Jaime Staengel and Michael Hutchinson

[00:03] JAIME STAENGEL: Hi, my name is Jamie Stengel. Today is October 15, 2023, and we're recording this conversation in my hometown of St. Louis, Missouri. I'm here to interview a good friend of mine from the confluence chamber orchestra and I'll let him introduce himself now.

[00:19] MICHAEL HUTCHINSON: Hi, my name is Michael Hutchinson I'm 75. It's October 15, 2023, and we are in St. Louis, Missouri, my hometown also. And I'm being interviewed by Jamie Stengel, who's been kind enough to ask me.

[00:34] JAIME STAENGEL: Awesome. Well, thank you again so much, Michael It really means a lot to me. I know you've accepted and we know each other from orchestra. We're both violas. I want that to go into this conversation as well. So we talk a lot about music. But today, as I asked you to do the interview, you know, there's, from your background and your many years of experience, one part of your life that I found incredibly interesting and it seems you are very proud of, and that is nursing. So if it's alright with you, I think it'd be great if we got started talking about how you became an RN. You mentioned you were a journeyman carpenter for 30 years and then became an RN. So I was wondering, if anything, what made you want to pivot, and when did that pivot happen in your career?

[01:17] MICHAEL HUTCHINSON: Enjoyed being a journeyman carpenter and I did it for overall, 30 years. But I wanted to try something different. I always admired healthcare and healthcare workers and I wanted to be able to myself, I wanted to be able to make a difference and help people. Carpentry was great, but nursing was even better. I've had my nursing license now for 27 years, which I'm very proud of. It's one of the things I'm most proud of in my life. And I'm still contributing. I'm not at the bedside anymore, but I still contribute with the medical and nursing schools by helping to the faculty to assist in teaching students learning how to be doctors and nurses.

[01:56] JAIME STAENGEL: Wow. Can you talk about that a little bit more? How specifically do you help these future generations of nurses and doctors?

[02:03] MICHAEL HUTCHINSON: Well, we are standardized patients. We go in and we have a script to follow. We let them do mini exams on us and we follow a script. I'm a different person and I have symptoms and then they have to assess us and diagnose what's going on. It's of course just fiction, but it's more realistic than just reading a book or looking at a mannequin.

[02:28] JAIME STAENGEL: Yeah. And is there anything as you work with those students, that whether you just tell them anecdotally through the experience by being that standardized patient. Or after that, you would want future generations of nurses or healthcare workers to know based on your own experience and then doing the standardized patient work.

[02:46] MICHAEL HUTCHINSON: Well, we generally stick very close to the standardized patient character. We're not supposed to break character. Occasionally at the end, we can give them a little feedback and I usually ask them why they went into what they're doing and what their specialty wants to be, whether it's pediatrics or whatever. And then I give them a little feedback from myself about how I went into nursing if there's time. But the best part of teaching them is when I get to see, we work with 1st, second and third year students and you can see the progress that they're making and how much better they're going to be when they actually go out into the hospital settings and how they're going to help, be able to help people. And that gives me a lot of pride.

[03:27] JAIME STAENGEL: Wow, that is so amazing. Really kind of going back to your past a minute now, though, you mentioned too that you had served in the air force during the Vietnam war. I know you said you were not in Vietnam, but did anything of being in the military influence your decision to become an RN many years later? Or put another way, how did a nurse later on being a nurse make you feel more hopeful after maybe being closer to war in the military? I know I've never been that close to war, so.

[04:01] MICHAEL HUTCHINSON: Well, I understand your question. When I was in the air force, part of my job was to handle munitions, and those are not, those are weapons of war, of course. And I was never really, never really had a great feeling about doing it. I mean, we did it because we were supposed to, but being changing over and becoming a nurse gave me a chance to give back to people and make them better instead of going after them. Basically, I just felt like I could only do even a small part, some small way, help people now. I thought that would be really the.

[04:45] JAIME STAENGEL: Right thing to do and bringing that healing to folks. Amazing. Again, you have all this great experience. I just love hearing about it. Maybe going back now, you just said wanting to even do a little small part, kind of giving back. How would you like your patients that you took care of all those years to remember your care for them?

