Episode 38: Mentoring for a More Equitable Future

40 min listen • February, 12 2021

Think of the countless individuals seeking care daily in our clinics, pharmacies, hospitals, schools, and all manner of health care setting. To best communicate, understand, and build trust, it's vital that patients see people in the healthcare workforce who look, speak, eat, pray, and live like they do.

Our healthcare workforce is far from diverse, representative of our population, or a reflection of our communities and the people we care for. And that is problematic. This representation pipeline problem takes root early on in our educational settings.

In this episode, we meet nurse anesthetist, founder and CEO of Diversity in Nurse Anesthesia Mentorship Program, Wallena Gould, EdD, CRNA, FAAN, whose personal experiences led to a recognition of the scope and root problems that prevent innovation from being impactful or scaled, which led to a body of work that has been applied across healthcare to forge a more equitable future.

About See You Now Podcast

See You Now is a podcast highlighting the innovative and human centered solutions that nurses are coming up with to solve for today’s most challenging, healthcare problems, created in collaboration with Johnson and Johnson and the American Nurses Association and hosted by nurse, economist and health tech specialist, Shawna Butler.

For more information on the podcast bundles, visit ANA's Innovation Website at https://www.nursingworld.org/practice-policy/innovation/education.

Have questions or feedback for the SEE YOU NOW team? Future episode ideas? Contact us at hello@seeyounowpodcast.com.

Resources

• Diversity in Nurse Anesthesia Mentorship Program
• Wallena Gould's Keynote Speech at the 2016 Rutgers School of Nursing–Camden Commencement
• Diversity in Healthcare: The Importance of Representation
• The New Yorker, "Slow Ideas" by Atul Gawande
• Diffusions of Innovation by Everett Rogers
• CRNA Goldie Brangman on Treating Dr. Martin Luther King