyllis. I think that would be so fun and just oh, my gosh, what a learning experience to see what a president does. Just a day in the life of a president. Man, that'd be great. Okay, last one. Would you rather represent celebrities as their publicist or their lawyer?
[01:02:31] Phyllis: I'm probably better at marketing. I'll do the publicist thing.
[01:02:36] Michelle: I totally thought that you were going to say lawyer just because you're a legal nurse consultant.
[01:02:42] Phyllis: Well, remember, as a legal nurse consultant, you are the expert in nursing, not in. True.
[01:02:48] Michelle: True. Yes. That's what Leah told me. They don't really want you to have a background in law. They don't prefer that. Well, this has been super fun, and we found out a little bit about your off-duty side, gosh, thanks again, Phyllis. You've brought so much information and you have educated us, inspired us and just entertained us. So thank you so much. I appreciate it.
[01:03:14] Phyllis: I enjoyed every minute. Thank you.
[01:03:16] Michelle: You have a wonderful rest of your day.