[05:07] MICHAEL HUTCHINSON: I would like for them to be, of course, better when they left the hospital, when they came in or whatever. But I would like them to be able to look back on the care that I gave them and think that I helped them and that I don't know how to say it exactly, but that they enjoyed the time that I spent with them. Nobody likes being in the hospital, so the best thing we can do is make their time there valuable and pleasant for them, but also improve their life and health. So I would like them for to remember me as a good caregiver.

[05:43] JAIME STAENGEL: That's amazing. And actually, that leads well to one of my questions I had, which is, do you think there is such a thing as a natural caregiver? What are your thoughts on that?

[05:55] MICHAEL HUTCHINSON: I think there is. I've worked with many nurses over the time in different settings, and there were some that were just so born to do this that it was obvious, you know, exuded right from them. It was a glow that they had about them, I think, sort of say. And so, yes, I think that the best nurses and the best doctors are pretty much natural caregivers and that's why they are what they are.

[06:22] JAIME STAENGEL: Yeah. And did you feel that at all? Like I'm asking this, you know, as someone who's not in medicine, so to your point, I feel like the best ones seem to have this, again, radiate from them. Do you feel like it's a calling for those folks or that there's maybe a moment that changes, you know, their life and puts them on that path?

[06:43] MICHAEL HUTCHINSON: I think probably both. I think a lot of the people that go into healthcare do so because they want to give, they want to take care of people and they want to do good things for people. If you look just recently at the major COVID pandemic, you can see that people were there no matter what. And it was hard. They had to separate from their families and that make sure they took care of people at home, too and everything. So those people were just, those nurses especially were just, I don't know, so dedicated. It's almost impossible to imagine I was not at its bedside anymore when Covid hit. I think I would have been able to do it, but I actually glad I didn't have to, sort of. But no, I think that there are some, that perhaps something changes their life. Had an opportunity just to go into a nursing program here at community college and get my degree and then get my license. And I didn't know if I would be good at it when I first did it, you know, something. But I picked, I figured it out pretty quickly that I was going to be fine and it was going to work and I was going to be able to help these people that hopefully needed my help.

[07:57] JAIME STAENGEL: Yeah. Well, that's one. Thank you also for just mentioning the COVID pandemic, I think going off our questions here really quick, that it's something that really changes how we connect with people. And, you know, honestly, seeing opportunities like this to interview and really get to know each other, I think it made me not want to take that for granted. And so hearing to your point, what all those nurses went through and everyone who had to take care of people is important for future generations, you know, to hear this conversation, to know. So thank you for sharing that as well. And when you said that you figured it out pretty quickly, that made me want to ask, do you have any memories from either your first day on the job as a nurse or maybe the first few months that stick out in your mind? I remember my first day not in medicine, but just having. Going from school to working and having that shift and some memorable things stick out to me. So did you have anything like that when you switched and you were a brand new nurse?

[08:53] MICHAEL HUTCHINSON: I think so, yes. I finished up on a Friday afternoon with my carpentry employment job. I was working for a company and we did installation work, and I finished up on Friday afternoon at 430. I'd given my two weeks notice. And then on Monday I went in at 07:00 at night because I signed up for night shift. So it was like just the weekend between the two. When I got to the floor, I didn't quite know exactly what to expect, but I was lucky enough, fortunate enough to have one of the best nursing crews I've ever worked with. And we worked together for a number of years, but they were so helpful and they sort of held my hand, if you will, right away. And I could tell that this was going to be exciting work and I was going to make new friends and I was going to be rewarded every day that I could, was able to do something good for somebody. That was going to be a reward that I could take home with me. So that was kind of like what made it go.

[09:54] JAIME STAENGEL: Yeah. So it's already first shift, you found.

[09:57] MICHAEL HUTCHINSON: Your home walking right in. It was just like, you know, I mean, I've been some places in healthcare where you didn't get that feeling when you got to the floor or something, but this crew and this floor. I worked orthopedics, which was just carpentry.

[10:10] JAIME STAENGEL: Yes. Of the medicine, right?

