Transcript

We’re speaking right now with Jaliza Johnson. Hello, Jaliza.

Hello, Steve. How are you?

Good. So, Jaliza, tell us how you got into nursing and the path you’ve taken, the educational credentials you’ve attained, and the the academic program you’re in now, and also, the roles you’ve played at Stanford Health Care.

Yes. Thank you for asking that question. I’m actually a second career nurse. So my first career was in sales and marketing in the telecommunications industry.

And, ultimately, through my career journey, I just wasn’t happy with where I was. And I found myself having friends who were nurses, and I was really interested in their various roles and different specialties.

So I decided to look further into nursing as a career option, and I saw that there were many different possibilities within the nursing profession that really sparked my interest. And plus, I am a person who really loves supporting and caring and connecting with people, so I think nursing just happened to be a natural fit for me.

So, you know, Steve, I almost let fear kinda jump in and really stop me from joining this wonderful profession of nursing.

And I was able to really do some self deep self reflection and really push past that fear and, decided to just move forward, jump right in, start a new career, and really grapple with the fact that I was gonna have to go back into school again.

But, I remember one thing that really helped me in that I was at this presentation, and a presenter had, presented the word fear, right, as an acronym, which stood for face everything and rise.

And that really stuck with me, and I really try to keep that within me when the fear tries to come up in me again. And I always tell people that becoming a registered nurse was one of the best decisions that I’ve ever made, and I have no regrets with that. And I share with people that it’s important that we continue to push past our fears because I believe that, you know, past that fear could be a huge blessing on the other side, and I can say that nursing has been a huge blessing for me and my journey. And to share, I started my nursing journey actually initially, my education came from San Francisco State University in a master’s entry level program. And after that, after I graduated, I started my journey in the nurse residency program at Stanford Health Care.

So that was a wonderful opportunity. And I’ve been a RN for almost ten years now, and my initial training was as a bedside nurse in blood and marrow transplant. And then I also held management roles within BMT and also in clinical trials in the inpatient setting. And now I’m currently working as a nursing professional development specialist where I lead our various nursing mentorship programs and also help to facilitate other classes around nursing professional development. And I’m also proud to say that I’ve achieved a few certifications along the way. I’ve got my nurse executive advanced certification as well as the nursing professional development certification.

And currently, I’m working on my terminal degree, and I am in the doctorate in nursing practice program at the University of California, San Francisco. And I’m really looking forward to, becoming the first person in my family on either side to achieve a doctorate degree. So this is a very important and meaningful goal for me to complete.

That’s very inspiring. You have had an article published about mentoring and and the importance of it in the nursing profession.

Can you tell us where was that article published, and what’s the basic idea of the article?

Yes. I actually recently just co-authored an article with a few of my colleagues from Stanford Health Care, and the article is entitled Mentoring Models to Support Transition to Practice Programs, One Size Does Not Fit All. And it was published actually this month in April in the Journal of Continuing Education in Nursing.

You know, when most people think of mentorship, right, they think of more of a one to one basis. But this article showcases using a peer to peer small group mentoring, model where our experienced clinical nurses take on the mentor role to support our novice nurses as their mentees who and these novice nurses are transitioning into practice, really going from being that student nurse, having that mindset to a more professional working nurse mindset. And as we know, that can be a challenge, right, coming from a student to a professional working nurse. And, also, we support other nurses who are coming into new specialty areas like critical care and oncology.

And this, mentorship model, we really aspire to enhance job satisfaction, reduce stress, really hoping to increase retention, and then also fostering a sense of belonging with those nurses within our organizational setting.

And then as we support nurses through, mentorship, this really helps to build them professionally, and we ultimately hope that this will translate over into enhancing their care that they’re providing to our patients, which we will hope will help to improve our patient outcomes.

And then I can really say that overall mentorship, it really does matter. And I can say in my own personal journey, it’s been a very important part of my journey. And since it has, I too now give back as a mentor, and I’ve been able to, have a number of mentees and support them along their journey.

Mentoring has, been mentioned by others as a very important aspect of, getting more participation in clinical trials, which we talk a lot a lot about here, but also health care in general. Can you speak to this idea of mentoring to increase health equity in underserved communities?

Oh, yes. I would say, you know, mentoring plays a pivotal role in supporting nursing knowledge with regards to health equity, by providing really a platform, right, for knowledge transfer, really giving that guidance that’s needed, and really helping to empower our nurses. And mentors can sit in that space of sharing their expertise and insights around addressing health disparities and promoting equitable care, practices.

And then also by drawing from their own experiences, mentors can help mentees understand the root causes of health inequities, including, like, things like social determinants of health, systemic barriers, and biases within the health care system.

And I would also say that mentoring fosters a culture of continuous learning, which allows for a sense of self reflection really for that, mentee. It really engages the mentees to really critically think and examine their own assumptions, their biases, and certain privileges that they may have that may influence their patient care. Right? And it is important that nurses really prioritize culturally sensitive, sensitivity, having cultural sensitivity and humility when they are providing equitable care to a diverse patient population.

