PACU Nurse and Travel Writer, Katherine Leamy

[00:01] Michelle: Katherine Leamy set out in life to become a physical therapist but instead became a fantastic nurse and we talked about all things PACU nursing: the ratios, the time spent with each patient, her autonomy, how she involves the family for support, and the importance of critical thinking skills, because, after all, the PACU is a critical care unit. We even dished on the funny things patients say when waking up from anesthesia. I can't imagine what I said. She sold me on PACU nursing when she described what she loves about it: the close proximity of her colleagues, the teamwork, and seeing her patients progress by providing everything they need in the short time they are with her. And bonus, she's a travel writer with a book on the horizon. It's a memoir of traveling not only solo but traveling light. I mean, her Instagram is the 5Kilo Traveler. She describes writing as a "total escape from nursing" and suggests nurses could benefit from using writing as a creative outlet. In the Five Minute Snippet: Pasta with Lemon Sauce in Italy? Sign me up.
Well. Hi, Katherine, welcome to the program.
[01:41] Katherine: Hi, Michelle. Lovely to be here.
[01:44] Michelle: So wonderful to talk to you. Instagram gets a lot of bad press for its algorithms and all of that, but one thing that I will say they are good at is bringing people together. And that's how we met.
[02:01] Katherine: Absolutely. For me, it's built a great community, particularly of sort of midlife women. It's been amazing and, yeah, I know people bag it, but I think it's been amazing, particularly over the pandemic.
[02:21] Michelle: Yes, absolutely. It's helped us stay connected. And I have to say, you have a beautiful Instagram and website.
[02:31] Katherine: Thank you.
[02:32] Michelle: Yeah, I'm going to link those in the show notes so people can check those out. But you're here today because you are a PACU nurse and that is Post-Anesthesia Care Unit. I know that they have other names, but I'm excited to talk to you because I don't really know what a PACU nurse does, kind of on a shift-by-shift basis. So I appreciate you being here to talk about that.
[03:02] Katherine: You're welcome. Yeah.
[03:03] Michelle: So we'll just get started. I like to jump in and first tell us about how you got your start in nursing.
[03:12] Katherine: Well, I think I was at school and I was trying to get into physio school and I kept getting declined, and the career advisor at school suggested that I try nursing and I thought, oh, well, I'll give nursing a go, and I'll reapply for physio at the end of the year. And I think I did. But actually, by that stage, I was quite keen on nursing. I quite enjoyed it and I could see the benefits of doing nursing. On our first day of nursing, they asked us why we'd gone nursing, and everyone was saying, "I've always wanted to be a nurse, or my mum was a nurse" or all those kinds of things, and I just said, "it's great for travel." So that was my sort of motivation. And yeah, that's how I got into it. I wouldn't say it was something I sort of had planned, it's something I sort of fell into.
[04:05] Michelle: I've heard that from so many nurses, and I just keep saying it again and again on this program: a lot of us don't get into nursing for any lofty or grand reasons. It's just kind of like someone suggested it, or they wanted to do another profession, but they couldn't do that. So many reasons, but definitely that's a thread through a lot of the nursing community. And so when you started in nursing, where did you start out? What field?
[04:41] Katherine: My first field was surgical. I was sort of in the days in the 80s where you could sort of choose a bit where you decided to go, you sort of had choices. So I did surgical for a year, and then medical, and then I went overseas to Australia and England, and it was in Australia that I worked in a unit that specialized in HIV and AIDS care. So this was back in the late eighties, so 89-90, which it only was still pretty new back then, and pretty much right in the middle of an epidemic of it, the AIDS epidemic. And from there I sort of went to the UK and continued working in the HIV and AIDS area over there. So that was sort of where I started in nursing.
[05:36] Michelle: Well, that's really interesting. I remember that time I became a nurse in 1986, and I was a nurse's aide before that while I was going through school. And in our little town here in California, we had an HIV patient. And I remember the confusion and the fear. Nobody knew what to do. It was so new, we didn't know what kind of isolation to put them in, and we were just navigating everything. It felt a lot like COVID.
[06:13] Katherine: I'm nodding away, going, yeah, this is all familiar, isn't it?
[06:17] Michelle: Yes, that's interesting. Yeah, the fear, really overwhelming. So how did you get into PACU?
[06:27] Katherine: Well, I applied for a job through an agency in London, and anyway, I turned up and they said to me, so I see that you've worked in Alice Springs in ICU in Australia, and I went, no. And then they mentioned another ICU experience, and I went, no. And I said, oh, could I have a look at the CV that you've got?
[06:50] Michelle: No way.
[06:51] Katherine: My flatmate's CV.
[06:55] Michelle: Wow.