[10:12] MICHAEL HUTCHINSON: Yes, it's medicine. Carpentry, as opposed to wood carpentry. Yes, same thing. But just the idea that I wasn't. Didn't have to just jump in by myself. I had the precept short time, of course, before it was on my own, but they were not what they wanted, but they wanted to help me. And you could generally tell that. And it was just. I don't know. I don't know if that answers your question.

[10:35] JAIME STAENGEL: No, I think it does. And that's, again, what you would want from people you work with. And hopefully, I think it also reflects maybe to our earlier comment about natural caregivers. They probably, you know, were caregiving for you in a way, like getting you on boarded, bringing you in so you could pass that forward to the patients. Right. I think, you know, maybe if they didn't have that natural caregiver aspect, it would have been, like you said, sometimes maybe there were teams that were a little less welcoming.

[11:00] MICHAEL HUTCHINSON: Yes. If you asked me to pick natural caregivers right from, from the get go, I would have to give you all their names.

[11:05] JAIME STAENGEL: Okay. Oh, yeah, I should have done that.

[11:07] MICHAEL HUTCHINSON: We're not going to go there.

[11:08] JAIME STAENGEL: But. But you know who they are.

[11:10] MICHAEL HUTCHINSON: Yes, I know who they are. I'll always know. I will always remember them.

[11:12] JAIME STAENGEL: That's amazing. And when you spoke to, you mentioned your first shift was a night shift and I know we had talked before this and you really loved the night shift. So one question I had for today as well is what aspect of night shift work in nursing did you find especially appealing? I would figure most people would be like, oh no, I don't want to work, you know, overnight. They would run from that. But you really went towards it.

[11:33] MICHAEL HUTCHINSON: I really went towards it, yes, that's true. I always enjoyed working night shift. I worked night shift the whole time for ten years. There were several benefits to night shifts that I really liked. One was you had a lot more autonomy. You had to make decisions for the patients sometimes not doctor decisions exactly, but smaller decisions for their healthcare. But there was so much less. There's a lot more going on during the days, administrative wise and stuff like that. At night you had much more time to focus on the patient and take care of them. Of course, they were asleep a lot, but just the same, you were able to devote all your attention to taking care of them and getting their charting on them and everything else and making sure that they were okay overnight. That's usually the tough time for a patient in the hospital. It's a lot of problems come up overnight for the patients. So we were, we were the gatekeepers for their health, right there at night by ourselves, with backup, of course, but we got in there and did the work and I just felt that was what I was really wanting to do.

[12:48] JAIME STAENGEL: Yeah. So it lets you be maybe even closer to the patient than you might have been during the day shifts.

[12:53] MICHAEL HUTCHINSON: Possibly, yes. I mean, when you start at 07:00 at night and work till 07:00 or 08:00 in the morning, of course, the patient is hopefully asleep a good portion of the time, because sleep is important for their recovery. But you get to know them in the evening. You get to see their family most of the time because they come by to visit sometimes. A lot of times, the patients are not there for more than a few days, but occasionally they are. So you really become close to those people, and you're so glad to see them actually improve and be discharged, and then, you know, you remember them for a long time, but then you move right along to the next person right away. Yeah, there's no.

[13:36] JAIME STAENGEL: You can't dwell. Maybe too long.

[13:38] MICHAEL HUTCHINSON: Yeah, no, but, yeah, so that's. I just was. I just like night shift, I guess it was a little more quiet, too, and a little less busy.

[13:48] JAIME STAENGEL: Yeah, I can see that. And again, that's just great to hear. Like you pointed out, which every nurse and any shift is obviously a guardian of health, but really, like you said, a gatekeeper at a time when most folks aren't there, like you said, the doctors, to my knowledge, you can correct me, I don't think doctors do night shifts like nurses and other medical staff. Right.

[14:05] MICHAEL HUTCHINSON: No. The only thing, we did have one doctor, one of the residents, was always assigned to the orthopedic floor at BJC because they had traumas come in and they had to be admitted in the middle of the night and stuff. So there was always one person on call. We could actually have come see the patients right away if there was a problem. And they took. They rotated, like a month at a time, so we always had one there. And I thought that was a very, very smart thing for Barnes to do because it certainly improved patient care and got done. But we had to admit patients sometimes in the middle of the night from a tragedy or from a trauma or a scene or something like that. So it was good to have everybody that could go in and take care of the person right away. It didn't feel like I didn't worry as much about the patient, because we were all taking care of them at the same time, and we were all doing what we were supposed to do, so. Yes.

