Dr. Viola Pierce's Vision for a New Healthcare Future

Dr. Viola Pierce, or Dr. V, has had a truly remarkable journey in the nursing profession, from starting as an LPN to becoming a doctorally prepared nurse with extensive experience in the emergency department. Her passion for nursing and education is evident in her commitment to helping other nurses not only survive but thrive in their careers. Through her work as a nurse business coach, Dr. V empowers nurse coaches and consultants to build successful businesses that allow them to work from anywhere in the world and on their own terms.

Dr. V's experiences in the ER, where she witnessed both the triumphs and tragedies of life, have deeply shaped her approach to nursing and life. Her belief in the importance of living fully in the "dash" between birth and death, along with her commitment to solving problems within the healthcare system, drives her mission to create better opportunities for nurses. By teaching nurses how to establish coaching and consulting businesses, she aims to revolutionize healthcare by enabling more personalized and efficient patient care, such as through the creation of infusion centers and home health agencies.

Dr. V's personal experiences with loss, including the deaths of her family members, have also informed her compassionate approach to patient care, particularly in end-of-life situations. Her ability to connect with patients and their families, often going above and beyond her duties, highlights the deep empathy and dedication she brings to her work. Whether she's teaching nurses, supporting families, or sharing her faith, Dr. V is committed to making a positive impact on the lives of others, both within and outside the healthcare system.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Viola: What happens is you understand life so much better when you've experienced death and dying all the time. You understand the dash. The dash is the life between your birth and your death, right? You understand that it is precious. You understand that you have to go at it with all that you can. 

[00:00:21] Jill: Welcome back to Seeing Death Clearly.

[00:00:23] I'm your host, Jill McClennen, a death doula and end-of-life coach. Here on my show, I have conversations with guests that explore the topics of death, dying, grief, and life itself. My goal is to create a space where you can challenge the ideas you might already have about these subjects. I want to encourage you to open your mind and consider perspectives beyond what you may currently believe to be true.

[00:00:46] In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Viola Pierce. Also known as Dr. V, a nurse with an incredible journey from LPN to a doctorally prepared nurse and business coach. Dr. V shares how her time in the ER witnessing life's highs and lows shaped her approach to nursing and her belief in living fully in the dash between birth and death.

[00:01:10] We explore her passion for helping nurses thrive by building businesses that allow them to work on their own terms. Dr. V also opens up about how personal loss has deepened her empathy and commitment to end of life care. Thank you for joining us for this conversation. Welcome to the podcast, Dr. V. Thank you so much for coming on.

[00:01:30] I'm excited to talk to you today. Can you just tell us a little bit about yourself if you want to share where you grew up, any background information as well? 

[00:01:38] Viola: My name is Dr. Viola Pierce, better known as Dr. B. I teach nurses how to work from their computers anywhere around the world, make money and own their own time.

[00:01:47] I'm a nurse business coach. I work in specifically with nurse coaches in this office. I'm from North Carolina, small printer girl, just traveling the world and having a good time. That's amazing. 

[00:01:57] Jill: So you're not in North Carolina now. You'd like to travel around as you're working. We're in North Carolina now, but we do travel a lot.

[00:02:05] That's wonderful. That's the life, right? That's what a lot of us want to get to, to be able to work and travel at the same time, doing something that we love, which is really cool. How did you get into becoming a doctor, even in the beginning? What led you to working in the medical system? I am a 

[00:02:25] Viola: doctorally prepared nurse.

[00:02:26] I am a nurse. But I have a doctorate in nursing practice. I'm like, okay, doctor and a nurse. So I've spent many of my years being a nurse, being at the bedside and really seeing a lot. I worked in the emergency department for about 15 years. And so I thought a lot, a lot of, a lot of tragedies, a lot of things that went on.

[00:02:44] It was rough. And not only that, things that I've experienced outside of working, I became a nurse because my mom wanted me to. I wanted to become an engineer. But that was because of what I was exposed to. I was exposed to engineering because I was doing a couple of summers. Prior to going to college, I went to this program called Student International Engineering.

[00:03:08] I wanted to be an engineer. And my mom was like, we can't send you to that college because we don't have enough money. She said, well, you can go to the community college. And I said, well, okay, I'll go to the community college. So I went to say, well, then I will go and get my associate. And then I'll transfer to a big college.

[00:03:25] She was like, well, no, we don't have enough money then at that time either. So I'm gonna need for you to stay there. I said, what am I going to do? She was like, how about you become a nurse? No, I was like, okay. So I considered it. I went on to become a nurse. I was an LPN at first because I had no exposure to any healthcare, like nothing.