[06:56] Katherine: But I clicked with them immediately and I said I was keen to learn and I'm sure I could figure it out. So that was a complete fluke that I ended up in a small private hospital in Essex, and I tell you what, it's the first time that I've, I mean, I've loved all my nursing, but this was I used to love waking up and going to work, and I thought, this is where I belong. This is such a neat place to work.
[07:26] Michelle: That's a great feeling, right?
[07:28] Katherine: Yeah.
[07:30] Michelle: So now you're a PACU nurse. And let's just go through some of the particulars about PACU nursing. I mean, it's pretty obvious you care for patients that are post-surgical, post-procedural, is that correct?
[07:45] Katherine: Yes. Generally, anyone that's had an anesthetic. It differs in certain places, but in the hospitals I've worked in, anyone that's had an anesthetic is recovered by a PACU nurse simply because it's airway management and that's our specialty.
[08:07] Michelle: Absolutely. So what's your ratio in the PACU at any given moment? Or do you have those?
[08:16] Katherine: So this changes over, as in depending on so if you're in a public hospital or a private hospital, it's changed over the years. Generally, it's one on one, but sometimes what will happen is you've got a patient that's pretty much ready to go to the ward, so you'll get them ready for the ward, and then you can take another patient. So it balances out that you might have a couple of patients at that point, but then also, there are times when with staffing, it may be that you can't have that one-on-one ratio. It has to be you've got to take an extra patient, but generally, one is the preferred ratio. But the thing is, you're working in a really close environment with a lot of people, and so you literally got nurses right next to you, and if you say to them, look, I've got the second patient, but I'm not coping, then something will change. Someone will do something, someone will pick up a patient, or they'll do something for you to ease it. So you're working in such close proximity with people that it generally works really well.
[09:36] Michelle: I did many years of NICU, and until the last two years, we finally went to single family rooms, but we had an open bay NICU, so all of our babies were very close together, and all the nurses were very close together. And we did exactly what you said, hey, this baby is declining rapidly. I'm going to need you to take my other baby. And we picked up all the slack.
[10:05] Katherine: Yeah. Exactly how we get it. And also the great thing about that is with having those other nurses right there, you can actually just bounce ideas off each other and you don't have to go and find someone because they're literally right there.
[10:19] Michelle: That's so great. Yeah. Because sometimes on a big unit takes a while to go find somebody.
[10:24] Katherine: I know, right?
[10:26] Michelle: Yeah. What would you say your patients ask for the most once they're waking up?
[10:35] Katherine: Generally? Pain relief. They want to be comfortable. And airway management is our primary concern. And then once they're awake, it's often pain relief. But it's also so often they wake up and they want to know if they talked during the procedure. No, you had an airway in your mouth, it's physically impossible.
[11:03] Michelle: I think people are so worried about that, right? With all those medications they give and their Versed being the truth medication.
[11:12] Katherine: I know.
[11:13] Michelle: That's so funny.
[11:14] Katherine: Yeah.
[11:14] Michelle: I think people are always afraid of embarrassing themselves. I had the pleasure of interviewing a CRNA on this program, Flo Schenke, and she's amazing. And she said that when patients wake up, they either are swinging, especially the men, or they're crying. Have you observed any of that?
[11:46] Katherine: Yes, we do get people who sometimes get delirium, because people wake up with delirium, and that's a mixture of age and medications and the anesthetic and everything that's going on in their system in life. So they wake up with delirium, which doesn't last. And we do get some people that wake up crying, but I would say that for the majority of people, they just wake up and they often say, when am I going for surgery? And you go, you've already had it. Yeah. I think for the majority of people, it's just a really smooth wake-up. And they go, is that it?
[12:28] Michelle: It's the most bizarre thing, as anyone who's had surgery can attest to. And I was telling Flo that when I had my mastectomy before surgery, I was obviously very anxious and nervous, and when I woke up in the recovery room, I was crying.
[12:51] Katherine: Really?
[12:51] Michelle: And the nurses kept saying, Are you in pain? And I said no because I wasn't. And I said, no, I'm not in pain. But I just kept crying. And Flo was very comforting. She said yeah, a lot of people who are extremely anxious before they go under, they wake up and they're very emotional.
[13:14] Katherine: Yeah, I think possibly after an anesthetic and your inhibitions are down a bit and you just let it out.
[13:24] Michelle: That's a good point.
[13:25] Katherine: Which is good.
[13:26] Michelle: Get those feelings out.
[13:27] Katherine: Right, exactly.
[13:30] Michelle: Well, you mentioned that you work with nurses, obviously. Who else do you work with in the PACU? What other disciplines?
[13:37] Katherine: Predominantly, it's the anesthetists, and they are our absolute, they're our rocks. The teamwork between nurses and anesthetists is phenomenal. They trust us, we trust them. And yeah, it's a very close connection with them. We don't see surgeons overly much unless there's a problem, really. They've moved on to the next operation, but the anesthetists will hang around and we have a team of anesthetists and, you know, everyone. So if you've got an issue, you get to the duty anesthetist if your anesthetist is no longer available. And yeah, it's just a really well-run team between nurses and anesthetists.