[14:56] JAIME STAENGEL: Wow. That's, again, so much. I hope I don't sound like a broken record, but I think just hearing your story, to me, is amazing. You know, I'm not in healthcare at all. So this is really pretty deep, you know, relative to my day job maybe kind of jumping off some of the things you've hit on, too, so far. Are there any moments or days when you felt like, this is where I really need to be, like, I'm where I need to be as a nurse now, whether it was at the beginning, towards the end of your career, any patients where you maybe did have that extra connection with, and maybe one more thing, if I can add, just for your answer is when you were talking about you got to see their families come in, I'm sure. Unfortunately, just statistically speaking, there might have been patients you took care of that didn't have family. You know, how did you be there for them if that was the case, or, you know, any of those moments where you're like, I'm stepping in above and beyond just the medical care and like, again, being a true nurse and.

[15:55] MICHAEL HUTCHINSON: Caregiver and felt that, well, sorry moments. And there were a lot of them. So we're, we don't have this much.

[16:04] JAIME STAENGEL: Time, but maybe just go on about.

[16:05] MICHAEL HUTCHINSON: That for a long time. But there were times when I either helped save somebody's life or really improved their health. I mean, the doctors had done the surgery on them and that, but we were there. We had to do all the post op care and take care of them. Like spine patients sometimes we had some young spine patients that had developed spine problem, scoliosis kind of things, and the doctors had straightened them back up. And working with them is a little more challenging because it's painful, for one thing. And you have to be much more careful to not mess up anything that they just got done. But they would usually be there longer, and I would get to know their families, and we would help teach the families, too, how they were going to take care of them when they left. You can't just say, go home. That's more quite like that. But occasionally, as you mentioned, there are a, we've had some patients who, families were gone or these were older people. Maybe you're not just a nurse that's taking care of them medically. You are a member of their family when you're taking care of them. At least that's the way I felt about it. And I think most nurses feel that way. But I think I got to know them, and we got to know, we talked a little bit. There was one man I took care of one night that he had a small violin shop in central Illinois someplace, and he was just, and he was an older guy, and it was kind of like a hobby for him to. Whatever. And he was going to have to be at BJC for a few days longer than most. Most patients. And so one night when I went into work, I brought in my violin and viola and let him play him.

[17:51] JAIME STAENGEL: That's amazing.

[17:52] MICHAEL HUTCHINSON: Oh, my gosh, he just lit up.

[17:55] JAIME STAENGEL: Yeah, no, emotions are good. That's. Wow. And so did he play. Do you remember if you played anything.

[18:03] MICHAEL HUTCHINSON: For. I played something for him and I told him to do it and he was just like, oh, he was kind of shy about doing it and stuff like that, and. But just, I played. I only played for a couple minutes because that's all the time I had. But it was just. But he. He handled them because he was more interested in what they looked like and.

[18:20] JAIME STAENGEL: Right. He was the shop owner. Maybe not.

[18:21] MICHAEL HUTCHINSON: He was the shop owner. He was critiquing them from their quality and their construction. Yeah. But I played a few little things. Nothing, nothing fancy, but that's still.

[18:30] JAIME STAENGEL: I just love that story, too, again, showing how you never know what a patient might need and where you're like, that's a very personal part of your life. I know we opened, we didn't go into it, but I know you've played violin or viola most of your life.

[18:42] MICHAEL HUTCHINSON: Pretty much, yeah. And so since 6th grade.

[18:44] JAIME STAENGEL: Yeah. So the fact that you could bring that into nursing, to me, is great. You know, a personal passion and skill and talent and help this patient who otherwise was alone.