[00:03:44] I didn't know that you gave Tylenol or fever. It was like fire hosing me with information. I was like, I can't take in all this information. Yeah. And so finally, I was an LPN for about 10 years. And so the way that the program worked was that it was a year long. It was two years to get your RN degree. If you made a certain GPA, you could become an LPN, but you had to make a higher GPA to become an RN.

[00:04:08] I didn't have that higher GPA, so I became an LPN and because I am a largely a kinesthetic learner, I was able to go in and learn everything. By the time I went back to school, seven years later, I ended up being 10 years being an LPN. It was really easy, not easy, easy, but it was a lot easier going back to get my heart rate.

[00:04:30] Jill: Interesting. So being that my podcast is about death and dying, and this is something that I think about a lot, is that A lot of us end up in careers that maybe we didn't want to do originally, right? We just kind of end up there for a variety of reasons. Financial is definitely a huge one, but also our parents want us to do something, whatever else it is.

[00:04:51] Do you ever think back and wish you still could have gone for engineering? Or did eventually your path take you to a place where you're like, actually, this is where I was supposed to be. This is definitely where 

[00:05:01] Viola: I'm supposed to be for sure. One of the things that helps me be there is that The death and dying aspect, because what happens is you understand life so much better when you've experienced death and dying all the time.

[00:05:17] You understand the dash. The dash is the life between your birth and your death, right? You understand that it is precious. You understand that you have to go at it with all that you can. And so it changes your perspective. Do I absolutely know that that was where I was supposed to be? Absolutely. I don't think that makes any sense.

[00:05:36] Thanks. I think he challenges us sometimes. We talk about that all the time because, you know, I talked to him every morning. What more did you? Can we not challenge him like that?

[00:05:48] Yeah, 

[00:05:49] Jill: I know that feeling. Wonderful though, that you were able to find the career, even though maybe wasn't where you were planning on going in the first place. And so you did nursing, 

[00:06:04] Viola: you said in the ER? Yeah, I worked in the ER. So initially I worked in med surg and then it was one night I was supposed to, and this is how I found my love for it was because I was young.

[00:06:17] I was naive, right? I didn't know what constituted an emergency, what didn't constitute an emergency, and I wanted to understand how to figure that out. I remember I went down to the emergency department and there was this young girl who sat down and tell the story all the time because it was the thing that really, really helped me to want to be in the emergency department.

[00:06:35] She sat down and we ended up having a seizure. We didn't know she was pregnant. She was young. And when she had seizure, she ended up, we ended up, you know, She ended up being fine later on, but her mom was freaking out, but she didn't know she was pregnant. She didn't know that, you know, of course she's having a seizure.

[00:06:53] She didn't want to have a baby. She didn't know she was pregnant in the first place. It was a whole mess. And the doctor was like, look, this is not what we're going to do right here. We're not going to fall out. So I knew it was the place that I needed to be. And so that's the reason why I went back to school to get my R.

[00:07:06] E. degree because in the state of North Carolina, as an MPN, you can't educate. The patient already has to do it and you cannot do initial assessments in the emergency department. That's all you do. So that's what propelled me to go down there. But in going down there, I saw a lot of good, a lot of bad. 

[00:07:22] Jill: I'm sure.

[00:07:23] I mean, in the emergency room, there must be a lot, like you said, a lot of tragedy, a lot of deaths that did not have to happen, but do for a variety of reasons. And a lot of the times it's going to be a tragic, traumatic death if they're in the ER. That must be very difficult. What were things that you did?

[00:07:43] You said you pray every morning or at least talk to God every morning. What other types of things did you do to help deal with the stress and the overwhelm that I can imagine would come from working in the ER for many years? I don't think I did it well 

[00:07:57] Viola: while I was there. I think I do it much, much better as an entrepreneur.

[00:08:00] I'm sure that while I was there, because when you're in the healthcare system, one of the things that a lot of people struggle with is they tell you to debrief whenever you have code or all these things. But the reality is that You can't debrief, you've got 10 other folks out there in the waiting room, just waiting to come back.

[00:08:19] Right. And you can't debrief and it's, it's, it's rough. And I remember I had this, this kid that came in and I just, I'll never forget this particular day because it was just crazy. We rolled this older gentleman, okay, that he had been sick. He had abdominal pain. He went to the physician. Physician's office the day before they sent him home, most of pain medicine and told him to rehaul, but then he started having really bad pain.

[00:08:49] It comes back to the emergency department. We find out that he has what's called a triple A, right? And so what that is, it's a abdominal aortic aneurysm. And so the biggest aorta that you have in your body, just imagine it is It's called safety and it is split. When those split, I've seen maybe one survive in my lifetime as a nurse and I've been a nurse for a long time.