[14:33] Michelle: I think that's so important, to have a really tight-knit team where there's a lot of trust. Do you have protocols? Like, do you have to call the doctor for everything? Obviously, like you said, a lot of the surgeons have moved on and most of your problems are maybe airway management, and your anesthetists are right there. But do you have protocols where, if your blood pressure is falling, can you run fluids or give some medications? How does that work generally?
[15:06] Katherine: So this is speaking from New Zealand practices, which I'm sure are the same worldwide. Generally, when an anesthetist hands over a patient, they'll actually prescribe certain things. They'll say if you need IV fluids and they will put parameters. So if the blood pressure drops below 90, then we want you to give 500 mil bolus or things like that. So they'll often have pre-empted, so they know what we're going to ring them for. So rather than ring them, they give us parameters, they trust us, and they know that we know what we're doing. And they also know that we have the critical thinking to make that decision of actually, even if the patient fits those parameters, you go, hang on. Actually, I don't think a 500 mil bolus is really going to help this patient. They might have a comorbidity that's going to be so heart failure or something. That's a problem. So in that case, even though they might have written the parameter, you still might ring them and say, look, I'm not sure that's probably the right course of action. What do you think? And they may say, no, that's fine, give it. Or they may say, Actually, no, let's just give them 250 mils. So they will have prescribed pain relief, so they will have prescribed morphine or fentanyl and that we can give IV, and we know the protocols and we know how to give it and all the safety parameters and we're trained on that. But there are standing orders, but they're generally that sort of quite specialist. Say, for instance, if someone's got a bladder spasm, we can give them the drug that helps with that as a standing order. Depending on the surgeon, they may have standing orders, but generally, the anesthetists actually prescribe everything. So you've got all your pain relief laid out from simple analgesia to IV narcotics, and IV fluids. Oxygen will always be chartered. And again, one of the big things that's changed is we always used to give patients oxygen willy-nilly, whereas now it's like, well, actually, why do they need the oxygen? Do they need oxygen? Are they breathing properly? Are they sitting up? Are they doing their deep breathing exercises? Sometimes it's too easy just to put the Hudson mask on and give them five liters, whereas actually, we need to be looking at what's going on here. Is there an issue? Is there a blockage? Whatever. So, yeah, on the drug chart, you've got all the drugs and everything that you need, but you still need to use your critical thinking to actually go, is this the right route, even? Are we going down the right route with this treatment?
[17:51] Michelle: Yeah. Critical thinking is key in any nursing situation, so I'm glad you touched on that. Have you had a patient that's had to go back to surgery, maybe starts bleeding or something like that?
[18:05] Katherine: Yeah, probably. It doesn't happen a lot, but just every now and then someone will get a bleed. Probably the most interesting one was a neurosurgery patient who had a clipping of an aneurysm. And I have in the past worked as a neuro nurse, so it's kind of one of my happy places. And I always used to, when the neuropathies came through into recovery or PACU, that I would always say, oh, can I have the neuro patients? And anyway, this particular person, I was doing her neuro ops, and I always say to newer nurses, you've really got to get in their space and really be aware of a neuro patient, like whether their responses are slowing down. So this particular patient had this aneurysm. She was answering all the questions correctly, but her responses were just getting slower and slower. So I called the registrar in and I said, look, she meets she's still like a Glasgow Coma Scale of 14. Her eyes open to speech, but everything's just getting a little bit slower and I'm concerned. And anyway, so he said, okay, well, call me in 15 minutes and update me. So anyway, literally five minutes later, I said, actually, no, she's deteriorating. And they took her down for a scan and sure enough, she was bleeding. So if you're not focused on that patient and really seeing them, really looking at them, and really not just glossing over how they are, you've really got to understand what that patient's doing. It's a bit like when you do an abdominal assessment and sometimes you think it's easy just to lift up the blankets and go, oh, yeah, their stomach looks fine. The abdomen, if they've had surgery on their abdomen. But actually, if you touch it and feel it and really understand, if someone was to walk up five minutes later and say, what was Mrs so and so's abdomen like after that surgery? You could say it was soft or there was a, you know, had a bit of a lump at one point or whatever, and then when you do it again ten minutes later or 15 minutes later, there's a change and you've really taken it in. So when you see that change, you go, that didn't look like that before.
[20:36] Michelle: Yeah. Wow. The power of observation. Our observation skills are just so important. Absolutely, yeah. And I think sometimes as nurses, we have it in our head of kind of how things should go or how things should look, and we kind of let that be our guide instead of, like you said, really looking and seeing what is actually happening here, not what's supposed to happen.
[21:06] Katherine: It is so true.