[18:55] MICHAEL HUTCHINSON: Well, yeah, his wife was there, but he was. He was missing his shop and he was missing his local community in Illinois, which was more of a rural community, much tighter knit or something, probably. So I didn't. I don't even know where the town was. I would have had to look it up. But, you know, he knew he wanted to get well and get back to his shop. That was his main goal. But to give him a little something in the middle of Brighton is night and, you know, and I got his name and number and I kind of stayed in touch with him a little bit after he was gone from the hospital check out. I never did get to go see the place. I wish I had, but it would have been fun. But that's kind of. You're not really supposed to get too involved anyway. But those, you can tell who's when you can do that and when you can't too. That's okay.

[19:41] JAIME STAENGEL: Yeah, no, and that's great to hear. And as you know, my mom is in medicine, not a nurse, but in rest Peru and I think she, from the high level stories I can hear, I think it's just like you said, you got to know when certain patients might need that little extra comfort to get through. It's really, like you said, their mental health too. It's that you probably helped him when maybe he was really depressed and he would have had a harder time otherwise.

[20:03] MICHAEL HUTCHINSON: Well, since you mention it quite that way, I've got something to add to that. The work I do now as a standardized patient teaching associate is more of an acting job than I don't give any health care because that's not my job. But we go in and we play different people and we have different characters and sometimes you're sad and sometimes you're this and or whatever. We have to follow our script so that the patients, so that the students all have the same person to talk to no matter where, which room. The reason that, and I think I'm pretty good at the acting part of it, actually. But the reason I thought that I think that I am is that I think nurses are actors. Because every time you go into the next room to see the next patient, that patient has a different outlook and different needs from you slightly. And you always adapt yourself to try to make the patient comfortable, work with them. At least I did. Where you get, you try to talk to them in the way they like to be spoken to and everything else and that's just like improv acting stuff.

[21:19] JAIME STAENGEL: Yes, that's. I was like, it's improv. It's reading the room. That's exactly right. Exactly.

[21:23] MICHAEL HUTCHINSON: And I, you know, there are times when you have to do a little bit more of it first for certain people, but it makes them feel better and it helps their recovery. I think if they're more comfortable, maybe they'll get more sleep tonight. Those kinds of things. You're helping them without giving them a single pill.

[21:39] JAIME STAENGEL: Yes, exactly. And yeah, you just said all the things that hopefully, I'm hoping that we wanted to get out of this conversation. So that's a great story. You surprised me on that one. I was not expecting all of that kind of related, though. I think we've been working towards a few themes here. I'm a big reader and I always like when I read a book to try and get a theme out of it. And I was wondering, I had a hard time picking one word, but if there was a motto or a mantra or an ethos of a nurse, like if you could put a phrase to a nurse's outlook on life, whether they're in the hospital or out of it. Do you have a phrase or a few that come to mind?

[22:21] MICHAEL HUTCHINSON: Well, the one that I think means the most to me, and I believe it's usually attributed. You see it a lot of places. It's anonymous, supposedly. I don't know, but it's a meme that starts with a person coming up to the nurse and saying, I have AIDS, I'm pregnant, I've got Covid, I use drugs, things like that. And the only response from the nurse is, I'll take care of you, no questions asked. That's pretty much the way I viewed it as a nurse, was I took care of everybody exactly the same as everybody else, everybody in the hospital or whatever, and are out. And because my only focus was on making their life better and getting them back to good health. I don't care a single thing about any.

[23:21] JAIME STAENGEL: Any of that other stuff.

[23:22] MICHAEL HUTCHINSON: Any of that other stuff. That's not my department, so to speak. I just want to make sure that I take good care of them and give them the best care that they can possibly get. That was my job.

[23:33] JAIME STAENGEL: I love that again, as a motto. And I think when I hear it, it reminds me of, you know, I'm not like a parent, but when I know you are, I think of my mom, who I think is a good parent. That nurse's motto, I'll take care of you, makes me think of, you know, how parents give unconditional love to their kids. It was like unconditional care, you know, you didn't. It wasn't, oh, you've done drugs, sir. I can't take care of you. You put yourself here, which I think, sadly, a lot of people outside of the medical community might do when people go to the hospital for things.