[00:09:12] We have him in there and we're trying to get him stabilized to get him to another tertiary care center because we don't have the ability to take care of that. We don't have vascular surgeons there. So we're working on him really hard. I wasn't working on him. So it was, but that was what was going on in that room.

[00:09:29] And this kid came in, he was walking outside. His father was supposed to be watching him. Apparently he got out of the eyesight of his father. So he walked into this pool. And he walked into the pool, he drowned. I remember having the oldest person in that family and the youngest person in that family simultaneously dying in two separate rooms.

[00:09:53] And I remember thinking, this is rough. The nurses were doing all they could to save those children and save that gentleman, but it was just the time, it was time for them. I'm a firm believer that the date of your life and the date of your death is already determined. It's what you do in that day that matters, right?

[00:10:12] And sure enough, it was Rob going and telling those families. And it was like, you know, we normally have like one family room, like we had to split them up. We had to put them in another conference room. It was just rough. 

[00:10:24] Jill: Yeah. I think the death of a child is never anything that anybody can really get used to, right?

[00:10:30] Like it just never feels. No matter how many times I talk to people and they say about their child dying or experiencing the death of a child. It just never feels right to me. And yeah, just hearing it gives me goosebumps. Bulls freak me out when people have them in their house and they have little kids.

[00:10:45] I think because I was a lifeguard when I was in high school, I know how fast it happens. It's not like it is in the movies. Oh, that's tragic though. It's terrible. 

[00:10:54] Viola: I think one of the things that when I was in nursing school, one of the nursing students, she's a nurse now, said to me that her dad was passing away and they knew he was going to pass away.

[00:11:04] He said to her, it is the natural flow of life for me to pass before you. When I think about children, I think like you do, it's such a tragedy whenever they pass away, when their parents. Yeah. 

[00:11:17] Jill: In my mind, that will hopefully be the way that works for me and my children, because that does seem like the natural order and that they will be okay.

[00:11:25] And I've talked to people that had children that have died and they're okay. I still I'm not sure how they get there, but they do. It's hard, I can't imagine, and hopefully won't ever have to. This idea of having our birth date and our death date already kind of planned, that's something that I've thrown around in my head a few times.

[00:11:46] Can you just talk a little bit more about that? Like where even that originally came to, why you think it? Because I love to talk about that kind of stuff too. So I had this kid 

[00:11:55] Viola: that came in, he was on a motorcycle, traveling really fast, didn't have his license. And it was a car right in front of him, and the car turned to the left, and he was trying to pass the car over.

[00:12:07] And he hit the car, and he flew 120 feet. Whenever he came into the emergency department, he was really nasty, tough, and drunk. He had mush in his head. I could feel the bones that cracked, or the swelling that was there. Whenever they come in like that, you can't assume they're just not nice. You have to assume that they have a head injury and that the reason why they're talking smack is because of the head injury.

[00:12:32] So you have to secure their airway before they cannot secure their airway on their own, right? We secured the airway and that kid walked down to the hospital probably about a couple of weeks later and he's fine. One came in. Motorcycle sitting on the side of the room and the stop sign fell over, hit his head, died.

[00:12:52] For me, that was like, yeah, this is already planned out. We were playing a part in it, but it was already planned out in the beginning. 

[00:13:00] Jill: Yeah, you're right, because there is definitely those stories where you hear about, like, some really small freak thing and somebody dies, and then somebody goes into these, massive accidents and falling off cliffs and crazy stuff and yet they survived.

[00:13:15] So maybe it is planned. I don't know. And I figure either way, I don't want to know my death date. I don't think I could live if I knew, even if it is in 40 years, I think it would still be difficult. So I'm glad I don't know. But. I do like to think about it sometimes, and of course I always imagine myself old when I die, but that doesn't mean that'll be the reality either.

[00:13:38] Yeah, right, we can't control it, but you're right that we can control that dash in between our birth and our death date to a certain extent. I think life, we will suffer no matter what, right? That's just part of the human experience, but we can control how much we suffer to a certain degree. I'm trying not to focus as much on myself.

[00:13:58] suffering. Just focus on being present for whatever is happening. The good, the bad, everything in between. Just being fully present for it. That's my goal. 

[00:14:07] Viola: Yeah, 

[00:14:07] Jill: it has definitely helped me 

[00:14:09] Viola: with family members and their deaths. My mom suffered the death of two of my brothers prior to her passing. My mom was 91, right?

[00:14:18] The reality is that as you grow older, Then that could be a reality. I remember one of my brothers passed away. It was a struggle for her because he lived with her and I didn't know what was going on with him. He never told us. I knew something was wrong because he lost all this weight. He said that his tummy was hurting all the time.