[21:07] Michelle: Yeah, that's a good distinction. And as you were talking about that. I was thinking about how important the family is to the patient in helping nurses know if this is normal or not. Normal behavior for the patient. Peds Nurse for many years, parents come in, they know their kids and they're usually the first ones to say something's not right here unless it was glaringly obvious. But you don't have that feedback from the family because the family obviously can't come in the pack. You.
[21:54] Katherine: We generally allow one parent to come into recovery, PACU with a child. Once the child is awake and eyes are open and they're awake, we get one parent into Paku. The issue with having families in PACU is that it can be a distraction to your work and it's also because it's a critical area, there are other things, there are other patients, there's other stuff going on and so it can be quite stressful. So it's a balance, trying to keep the family, keeping the child happy as well, because if the parents are there, they're a lot happier. So that works well. But with, say, for instance, if we had a person who had delirium, an older person, we have the ability to make executive decisions and if, for instance, I had an older person that had delirium, it might be in their best interest actually to get one of their family members down to sit with them. It might be a better option. But what I do is when I talk to the family as they come in, I'll say, look, we're going to try this, but if actually, that doesn't work, I'm going to get you to leave. So making sure they realize that they're not going to be there necessarily the whole time if it's not working, or if something else happens in the unit where there's an emergency, it might be that that person needs to leave. Or actually, it might be better that they do stay to calm the patient. So we do have some flexibility there. The other thing is also we can ring the family and you can say, look, your father is struggling a bit, how is he normally? And they'll let you know that normally they're the nicest, meekest, mildest person on the planet. So you know that this is not their normal behavior. But generally, if I was going to say that, I would actually get the family down because if I've gone and rang them and said, your father's not coping very well, the last thing they want to do is hang up on the phone and not see their father because they'll be panicking. So sometimes you'll get them in very quickly and just say, look, we'll get you in to say hi and then we'll get you out again. So, yeah, we've got flexibility there.
[24:23] Michelle: That's great. I love that. I think it's essential, especially for kids. Yeah, definitely for older people, maybe with dementia or some of those problems. Yeah, that's great. How long are your patients usually there?
[24:38] Katherine: So I'm currently working in a private hospital and the patients are generally there probably half an hour or to an hour, an hour and a half. But when I worked in the public health system, they could be there for 4 hours at least. Again, it could be 20 minutes or it could be 4 hours or it could be longer. Sometimes in the public health system, there's no bed available for them. So if they're going to HDU or ICU, we have to hold them for longer until there's a bed available because it's safer that they're there than anywhere else. That's a sort of delay not because of the patient, but because of what's happening in the other units.
[25:27] Michelle: So you are actually in those cases you're working in a critical care unit?
[25:31] Katherine: Definitely. Absolutely.
[25:36] Michelle: Have you ever had a patient with malignant hyperthermia?
[25:39] Katherine: No. Well, we had one that we thought had malignant hypothermia. That was when I worked in Wellington and I just remember drawing up the is it Dantrium that you draw up? Yeah, I think oh my goodness. And it's a really hard drug to draw up. I just remember drawing up vials and vials and vials, but it turned out that it wasn't malignant hypothermia. Thank goodness. That's the closest I've got to MH.
[26:10] Michelle: Wow. What kind of certifications do you need to work in the PACU?
[26:16] Katherine: I don't think there's any extra so there's no extra training. It's more that you just need your IV certificate and probably some extra certification on giving IV narcotics. You don't need extra degrees or anything like that? Yeah, just sort of those extra skills that you learn on the job.
[26:41] Michelle: Yeah, I know here in the States we have to have ACLS, which is Advanced Cardiac Life support.
[26:49] Katherine: Yeah, we do have that. Yeah, I forgot about that.
[26:53] Michelle: Similar. Yeah. And then I was looking at certifications for PACU nurses and here in the States, there's a couple there's the CPAN, which is Certified Post Anesthesia Nurse. And there's the CAPA, which is a Certified Ambulatory Peri Anesthesia Nurse. Yeah, nurses can get board certified in those. Do you have anything similar there?
[27:21] Katherine: No is a short answer, but I know, like in the UK they've got the English Nursing Board, the ENB specialist certificates you used to be able to get. I know England has those kinds of things, but I know we don't have if people do studies at the universities, they can get more. If they go on to do postgrad stuff, they can do studies in clinical assessment and all those kinds of things. But generally, it's definitely not specific to PACU.
[28:04] Michelle: What kind of schedule do you work?
[28:06] Katherine: So me personally, I'm very part-time in the unit that I work, but in all the other packers I've worked in public and for the nurses that work full time, it's pretty much rostered and rotating, so night shift and do the whole everything.
[28:26] Michelle: And do you work eight-hour shifts or twelve?