[24:04] MICHAEL HUTCHINSON: Yes. And it doesn't have to be anything even really bad. I mean, you can have a person come up here and say, I'm a single mom, and I'm having trouble struggling with, you know, balancing work and jobs and children. Now they're helping, and so we're there to help them if we can. You know, it doesn't have to be anything they did or didn't do wrong or anything like that. It can just be the way life affects people. And your job is to help them if possible. And most of the time we can. Yeah. At least we'll try with everybody.

[24:35] JAIME STAENGEL: Yeah. Did you ever have, this was so great again, that idea of, I'll take care of you no matter what. It also made me think of, did you ever have patience? You know, you talked about the guy with the violin shop, and you were able to add on to his experience and help him heal in a different way than maybe just the standard nursing protocols. Did you ever have a really challenging patient? And even just broadly, you don't have to go into details if you don't want to, but where, despite your best efforts, maybe to connect with them, that didn't go the way you planned? Or maybe broadly, too. Again, just changing my question, how would you deal when you had cases of a patient? Maybe not. Again, you're doing that improv acting, you're reading the room, trying to connect with them, trying to get that. Yes. And to get them on their way to health. I'm sure you can't always have 100% success rate.

[25:27] MICHAEL HUTCHINSON: No, of course not. Then I'm not going to get into anything specific about it. But yes, there are patients that. And there can be a variety of reasons for it, too. They could be actually very nice people, except they're hurting real bad right now, and so they're not. They're cranky. That's the way it is. But you still do what you can for them and you give their mood and their, if they've got a negative attitude or something like that, you just don't, you just don't let that bother you.

[25:58] JAIME STAENGEL: Yeah, like, don't take it personally.

[25:59] MICHAEL HUTCHINSON: You still do what you're supposed to do for them and you try to, you know, maybe tomorrow when you come in, they might be a little bit less pain, they might be more comfortable. You. I've seen patients where I saw them two or three nights apart, and then when I, when I got back to them the third, they were just fine then because, you know, they had, maybe.

[26:16] JAIME STAENGEL: The pain had subsided, pain coming back.

[26:18] MICHAEL HUTCHINSON: And they, they're recovering from anesthesia on the first day, so that makes them all groggy and not really want to talk to anybody and stuff like that. They just want to sleep, and that's fine. You still do what you need to do, make sure they're okay, make sure they got their medicine, they're supposed to have any antibiotics and things. And then when you come back tomorrow, you start brand new, like this was.

[26:36] JAIME STAENGEL: You know, like it was a whole new day.

[26:38] MICHAEL HUTCHINSON: Like it's a whole new day. And you don't think about what happened yesterday or anything else? No.

[26:41] JAIME STAENGEL: Wow. And another question I have is, are there any particular doctors? You know, nurses have to work very closely with doctors, clearly, that you most admired, or that even though they were a doctor, not a nurse, did they shape your approach as a nurse, just by working with them?

[27:01] MICHAEL HUTCHINSON: Yes, I can think of several, but the one that comes first, and most prominently to my mind, was a spine surgeon at BJC. He was quite skilled, as I understand. He was one of the top spine surgeons in the country, but he didn't have. He was very humble and very concerned for his patients. He made rounds on his patients every day of the year, and I'm talking 365 days. Christmas, he was there in the morning, maybe only for a short time, because he had a daughter at home, and he would go home to have Christmas with her. But he came in every day. He had a team that went ahead of him, took care of things, and he came in and he always took us in the room. The RN, I was working at night before he got there, but it was just finishing my shift. But he would take us on rounds with him just so that if there was anything he needed to know or missed or, you know, the patient forgot to tell them or something like that, that we might be able to add that generally didn't have to do much, but was just there. There's one kind of strange, funny story about one of his patients. One time, one of the things he did, we would take two of us, the nurse and myself, or maybe another tech, and if he did just on the spine surgery the day before, we would get them to sit at the bedside, he would be on the opposite side, on the opposite side of the bed, and we would support them and stand them up, and so that he could see if the spine was straight and looking good and everything, and we would hold them very firmly. Spine surgery, you have to be very, very gentle, at least for a while. Her husband was in the room, and we're worst, we're standing her up and we've got a hold of her, and he goes, pow. And the husband, and he passes out on the floor because he saw, I.