[00:14:38] He kept going to the doctor and we were all living our lives. At that time I worked for corporate, so I couldn't just take off whenever I wanted to. This is one of the things I love about being an entrepreneur is now I can take I want to, I couldn't take off. He would have these appointments on days when I just, I went there, I couldn't go there with him.

[00:14:56] And so I called his daughter up and I said, I, I need you to go to 

[00:14:59] Jill: your dad. 

[00:15:00] Viola: Something that's going on, I said, and I don't really know what's going on, I said, but I know something's bad. I asked him questions after questions, but for some reason, I don't know whether he just didn't want to acknowledge it, or tell my mom.

[00:15:12] I don't know what the deal was. And still to this day, don't really understand it. But anyway, we went on a cruise in the middle of the cruise. I have a niece that travels with me a lot. Her sister called her and said that he had pancreatic cancer. And so I knew something was up. I just didn't know it was that.

[00:15:32] So when I got back home, I have an older brother who had had prostate cancer. And my mom was like, we're just going to pray for him. Everything's going to be okay. This is different. He had chronic cancer, has a very low survival rate. I don't think I've ever seen a survivor. And that next day, he passed away.

[00:15:51] Jill: Oh my. 

[00:15:52] Viola: And it was rough. For the longest time, she couldn't even look at his picture. She couldn't look at anything that, Because he was always a kid. Now, my parents were older. I'm the biggest thing. Okay. It was stair steps prior to me. And then there's seven years between my last brother and myself. She had four miscarriages and was stillborn prior to me coming into the world.

[00:16:17] She. You know, I didn't, I wasn't there for this particular car, but apparently my brother used to always say when she would leave, mama, you coming back? Or mama, where are you going? Mama, you coming back? He was that child. They had a really close relationship, you know, apparently my grandfather said, boy, if you don't shut up, ask me when she coming back.

[00:16:37] They had a really close relationship. So it was rough for sure. 

[00:16:40] Jill: I don't think it matters your age or your child's age. When a child dies, it's still your baby. And. I'm sorry to hear that. And you said you have two brothers that died already? 

[00:16:52] Viola: Oh, I'm sorry. Two brothers. One was killed. He was in New Orleans.

[00:16:57] He just went missing one day and my sister called me up and she said that he was missing. And I said, well, what is going on? And we were getting updates from the family, but nothing. Six months later, they found a kid and the father were in this field. There was a baseball field beside the wooded area and they were hunting.

[00:17:17] And somebody murdered him? 

[00:17:20] Jill: Yes, 

[00:17:20] Viola: that's what we think. 

[00:17:21] Jill: Oh gosh. 

[00:17:22] Viola: It's still inconclusive to this day. But there were several things that happened after that really made us think that something, there was foul play involved for sure. You never know, but the, the deal is that, When you look at things like that, those things are going to come back and you're going to get paid.

[00:17:38] I'm a firm believer that you, you reap what you sow. It talks about it in the Bible. I mean, I'm not, I'm not, vengeance is fine, says the Lord. I'm not here to give you vengeance. It's not my job. My job is to take care of my family and to be intentional about. Loving of people that I can't love, 

[00:17:55] Jill: I see it. I think there's enough hate and anger in the world.

[00:17:59] We don't need to add to that. We need to just add more love when possible. And I know I try my best. My children asked me the other day, who did I hate? I said, honestly, I don't hate anybody. There's people that I don't like what they do, but I don't hate them. I mean, it doesn't do me any good. It doesn't do the world any good to walk around with a heart full of hate.

[00:18:22] And so I try to send as much love out into my community and to the world as possible, but it's hard, you know, sometimes. Hearing stories like that, it's hard to not want revenge on somebody and to not want to hate them for what they did to your family. Even if you don't know who it is yet, there's still a them, right?

[00:18:42] I think one of the things 

[00:18:43] Viola: that really helped me with forgiveness and literally turned my life around was TBJ's when he said that forgiveness is like eating the poison and expecting the other person to die. For me, it was just, Like, Oh, you're right because they're over there and doing their life and having an amazing time, but here I am traumatized because of what they've done and completely stopped.

[00:19:06] I will dwell on it for maybe one, two, maybe three days. But then it's, it's out of my head. The reason why is because my mission for the nurses that I'm training and the nurses that I'm supporting is so important. I can't keep that in my head. I look at my brain as a hundred percent. It's a circle, right?

[00:19:25] And it's got a hundred percent. My family, my children, the business, my God, my husband, they're really important. Those are the people that I keep in my head and I can't keep other things in my head. Because that will stop me from moving forward. So that's kind of how I look at life and it works for me so well.