[28:31] Katherine: Generally over here it's eight-hour shifts. They have trialed twelve-hour shifts before and there have been some nurses that elect to do the 12 hours, but generally, they are doing, I know in ICU they do a lot of twelve-hour shifts, but for PACU it seemed to be 8 hours. It's interesting because we used to do 12 hours in London when I worked there and I really loved it because I would get a handover from a nurse, work my 12 hours and I had 12 hours to get this patient sorted. It was great. And then I would hand over to the same nurse. There was no in-between person. It was fantastic. But oh my goodness, at 55, I don't think I could do 12 hours now.
[29:16] Michelle: Yeah, it's tough. I did that for, oh gosh, the first 26 years of my career, and then the last ten I did the eight. And there's benefits to both. The 12's, obviously you work fewer days in a week, but I found myself to be more tired and needing more time to recover on those days.
[29:41] Katherine: Yeah, exactly.
[29:43] Michelle: Whereas the eight, your day is pretty short, but then you're scrambling over the weekend to try to get all your stuff done that you didn't get done during the week.
[29:57] Katherine: Yeah, exactly. A lot of nurses over here, and this is just my observation, but it seems to be becoming a lot more obvious that nurses are working 0.9 or 0.8 simply because full-time nursing work is a huge workload. And I know this must be the case everywhere else, but the comorbidities of the patients have really increased over the 30 years of my nursing. We used to get patients having surgery like an appendectomy, and that was the only thing that was wrong with them. Whereas now they'll have an appendectomy and they'll have renal disease, heart disease, diabetes, and multiple comorbidities. So the workload is really different now from when I started nursing. I think that sort of reflects in the fact that a lot of nurses are now doing 0.8 and 0.9 because it's just huge.
[30:57] Michelle: I worked with the NICU population and we saw that with the moms. It used to be mom would just come in and deliver and go home in a couple of days and now they have diabetes and high blood pressure and all these other things that extend the stay and just make them more sick.
[31:21] Katherine: Exactly.
[31:22] Michelle: Well, what would you say is the most difficult part of your job?
[31:28] Katherine: I don't know, because I've been doing it for so many years now. It takes a bit for things to be difficult.
[31:37] Michelle: Are you on your feet a lot?
[31:39] Katherine: Yeah, we are on a lot on our feet, but we're moving around the bedside. The thing is, there are a lot of things in PACU that ward nurses don't have to that we get that ward nurse don't. So if we need a doctor, generally the surgeons in theater, we can go and see them. If we need an anesthetist, we can go into the theater or we can ring them. Everyone's really available, whereas the ward nurses, that's not the case. They've really got to go looking for things. So I'm sort of mindful of that. I think we're really fortunate in PACU that we've got the support, and I'm just really also mindful that on the wards, they often don't. They rely on each other, and I think it's a luxury that we've got in a unit.
[32:36] Michelle: Man I have to agree 100% with that because I've lived it exactly,  like you working in a very close NICU. Our neonatologists were right there. We didn't have to go anywhere. We didn't have to call them. The respiratory therapist was right there, and there is a big comfort to that. And I think a difficult part if you don't have that support would be tracking people down.
[33:10] Katherine: When it comes to thinking, what's the hard part about PACU? I really can't actually think of anything that's hard. I mean, I guess it's just I know in the public health system at the moment, it's stressful. It's really stressful when patients come out of theater, it's intense and it's fast and everything's happening at once. And I think the workload at the moment in the public health system in New Zealand is intense for PACU nurses. So that's not my current experience, but it was what I left on when I left the public health the public hospital, it was that level of intensity that going home worried that you've not done the right thing, that something's happened. Was that choice the right thing to make? It was getting very intense.
[34:05] Michelle: You're passionate about PACU, and you really like promoting it to other nurses. So try to sell me on why should I be a PACU nurse.
[34:17] Katherine: Well, it's just a fantastic area because you've got staff right there. You've got your anesthetists. Surgeons are in theater. You've got your fellow nurses who are all pretty experienced and each have different they come from different backgrounds, so they've often got different skills in different areas. It's great teamwork. Like, they are my family. The PACU team is my family, and they're still my family. Even when I left the public hospital, they were my family still. You've got autonomy because you can still manage your patient. You don't need to be asking someone every time, do I do this, do I do that? You know, with experience and over time, you know the processes, you know how to get this patient ready for the ward, and it's an incredibly satisfying job. And even though we only say you only have a patient for 20 minutes or an hour, it's still really satisfying focusing on that one patient and giving them the absolute best care that they need. You can do everything for them. You can straighten. Their sheets, you can give them the right medication to make them not nauseous. You can give them their pain relief, you can get them set up, you can check their wounds, you can do everything. And I know that on the wards it's hard to do that kind of thing. If the patient in recovery wants their face washed, you're right there. You can do it. So it's fantastic intense care for that 1 hour that they're with you, and it's really satisfying. And I know some people say, but we don't get to see the patient progress and stuff like that, but for me, that 1 hour, I see them progress and it's just giving them the absolute best care that I can at that time.