[29:05] JAIME STAENGEL: Don'T know, something click with him.

[29:08] MICHAEL HUTCHINSON: It's like people. And we said, oh, we could not let go of her and help him. We sat her back down, then we helped him. Of course, he was fine. He just got. But still, he was, you know, it was just one of those things that made him pass out. I don't know what hit him, but Doctor Bridwell and his people were there, too, so we took care of the husband, too, but I just thought that was kind of a unique experience. But he was always there, and he had a very dry sense of humor, though, and I thought he was hilarious. But most people got a little bit they weren't. Some people didn't quite get it, but I thought he was just as funny as he could be. But he was very stoic and very deadpan. He was almost deadpan. He was professional. He was a consummate professional doctor, and if I had to have spine surgery, I'd have seen him in a heartbeat.

[30:00] JAIME STAENGEL: Wow. Well, that's interesting. We don't have to go too into it, but I know you had mentioned when you mentioned he has dry humor, that nurses sometimes have their own sense of humor. Did you ever have too, with your colleagues, any funny stories about how you might cope through harder times or just any anecdotes about, you know, medical or nursing humor, things like that?

[30:23] MICHAEL HUTCHINSON: There's a lot of them out there. I can't think of anything real concrete right away. I think everybody that's in the healthcare field, not just nurses, but everybody, you have to have kind of a little bit of a dark sense of humor about things, and it just helps you cope with things being kind of dark sometimes. You know, there's a, this is, I shouldn't probably say this one, but there's, there's a whole thing about how a whole bunch of nurses get together for a big party and somebody's making punch and everything. They're liable to serve it out of a bedpan.

[30:53] JAIME STAENGEL: Yeah, it's a simple, clean bed pan.

[30:56] MICHAEL HUTCHINSON: Of course, but most people would rather not want to drink that then. But if we get to get kind of get a kick out of it, you know, and I don't know how to put that, but.

[31:06] JAIME STAENGEL: No, but I like that.

[31:07] MICHAEL HUTCHINSON: We kidded. We were kidding. We'd kid each other at night at work and make. Make little jokes about each other. In a good sense, of course. And I think that goes with the territory. I think it's part of what I can imagine some of the tough times in the middle of the pandemic where you had to have some kind of levity. Levity, perfect word. Levity would be exactly what I was thinking. Thank you. Because that's just how you get through if it gets to you, no matter what. I don't know how they did it. The nurses that worked in the eds and during COVID I have no idea. You do what they were doing as much as they could, and the patients were not making it. So that gets to people.

[31:54] JAIME STAENGEL: Yeah. No, I really can't imagine now we're about three years, I think from the height of it, I would say. I don't know. This is more of a comment than a question. For you, but it's talking to someone like you who's been a nurse now, I hope other folks, whether they know someone who was a nurse before or after Covid, I hope we have a greater appreciation of what all those folks do, whether there's a pandemic or not, but especially in trying times.

[32:23] MICHAEL HUTCHINSON: Right. Well, the one thing about nursing that I would say off up front is that I was good. I thought I'd been a pretty good nurse when I did that. And I've worked in orthopedics, which is a little bit lighter in the sense of people come in and get a hip replacement and go home and they get better and everybody's, you know, I not, you asked if everybody, before you asked about everybody, if you had to be a natural caregiver, you can certainly be in nursing in some capacity without having to get into. There are only certain people in nursing that are cut out for certain things. People that work on oncology floors, burn units, neonatal icus, those things. That's a special kind of a nurse. I came to this career as a second career and that wouldn't have been. I could have done some of those things, but some of them I'm glad I was in what I was, but I still made a contribution.

[33:20] JAIME STAENGEL: Yeah.

[33:20] MICHAEL HUTCHINSON: I didn't feel you can't. Everybody can't do the exact same thing. Yeah. It wasn't just the COVID needy nurses. They were fabulous. But every day there's nurses out there in the field that are putting in very tough situations and I admire them immensely.

[33:37] JAIME STAENGEL: I do as well. And again, I'm so glad you shared your story with me. I have maybe one more question and then we'll probably have to wrap up. But is there, as you've talked through this whole conversation and you alluded to it here, how it takes a special kind of nurse, maybe for some of those other units, like the neonatal intensive care unit, the oncology units, is there a most important quality a nurse can bring to their job that you can.