[00:19:47] Like I will dump something out of my brain in a hot New York second, and won't even think another thing. Now we bring it back up. I can remember it. I just don't dwell on it. And I pray for the person. I pray for them because the reality is that we only do as good as we can with what we have. And so people do things because.

[00:20:07] They may be mean or whatever, but I don't know what they went through. People who hurt people are hurt people. I think about my life and the fact that I had such an amazing life, right? People who hate on me or do things to me typically are not people who are ahead of me. I feel like I'm looking to the person who really can help me to become a better me.

[00:20:31] So. I 

[00:20:34] Jill: love that so much, and I try to get things out of my head as best as I can. There's definitely some situations that get kind of stuck, right? It's almost like a broken record, really, where you're just like, why am I thinking about this again? Like, this is so last year, why am I thinking about this still?

[00:20:52] But I'm getting better, right? Like, with everything in life, I am getting better, because yes, there's so many things in life. that have changed now that I think so much about death and dying. How much of my life am I going to waste thinking about things, especially in the past, that I can't go back and change?

[00:21:10] When I could be experiencing what's here with me right now, or thinking about plans that I want to do, right? Which I don't think we should get too stuck in thinking about the future either, but that at least feels more productive, right? If I'm thinking about my business, or my children, or what we want to do, that at least feels more productive.

[00:21:30] And so, every once in a while when I feel myself getting stuck back in those loops, I try to remind myself that Jill, like, one day you're I'm not going to have the opportunity to experience this. So be here right now and experience it. Stop thinking about something you can't change that happened years ago.

[00:21:46] Just let it go. It's okay. But you know, it's part of the process of being a human, right? Is learning and growing and getting better. So I'm trying. And I do want to hear more about the training that you do with nurses. You know, I am not a nurse. I'm not a doctor. I've never worked in healthcare. I am a death doula.

[00:22:07] I do volunteer in hospitals now. So I have some experience in a hospital as an outsider, but I work closely with some of the nurses and the doctors. There's definitely some Places where I see that there needs to be a little bit more, I don't know if it's training or education or just more conversation.

[00:22:28] Doctors and nurses do the best they can with what they have right now, but I think there's some holes that can be filled. So that's why when we connected, I was so excited to hear that you train nurses. So I want to hear about what you do, how you do it. Why you started doing it, all of that stuff. 

[00:22:47] Viola: So that's a great question.

[00:22:48] I've been in nursing for a long time. And what I've seen over the years, it's the pace at which you needed to take care of your patient was growing. Nurses were not able to really even take a break and weren't able to. You know, replenish themselves. They were not able to do the things that they needed to do in order to be able to take care of patients efficiently and effectively.

[00:23:08] Whenever you can't take care of a patient efficiently and effectively, the patient suffers and they die. And so that was, and then that creates a whole another conundrum, right? Because if you were physically capable of doing it, you would have done it. But because you have limited physical capability to do the things you need to do, you just 

[00:23:29] Jill: can't, 

[00:23:30] Viola: right?

[00:23:30] And I saw the nurses struggling, not just with that, just with coming to work and running from the time that they hit the floor to the time that they left. And I was like, this is not the way that life should be. And it was not the way that it was when I first became a nurse. And so I knew that I needed to help nurses in the interim.

[00:23:48] What I decided to do is I started to teach nurses how to build a coaching and consulting business. These are nurses who at least have a little bit of experience. They take their experience and revolutionize healthcare. Nursing is the largest profession in healthcare, right? So I just give an example.

[00:24:04] This is a prime example. So if you have a patient that can't eat, they should have a non media now. If the patient came in, had an IV in their arm, they would have to stay there during the entire time that they were receiving those IV antibiotic medications. There was no letting the patient go home because we didn't have that type of structure to be able to let them go home.

[00:24:25] So then what happens is you've got patients upstairs who are receiving IV, and there was this one patient. A young lady, she was walking around, she was chit chatting with the staff, she was having a good time. The only reason she was there was because she had to have the IV medication. She stayed in the hospital for 21 days.

[00:24:40] So, why not create an infusion center? The patient can go home, go to the infusion centers, or receive the infusions at home. I have a nurse who helps me. infusion centers. She also helps create home health agencies that focus on infusions so patients can go home so that that patient can get out of the hospital, relieve the pressure on the emergency department, create a flow of patients that go upstairs.

[00:25:06] So that we don't have so much pressure on the healthcare system. That's a prime example of how we're shulking the healthcare system. 

[00:25:13] Jill: Oh, yeah. Makes so much sense. Like, why keep somebody in the hospital for 21 days? Thankfully, I've not spent a lot of time in a hospital as a patient myself. But when I have, you're not getting rest.