[36:18] Michelle: That has to be really satisfying because they come in in a certain state and you're with them through all those different levels that they go through. And when you send them off, their pain is under control, they're awake, and they're pretty comfy, so that has to be really satisfying. Yeah, well, PACU is something that I never thought about, but with your help, I'm definitely saying to myself, if I ever went back to work, maybe I would go to PACU. Well, we're going to do a little pivot because we're going to talk about your book. And nurses that do other things have always fascinated me. And you are a writer, so let's talk about your book. Tell me why you wrote it, tell me all about it.
[37:28] Katherine: So six years ago, I went to Croatia and Italy by myself. I left my family at home and went on a solo trip to Europe. And I went for four weeks. And when I got home, one of the things that I did was traveled with a five-kilo bag or an eleven-pound bag. And because I had a frozen shoulder and a bit of back issues from nursing, and so I decided that I wanted to travel light. And when I was away, I used to get a lot of Facebook messages saying, how did you manage? How are you managing? Have you got enough clothes? What are you doing with toiletries? How many shoes do you have? And all this stuff. And from there, a long time after, someone suggested that I start a Facebook page. So that's where I started the 5Kilo Traveler. And then I went and did Instagram, and then I decided to do a website. And this was all just for fun, it's just a hobby kind of thing. It was a great escape from nursing. It was something completely different. I've had some people say to me that don't know that I'm a nurse. They go, oh, don't you want to do something a bit more meaningful? Change the world kind of thing? And I'm like I look at them and I go, I've been a nurse for 35 years. Been there, done that, I've done my saving the world exactly.
[39:02] Michelle: Many times over, exactly.
[39:05] Katherine: So this was just a total release and just something just pure fun. And anyway, I think my mum was always telling me I should write my stories down. I always wrote letters and emails and she said I really should because they're so descriptive, I should really write a book. So anyway, she said to me one day, why don't you write this trip down? So I did, I started writing it and then I joined a writer's group and a friend of mine helped me with stuff. So I wrote this book. So it's called Dare to Travel Solo, exploring Croatia and Italy with a Light Carry-on Bag and a ton of Determination. But it's not out yet. It's coming out. I had planned on it to come out soon, but it's not going to be as soon as I thought. I've delayed it because there's a lot of work that I thought that writing the book was the big thing. But actually getting it self-published and going through the processes and marketing and everything is quite intense. And I've just had to think, actually, I don't think I can do this right at the moment. I need to just have a bit of a pause and when I've got my energy up again, then I'll release it. So, yeah, that's my plan.
[40:32] Michelle: I love it. I'm going to put that link in the show notes for anybody that wants to check that out in the future. I know it won't be long before it comes out. One of the other things that you say that I just loved was that nurses love to tell stories.
[40:48] Katherine: Oh, yeah.
[40:50] Michelle: And that writing is just a perfect fit for storytellers. Do you think nurses need a creative outlet and how can that help us?
[41:01] Katherine: Well, it was interesting. I was listening to one of your podcasts, I think it was with the student nurse, and she was talking about journaling. And I thought I had not really done journaling before, but with writing my book, I guess it's a bit like journaling because you're thinking about the past. And I've always been one for reflecting on my nursing practice and how a day has gone. And I think even journaling is a great creative process for nurses. Of course, it's hard with nursing because people say, oh, you'd have some great nursing stories to write about, and you go, well, actually, there's a bit of a thing called confidentiality that sort of gets in the way. But actually, nurses love telling stories. I've been in journal clubs and nurses love yeah, they love talking about work and when you have a debrief on something, they really want to let it out and even when you're sitting in the office, they'll want to tell you what's happened. They're great storytellers.
[42:17] Michelle: I agree with that so much and I just think it comes from the nature of our work, our patients are humans. We're taking care of humans all day, whether they're tiny humans or old humans, and we see a lot of human nature. And nurses are sort of like voyeurs in a way. We're people watchers, we are kind of entertained by we can go to Disneyland and Disneyland is great and everything, but all the people here, we can just see so many different people and hear so many different things. And I just think we love that.
[43:08] Katherine: Absolutely. One of the things with writing is that people will often say you'll say, how do people write a novel? And people often say that you often use experiences that you're familiar with. And so sometimes I'll read a book and the story will include a hospital scene, and I'm thinking, I don't think that person really knows what that doesn't quite seem real. But then you'll read another hospital scene of another writer, another author, and you'll go, oh boy, they know what they're talking about. You're not breaching confidentiality, it's just a generalized thing that might be happening and it might be quite a specific patient, but of course, it's not a person that you have, you're not saying their name or where the hospital was or anything. But you do use things that have happened and when you are writing, nurses, I think, have very visual we can see so much in a scene and it's getting it down on paper so that the reader can see that too. But yeah, we can use what we've learned or what we've seen in our job and use it in our writing.