Because, ultimately, in all of the goal that we have in nursing is really to provide positive patient outcomes. And I would say that, mentoring is also vital to support career development and advancement for nurses who are in underrepresented groups within the profession, because I feel that it’s important for patients to see a reflection of themselves in their care providers, which which research has shown if we look at the research, it shows that that there can be positive impacts when you have providers that, are a reflection of our patients, and that can give positive impact on, patient outcomes.

Hospitals, major medical centers especially can be great crossroads of many cultures.

And you mentioned, cultural humility. Can you say, something about what is cultural humility and the the idea of training people to be, more culturally competent?

Oh, yes. I know that terminology always gets used interchangeably.

Culturally competent cultural competency, cultural humility. I think it’s more leaning towards the literature cultural humility, because I can I think the question in the research is, can anyone be totally culturally competent of another culture? But, I feel that it’s important that, you know, we as health care providers step back to understand differences in each other, differences in culture. Because as we know, we care for a diverse patient population.

So it’s it’s important that we understand, you know, differences, right, within certain cultures.

You know, certain cultures like to be cared for in a certain way. How do we understand that? How do we provide that when we’re caring for patients in the inpatient space? Can we be more flexible with our care that we’re providing versus being so regimented and we provide care a certain way, but we may need to shift, right, and have that cultural sensitivity to take a minute and stop.

And sometimes and I always tell my mentees this. Sometimes as nurses, we’re running. Right? The day is busy.

The shift, we have a lot of patients, but sometimes we need to stop, pause, take a breath, right, and say, you know, take a look at your patience, who you have for the day, whatever your assignment may be. And I’m speaking obviously to an inpatient, example.

But really looking at the patient, not just what their name is, you know, just the surface of a patient, but who is my patient? Who are they? Speaking to them, connecting with them. A part part of, cultural competency and humility is connecting with someone, having a conversation with the patient, getting to know them a little bit better, you know, getting to know their caregivers who are there better. And I think if we take the time to do that and not continue to be rushing around so much, just taking that time to really connect with someone, I think, is important.

Thank you. Thank you. Jaliza, you also have co-founded a nonprofit, in Oakland, California, which is a wonderful and very diverse community, and has also a lot of people, with historic, income challenges.

And this nonprofit addresses some of the some of those things. I know it’s called A Sista’s Touch. Can you tell us about that?

Yes. Thank you for asking about that, Steve. Excited to talk about A Sista’s Touch. I’m actually wearing my little lapel pin.

This is our logo here. A Sista’s Touch is a 501C3 nonprofit organization that I co-founded in January of twenty seventeen. I can’t believe that we’re already at our seventh year, which is amazing. And, you know, we are an nonprofit organization that was founded by two black women.

We are both registered nurses, and, we are wanting to the goal of, forming our organization was really to make a positive impact in our local communities while also showcasing we’re about all things black excellence.

And our foundational program, was focused really on has a health focus. And our that foundational program is called A Sista is Always Prepared Puberty to Queen, where we partner with black female pediatricians in the local Bay Area to support girls ages eight through twelve as kind of our target focus. And we provide education on puberty, hygiene, and educating the young girls about what it looks like for them to develop into a young lady. And for instance, we really talk about things like them starting their menstrual cycle.

What does that mean for them, and how can we support them in being prepared for this huge milestone that they’re gonna come upon? And our program also works to increase their level of self confidence and their self esteem, so we really impart that into them. And at the close, it’s a we do a one day, educational session that we host, and we provide them with a kit at the end of it where we, give them high different hygiene products, feminine products to take along with them, along with the certificate to really celebrate them at the end of the day. And we kinda call this like a cohort model.

So we do different cohorts of girls, with this program. And it really is about supporting and encouraging and educating and really celebrating these young girls because it really takes a village.

And, so that’s one program that we started with as our foundational program. And then another area we focus on is human trafficking awareness. You know, A Sista’s Touch, we host an annual 5K called We Run Oakland for our Children, which is focused on educating our local community members about being aware of the perils of human trafficking that are affecting our local Bay Area communities.

Because if you didn’t know, the San Francisco Bay Area has a really high rate of human trafficking, and it’s so important that we get the word out especially to our youth. And we actually are coming up on our seventh annual 5k, which is, this year on Saturday, August twenty fourth, which we are really excited about.

It’s actually gonna be held at Oakland Technical High School in Oakland, California.

And, it’s always a great time when we come together as a community. It’s a educational event, and we really encourage people, you know, if they’re in the San Francisco Bay Area to come out, register, and join us and really get educated about what’s going on because human trafficking really is a public health crisis, especially here in California, which is one of the states which has the highest rate of human trafficking, which also includes when I say human trafficking, that includes, both sex and labor trafficking.

And we have a lot of work to do in this area, and this is really a space that we are trying to work towards prevention and continuing to get out the education to our local communities, and A Sista’s Touch is committed to continuing in this important work.

That is important work. There’s so much there and, a lot of, power that you are, helping to unlock. It’s an inspiration.

Thank you for speaking with us today, Jaliza Johnson.

Thank you, Steve. I appreciate your time.