[00:25:28] It's noisy. They're coming in a lot. You're not comfortable. So yes, if people can be home and go just to an infusion center, it makes a lot more sense. And yeah, then you just, I guess that's like a lot of things in life, right? There's a need and you just need somebody that can go and actually create the system to fill that need, which is easier said than done because not all of us are entrepreneurs.

[00:25:53] Not all of us want to go out and put that amount of work in that it requires to do something like that. A lot of people, it's just not their thing and that's fine too. But that's awesome. 

[00:26:03] Viola: When you start solving problems, You will have an endless paycheck. I'm all about solving problems. Let's solve the problem.

[00:26:09] There's nothing that I feel we can't solve as people. I'm a Christian, so I believe we were created by a creator who said we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us. That's one of the things I think about. And I also think about the fact that, again, this honors the time to, um, embrace. I had a patient that came in.

[00:26:27] His mom said that she was a dick. She was a do not resuscitate. So she said she didn't want any measures to keep her alive. If she used to go, she wouldn't. And so when she came in, that's what I thought was going to happen. And now all of a sudden, you know, they put her on a ventilator. And I was like, what is going on here?

[00:26:45] And so to, you know, I talked with the nurse, nurse said the son wanted everything to be done because it's hard, right? It's hard to have those decisions you have to make in the moment. And especially when it's your mama, because my mama passed away and listen, that was, that was the whole thing. I walked outside and he was smoking, right?

[00:27:04] We have a no smoke campus. So he thought that I was trying to stop him from smoking. I was like, bro, I just love it. I said, but, and so I sat down and I talked to him. And I said, your mom specifically laid out details of what she wanted. I said, and I know that it's hard as you as her son to be able to say these things.

[00:27:22] I said, but it's not what she wanted. Sure enough. He went back in and she passed away. He wrote a really nice letter to the hospital about me. He said her shift was over. She was not clocked in and she was going to recover. And she saw me, she stopped and had that conversation with me. I feel like my mother passed away in peace.

[00:27:42] It's those connections in which you make with the family members. And it makes it so much easier because, you know, physicians, I think that You know, as an experienced nurse, and especially once I got to the emergency department, I knew that some physicians, even though they were physicians, they still were not comfortable with death.

[00:28:02] And so we had one patient that came in and he was a DNR as well. To the day, we're going to do what the children say, it just is what it is, right? And the mentality around that is if they die, then they can't sue us, but the family members can. That is the reality around that, right? She was freaking out.

[00:28:20] She was like, you know, I don't know what to do. I don't know what decision to make. I saw the physician fumbling to say, and I sat her down and I said, this is what he would have wanted. You want to do it? Well, he, and I think that that's the value of having that conversation prior to, right? This is what I would have wanted.

[00:28:38] Having that conversation and being clear on what you would have wanted, what you wouldn't have wanted and having it written so that your family members know. Yeah. 

[00:28:49] Jill: Yes, because I think that's the hard part. It feels like we are making the decision when we're not. If we have the conversation with them, they made the decision.

[00:29:01] The conversation you had with the young man about his mother, that is one of the gaps or the holes that I'm seeing in healthcare is people are nurses, doctors, the people that understand. What these things are like if you intubate somebody now you have to be the one to say no Undo that and that's more traumatic than just allowing somebody to go naturally But I didn't know that until I saw somebody intubated.

[00:29:31] I didn't know that until I had these conversations we don't know that as the general public and Sometimes we just need a nurse or a doctor to have that conversation and say, Hey, look, this isn't what your person wanted. They didn't want this thing. And once we do it, it's going to be a lot harder to undo it than to just allow them to go naturally.

[00:29:53] And I think that's a thing too, is when we say DNR, do not resuscitate, that sounds so harsh. It sounds so like, well, I'm not. Doing the thing that will keep them alive where if we were to say Allow them to die naturally or allow nature to take its course. This is what's going to happen. Naturally We're not causing it to happen.

[00:30:15] This is what's happening. I can understand You know doctors and nurses are trained to keep people alive I get that and i'm really grateful for that, but it comes to a point in a human's life that It's not for their greatest good to do everything possible to keep them alive, because they're not living at that point, and they're never going to be able to live off of these things.

[00:30:40] So we need to have better conversations. And that's part of what I want to do, really, is to work with Doctors and nurses getting more comfortable talking about death because I'm really good at talking about death I don't know the medical stuff, but i'm good at having the conversations about death and dying I think there is that need to just get better at it to practice it because we got a lot of baby boomers coming up that are going to be dying, because that's the reality, right?