[44:39] Michelle: Do you see more writing in your future?
[44:41] Katherine: I do, actually, I thought I would do maybe another memoir, but actually memoir is really personal and deep and it's sort of a bit giving too much of me kind of thing, and it's quite exhausting. And I think a novel, I think I'd like to do a novel. I've got an idea of one that I would like to write, but it's kind of funny because I go, I've no idea how to do it. But I do, I do know how to do it. It's a similar process to writing any book, whether it's a memoir or a novel. And I've got some good people that I follow that I've got bought books on writing novels and memoirs, so I know I can do it. But definitely, I do want to write because it's really nice to do something that's just completely not nursing. Because with nursing, you give everything, you give everything to your patients. And yes, there's all the critical thinking, all that sort of stuff, but also at the core of it, you're nurturing them, you're caring. And I know that the whole slogan, I care or whatever, has been thrashed to death, but actually that's the basis of nursing. And you give so much to your patients, you are calming them, you're de-escalating them, and it's just really nice to do something that's, not that.
[46:10] Michelle: I agree. And I think writing, I feel like that is a creative outlet. And I really feel like nurses could benefit so much from fostering that part of themselves that has nothing to do with nursing that fills them up in another way that to me, that's the ultimate self-care, whether that's painting or crafting or needlework, volunteering,  just exactly like you said, getting away from something that you've always done, something that you identify with, something that you love. We love nursing, but it is nice to do something totally different. And I think for me, definitely one of the things has been podcasting. Yeah, that's something that's really far away from nursing, but it's a creative outlet and I love it.
[47:16] Katherine: It is. I think it just builds your self confidence as well. I know as nurses we're confident, but it's actually really amazing to think, actually, I can do other things. And if I can do other things, what else can I do?
[47:30] Michelle: Exactly? Just those tests that we had to have like you building your website, I'm sure that wasn't easy. It definitely wasn't easy for me. And just like you said, sitting down and writing, and now you're self-publishing and all those details, but every step that we take and every accomplishment, we just get that self-esteem. And there's nothing like it to say, wow, I did this at the end.
[48:04] Katherine: Exactly.
[48:05] Michelle: How can others get started in writing? What advice would you have for them?
[48:11] Katherine: First of all, if you do want to write, write in a genre that you enjoy reading yourself. So if you like romance, maybe romance is a good place to start. If you like a memoir, maybe a memoir is a good place to start. The thing with memoirs is that people think, oh, I don't have an interesting life to write about, but it doesn't have to be. Mine was a month. A lot of people do, like a year. So there was a woman, Eva Schwab, who's done a year of no clutter, and she's basically been uncluttering her house, and so it was a year's process. So people just take a snapshot of their life for a memoir. It might be a trip or it might be something you've been through an illness, or it could be something else that you've been through. So I think connecting with other writers is important. So most areas will have a writer's group. I belong to the New Zealand Romance Writers, and it's got groups all throughout New Zealand. And while I'm not a romance writer, there are people in the group that they cover all genres. So there's historical, there's all lots of different genres in this group, but they know so much. These are women who are men who have written. Some have written one book, some are unpublished, and some have written 20 books and are really well-known. So it's an amazing group and you learn so much. So I do encourage people to join a writer's group if they can.
[50:00] Michelle: Yeah, that's great advice. So start small and get with people, like-minded people and mentors that can kind of show you the road.
[50:11] Katherine: Yes, exactly. And remember, when you look at your nursing practice now, you didn't just wake up an experienced nurse, you started at your student. And then you develop those skills and you learn how to use different procedures and different pumps and all this kind of stuff. It's a learning process. And that's the same with any writing or any creative outlet that you've got. Everything is a learning process. You don't wake up a marathon runner. You do the training for years kind of thing.
[50:46] Michelle: That's a really good point. It's incremental, and you have to start somewhere. So just start and you'll figure out the rest.
[50:57] Katherine: Exactly.
[50:58] Michelle: Oh, I love it. Well, this has been so informational, Katherine, I learned so much about the PACU and I'm so glad that you talked about your journey as a writer. I can't wait to read your book when it comes out. I'm planning a trip, and I've been messaging you on Instagram because I have never traveled internationally and I'm 59 years old, so that's kind of crazy. But I'm taking my first trip in September to Scotland with my daughter.
[51:35] Katherine: Fantastic.
[51:36] Michelle: Yes. I'm so excited. But one of my anxieties was, I don't want to take a big suitcase. We have these wonderful little carry-ons, and then we're planning to get some travel backpacks, and I need all the tips on what to take and how to pack, and I'm excited about it.