[34:01] MICHAEL HUTCHINSON: Think of in one word, easy. Empathy.

[34:05] JAIME STAENGEL: Wow, I think that's great. Do you have any other thoughts? And one word fine too. I just didn't know if you had anything else you want to add on to that.

[34:12] MICHAEL HUTCHINSON: Well, I'm just going to say that I'm planning to continue with my contribution to helping teach people. Now I do not work at the bedside anymore. I'm retired from that. I'm a little bit old tool for that kind of hard work. It is hard work.

[34:27] JAIME STAENGEL: Nursing is hard work and hard physical work.

[34:29] MICHAEL HUTCHINSON: Yeah. But I feel like I'm still able to contribute and help, hopefully make people into help people become better doctors and better nurses and better physician assistants. We work with a whole variety of people, and if I can, in some small way, teach them something, or they'll learn something from me by working with me. And I think that's. I'm going to keep doing that as long as I can.

[34:56] JAIME STAENGEL: Yeah. And that's amazing. I think it's a show of your empathy for others, and you probably know where they've been going through your own nursing school experience, getting your associates. And I think it's a great way to pay it forward to those folks. And again, I'm just so grateful for this conversation. Do you have any other words of wisdom or parting thoughts that we didn't cover formally in these questions that you just want to share here now?

[35:24] MICHAEL HUTCHINSON: No, I think. I mean, I could probably go on forever. Forever. But what I really want to thank is you for inviting me to actually, to tell my story, contribute what I can, and hopefully somebody will get something that this might help them also. Maybe they'll decide to become a nurse. We could use more.

[35:43] JAIME STAENGEL: Oh, yes, we could.

[35:45] MICHAEL HUTCHINSON: We could always use more nurses and good nurses. And there's something out there for you that you can do as you can get into healthcare and help out in some way or another with everybody. Most everybody can, I was gonna say pretty much everybody has. There's something that they can do. Yeah. It does take special people of the beast, the best nurses, I think, and best caregivers, but. And I hope I was one of them. I hope I had a chance to make people's lives better.

[36:16] JAIME STAENGEL: Well, I know I never had you as a nurse, but I feel like, from our conversation here, I can tell you, you absolutely did that you made their lives better. And I want to thank you for agreeing to do this interview. It made my day. You know, I've talked to you and your wife, too. She's amazing. But you guys, I just love having what I call intergenerational friendship. It's so nice to me that in our orchestra, we have folks of all ages. I noticed at the beginning, I didn't say my age, but I'm 29, you're 75. You're not too different in age than my grandma, who is still alive. And I was very close to my grandpa, too, and similar. And I just love hearing your stories because I think they can just, what you said, I think it can help other generations, whether they're my age or now. I have nieces and nephew. You know, it's like, I think those folks are going to grow up and hopefully listen to things like this and realize, hey, I can be a nurse. If he did it after 30 years of another career, I can do it. You know, and it's a cliche quote, but you hear it all the time. Like, if not, who now I'm messing up? Like, why not me? Pretty much no. Why not me? And so I think you showed that if, you know, you can pivot and you just have that heart to go into it, I think anyone can. And my takeaway too is even though I'm not a nurse, maybe just having more of that empathy and that I'll take care of you mindset for those I just come across, well, we can do it.

[37:38] MICHAEL HUTCHINSON: In all parts of life, you don't have to be a nurse to have empathy for other people and understand their situation and do what you can. If there's something you can do to help them do it, it's not going to diminish you in any way, shape or form.

[37:51] JAIME STAENGEL: And maybe the last thing I'll say, too, just because we are both in an orchestra. And to your point, I think music helps people find that empathy, too. So in all ways, this has been an amazing conversation. Thank you, Michael

[38:02] MICHAEL HUTCHINSON: Thank you for asking me and having me tell my story, letting me tell my story. I really appreciate it.

[38:10] JAIME STAENGEL: I hope the questions were good. I loved the story. And we will have to just see where this goes and we'll be talking outside of this. Thank you, Michael