[00:31:08] Like, we're all gonna die at some point. And so we don't need to extend some lives at all cost when they can just die naturally and at peace, not in pain, not suffering. If anybody is suffering, Watched a loved one go through some of these experiences at the end of life. That's what's so traumatic about death.

[00:31:30] Death itself is typically not the part that people are like, Oh, when my mother died or whoever died, it was terrible. It's not the death itself. It's the, all this stuff leading up to it. And, you know, it doesn't have to be that way. We can change that. We can make a difference with that. 

[00:31:46] Viola: There was this particular thing.

[00:31:48] The lady said her father had been. Bedridden and contracted bedsores for 20 years. And she was like, well, I've kept him alive for 20 years. Like it was a badge of honor. Almost, I just looked at her. I was like, and I, like, I could not say anything. I was not mature enough at that time to have a great response to help her understand that none of that is cool.

[00:32:11] Because he doesn't have any, I believe that if you're going to be on this earth, then you need to have quality of life, quality over quantity of life. And that's where people get it wrong. And that's just my opinion. The reality is that I'm going to have quality of life, like they have quality of life. And I, you know, mean a little good with each other.

[00:32:31] I mean, let me go where I need to go. Right. So that's how I look at. Life as a general rule. 

[00:32:36] Jill: Yeah, same, because I feel for the woman, right? It gets to a point where we have to stop these treatments, knowing that stopping the treatments is going to be what essentially causes the death, right? Not that if we look at it the other way, is that, you know, The treatments are keeping them alive physically, right?

[00:32:56] Their body will continue to thrive for 20 years, which is crazy. That's not even thriving. That's barely living, right? If my children ever listen to this, for the love of God, please do not do that. What that woman's life was like for 20 years. That is not a life for anybody in that situation. And then that's when I start thinking about what kind of guilt did she have about their relationship?

[00:33:22] What unfinished business did they, like, what was holding her so tightly to him that she couldn't let go? There was something she needed to work through. And. I encourage people to do that work now. If you have any of that unfinished business with your parents, children, or anybody in your life, do the work now to get closure as best as you can, to forgive, to let go.

[00:33:47] So when somebody is dying, you're not holding on like tooth and nail because you're like, no, but I need to have this. thing. We need to have this conversation. We need to have this closure. Let's do this work now so that we can all die in peace. Hopefully. That would be lovely. That's right. I'm a firm believer that 

[00:34:05] Viola: when it comes to my children, your children don't always do what you want them to do.

[00:34:09] And you have to be graceful. You have to understand that it's just not always going to go your way and it's not going to always be the straight line to the land of prosperity that you want for your children or the land of prosperity that you want for any relationship that you have. It's not always going to be that straight line.

[00:34:27] It's going to be your all. Right? And when it veers off, you have to understand that you have to love them in, in the, in the interim. You have to love them through it all, no matter what. And then when you love them through it all, you teach them how to do that. And when you teach them how to do that, then it's passed on down to your grandchildren, and then it's passed on and on.

[00:34:46] But some people don't think that they think, you know, I'm gonna hold this grudge forever, which is foolish, right? It's that unforgiveness and it creates this hole that it's just a horrible. I mean, I've seen that guilt and that I wish I would've, you know, I wish I'd have talked to him. I wish, you know, those things.

[00:35:04] And it's just, it's rough. It's rough. And you just, you can't undo it. I'm way too many times. 

[00:35:10] Jill: Yeah. I'm experiencing it within my own family. My aunt recently passed away. I had a conversation this past weekend with a family friend, even with good relationships. You're still going to have some feelings of guilt and questioning.

[00:35:25] Did I do things right? Maybe I could have done more. So you're already going to have a little bit of that, right? So let's take care of the big stuff. But again, I think some of that guilt that I'm finding with my family. And this family friend goes back to the doctors and nurses not always helping people understand what's happening.

[00:35:44] And so then when all of a sudden your person dies, it's like, Oh, what did I do wrong? I made the wrong decision. I didn't do things right. When it's like, no, they were dying, like, the other people in the room knew that and saw that, but they weren't necessarily able to communicate. A lot of us do the best we can with the information we have, but then people are left with so much guilt, like, I could have done more, I should have done something different.

[00:36:11] And it's like, no, you did the best you could with the information you had. 

[00:36:14] Viola: I think it is the, the communication. Sometimes people get where they weren't here. A physician told me that whenever he goes in, he tells a family member that they're, that person has passed away. He said, I never say passed away. I always say died because it's almost like they can't take in it until they actually hear the words die.