[52:01] Katherine: That's fantastic. Traveling light with carry-on is, I say that I'm a 5 Kilo traveler, but I am about people just traveling with less and just making their travel just they're less. Struggling with heavy luggage really is what I'm, and carry-on is a really manageable size. It's about, I say, seven kilos. I think that's maybe 14 or 15 pounds. But it is manageable and it is doable, but a bit like learning anything. It doesn't happen overnight. And there are loads of tips on my website and on Instagram. People are free to ask me questions, and you are as well, Michelle. Just ask away. Just ask the question what's? And there are loads of tips on my Instagram and Facebook as well. So it's just figuring out what you need. And I guess the key things are mix and match, lots of layers, and everything has to be comfortable.
[53:09] Michelle: That is the keyword, comfortable. Well, again, I'm going to link all that in the show notes because I really encourage our listeners to check that out. You have so much great information, but at the end, you know that we do the five-minute snippet.
[53:26] Katherine: Yes.
[53:28] Michelle: Are you ready for that?
[53:29] Katherine: I'm ready.
[53:30] Michelle: It's fun. It's a chance for our listeners to see the off-duty side of Katherine, and it's just five minutes, and I guarantee you know all the answers to the question.
[53:42] Katherine: Good.
[53:46] Michelle: First thing I do when I get to my destination.
[53:54] Katherine: So because I'm only traveling with a day bag, I actually often just keep wandering. When I arrived in Dubrovnik, straight off the bus, I actually instead of going to my accommodation, I actually wandered around the town because I just had a little day bag on my back. And, yeah, I didn't need to check my luggage in. I could start sightseeing straight away.
[54:18] Michelle: That's great. The freedom. That's amazing. If I were an airport designer, I would add blank to airports.
[54:30] Katherine: More sleeping spaces, like pods.
[54:34] Michelle: I love that.
[54:36] Katherine: At Munich airport, they have got this amazing set up where they've got this great loungey area, but they've got these little tiny little rooms. They'd only be like, I don't know, 2 meters by three. And they've got a desk and a bed, and I wasn't there long enough to use it, but oh, my goodness, I thought how brilliant, every airport needs.
[55:00] Michelle: To a weary traveler just to be able to lay down. Absolutely. Okay, this one is a would you rather so would you rather have a self-cleaning house or a laundry fairy to take care of all the laundry?
[55:16] Katherine: Probably a self-cleaning house. I think it's a bigger job.
[55:21] Michelle: Laundry. Yes. Okay. A favorite dish in Italy.
[55:30] Katherine: So it was probably on the Amalfi Coast, and it was a pasta dish, and it had a lemon sauce. And it was because, of course, lemons in Amalfi. Even now, thinking about it, my mouth was just zinging with the flavors. It was incredible.
[55:55] Michelle: Same, fresh.
[55:56] Katherine: Yeah, everything was fresh. The pasta was beautiful. It was just like nothing else.
[56:03] Michelle: Oh, my gosh. Sounds so great. An interesting discovery in Croatia, something that you discovered.
[56:14] Katherine: Interesting discovery.
[56:17] Michelle: Probably so many.
[56:19] Katherine: Exactly. I think because I was on an E-bike in Croatia on the islands of Cortula and I think it was just like there was one point on the day in Cortula when I stopped to have a drink, and I paused just for that reason. And as I stopped, I just looked around and I was just surrounded by this village and their veggie gardens and the mountains and hills, and it was just not an amazing discovery. It's just the fact that I just stopped at that moment and it was just a real-life moment in these local people's time. It was just a beautiful snapshot of their lives.
[57:17] Michelle: Wow. How fortunate to be a part of that. Yeah. Okay, here's another. Would you rather write a book on a typewriter or a word processor?
[57:31] Katherine: Probably a word processor. Yeah. When I did my many years ago, I wrote it on a Brother word, you know, a Brother typewriter thing. Oh, my God. And it wasn't a typewriter, but it was a thing where you had to save it to a disk. Oh, my God. And you print it out. It was just hilarious. It's just like a bloody history lesson thinking about it now.
[58:09] Michelle: All right, we have 35 seconds. So you have a whole year. Would you rather be a museum curator or a librarian?
[58:21] Katherine: Librarian. Hands down. Hands down. A librarian. Just dive into so many books. It would be fascinating.
[58:31] Michelle: Yeah, just get lost in the library for a year. That'd be awesome. Well, that was fun, right?
[58:37] Katherine: That was brilliant. Thank you, Michelle.
[58:39] Michelle: Yeah, I always love it. And we get to see a side of you that's just fun and relaxed. Well, thank you, Katherine, so much. This has been so much fun, and I've learned so much. And again, I want to encourage our listeners to check out your Instagram and your Facebook, and your website. Thank you so much for coming on and talking today.
[59:05] Katherine: Thank you, Michelle. It's been really fun. I've really enjoyed it.
[59:09] Michelle: Well, you take care of yourself and have a great rest of your day.
[59:13] Katherine: You, too. See ya.