[00:36:34] I think that there is this want or desire to do those things. However, what happens is. It is the capacity in which they can receive it that changes the game. And so sometimes what happens is they just don't have the capacity to receive it. And so we have to be very clear on how it goes and you're right.

[00:36:56] We're there to save their lives. It is what it is. We didn't have a class on death and dying. I don't think I, well, maybe I did. Maybe I didn't, I don't remember. It was way too long ago. But the reality is that it is definitely something that we have to be a lot better at. But I think you as a death doula is a value add to any hospital, right?

[00:37:16] Because you get to be there for the families because the nurses and the doctors are so busy. I agree, especially now, just that I've spent more time in hospitals and I work with a lot of people. So I think that's a great value add. You should be at every hospital. 

[00:37:37] Jill: I agree, especially now just that I've spent more time in hospitals and I work with a lot Usually, just with like the palliative care team, I've been volunteering at two different hospitals in New Jersey.

[00:37:48] The palliative care team is wonderful. They do great work and they have social workers and all the people at the hospital that do their jobs. But death doulas do something a little different. It could really benefit a lot of hospitals to have death doulas on staff. But like most people, you hadn't heard of them until about two years ago, at the hospital people will be like, wait, what do you do?

[00:38:09] There's just a lot of education around. The fact we even exist, but hopefully we'll get there with some time. Like a lot of things, it just takes time. I will put any links in the show notes that you want. If people want to reach you about your coaching, you only work with nurses. How does that work? Now, if you want 

[00:38:28] Viola: to be a coaching consultant, my niche is nurses.

[00:38:31] But as a coaching consultant, my job is to get you clients at a high ticket, pretty much. But because you have learned all these things, put in all that time, you can crunch the time for someone who is coming new to the industry. You need to be paying your rate because you're worth more than money can buy, but your rate is your rate.

[00:38:47] We help get clients. 

[00:38:49] Jill: I'll put your website in there. Is there anything else? Do you have an Instagram you want to direct people to? Yeah, so we're all over the place. 

[00:38:56] Viola: So on Facebook, it's Viola Coppedge Pierce, which is my maiden name, Viola Coppedge Pierce on LinkedIn, TikTok. We're BPNurse on Instagram and YouTube.

[00:39:06] We have a nurse nurturer channel, which we interview healthcare professionals. And we have a whole YouTube. channel where we do, we have podcasts. 

[00:39:16] Jill: Oh, wonderful. Well, I'll put links of all of those things in the show notes so people can easily find you. Thank you so much for coming on today. This was a great conversation.

[00:39:26] I enjoyed it. And I really appreciate you taking the time out of your day. Thank 

[00:39:31] Viola: you, Jill. You have been an amazing host. Thank you for who you are and doing what you do because we definitely need you. 

[00:39:37] Jill: Thank you for listening to this episode of seeing death clearly. In my next episode, it's the first part of a two part episode with my real life friend, David Downey.

[00:39:48] I learned that David has only a few months left to live, and during a phone call, he told me about his life story, and I asked if we could record an episode for me to share with all of you. David shares with us his journey as a nurse during the early days of the HIV epidemic, and the challenges of working in HIV clinics during a time when the government was doing little to help.

[00:40:11] David tells us about his heart condition, which led him to face the medical field from a patient's perspective and his experiences with the healthcare system. He opens up about the struggles of being disbelieved by doctors, the impact of living with chronic illness, and how meditation transformed his relationship with pain.

[00:40:30] And if you're wondering why I break some episodes into two parts, I try to keep the recordings under 50 minutes so I don't have to break them up, but sometimes the conversation is too good to stop early. I only get a certain amount of time in my editing and podcast hosting platform, so if you would like to hear more longer episodes, you can financially support the show, which will help me to extend the length of time and not have to break episodes into two parts.

[00:40:55] I have a new way to support my business. I have started a new line of death positive t shirts and other apparel and items that you can purchase. They're all designed by me. Each one is original and they can be ordered in a wide range of sizes and colors. You could head to my website, endoflifeclarity.

[00:41:12] com and go to the store tab to see them all. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend or family member who might find it interesting. Your support in spreading the podcast is greatly appreciated. Please consider subscribing on your favorite podcast platform and leaving a five star review.

[00:41:28] Your positive feedback helps recommend the podcast to others. The podcast also offers a paid subscription feature that allows you to financially support the show. Your contribution will help keep the podcast advertisement free, whether your donation is large or small, every amount, is valuable. I sincerely appreciate all of you for listening to the show and supporting me in any way you can.

[00:41:48] You can find a link in the show notes to subscribe to the paid monthly subscription, as well as a link to my Venmo if you prefer to make a one time contribution. Thank you, and I look forward to seeing you in next week's episode of Seeing Death Clearly.