 Alright, so I'm Ashley. Before I get started to my little spiel, how many of you guys are interested in nursing, or the health care field, or EMTs, respiratory therapy, phlebotomists, anything, a couple of you, how many of you guys are like techno, I don't know any part of that. Okay, quite a few of you. Well, maybe by the end of this, you'll either be confirmed that you never want to do it again, or maybe you'll have to change your mind, I don't know. So, again, I'm Ashley, and I'm a registered nurse, also called RN for short. And a little bit more about me, as I grew up here in the Mesa area, I went to Red Mountain High School, and straight after high school, I went to ASU and pursued nursing there. I married my husband's in the military, he's deployed right now. And so, yay for him being military, not yay for him being deployed. And we've got two dogs, two cats, it's just me, I'm a little lonesome, until he's back in a couple of weeks. So, anyway, I want to kind of talk about why I chose nursing versus something else. So, I've always kind of been interested in the healthcare field, that for a while I wanted to be a doctor, and I was pretty set on being a doctor until about my junior year here in high school. I just kind of had this switch of realizing that being a doctor is not really what I want to do. Doctors spend a lot more time in school, and it's a lot of work, not that I'm afraid of hard work or anything, but doctors more so make decisions and are only with patients for a few minutes and then they're out of the room. And I wanted to be the one that was at the bedside, hands-on, getting involved in the action, doing compressions for CPR, pushing medications, starting IVs, and just being hands-on and involved, and that appealed more to me. So, I decided, you know, I will pursue nursing. Kind of a funny little story to show that I've always been interested in the medical field is when I was younger, I'd always watch medical shows, and my mom tells a story in particular where I was like seven years old and I was sitting in front of the TV watching like a show of a guy getting a 200-pound tumor removed from his abdomen. And she was like, you're just sitting there with wide eyes watching the show. You know, most normal kids are watching cartoons and things like that and now I was watching crazy medical shows. So, I've always been interested in it and decided to do nursing. So, kind of how to become a nurse. There's kind of two routes to get your RN. You get your associate's degree or ADN, what we call it, or your bachelor's degree or BSN. So, I got my bachelor's degree. Both allow you to get your RN afterwards so you still have the same job just to educational groups. So, I decided to do nursing and applied at ASU to do the nursing major. And my first few semesters were just prerequisites, English, math, anatomy, physiology, all those things. You had to maintain a certain GPA in order to apply to the actual nursing program. So, even though you're doing the nursing major, you didn't hold those that high enough GPA you may not even get into the nursing program. So, I obviously got it. And then in the nursing program, it's very different from your traditional classroom setting. Some days you're spent in the classroom studying, lecturing, things like that, learning. But then the next day you could be at your simulation center using mannequins practicing IVs. And then the next day you're in the hospital setting, actually practicing the things that maybe you've just learned the day before. Maybe you've just learned how to start an IV. And the next day you're at the hospital practicing on someone for the first time. You never tell them it's your first time though because no one wants to be stabbed with a needle by someone that's never stabbed anyone with a needle before. So, it's just very, very different educational setting being hands-on. And I'm a tenth person. I like to be in on the action. So, I like nursing school. Anyways, I graduated August 2015 and once you graduate through a nursing degree, yay, you have a degree, but no, you can't work as a nurse yet. You have to actually take your registered nurse's license test. It's also called the NCLEX, the National Licensure Exam. And so, you take that and then you can become an RN. So, kind of a funny story. Right after I graduated from college, I moved like two days after I graduated. I moved up to Washington because that's where my husband was stationed out of and we had been long distance for a while. So, we're like, yay, we're going to live together now. I moved up to Washington, got my test state to take the NCLEX right when I got up there and I lived in a super, super rural area. So, I had to drive three hours to the test center. My test was at eight. Look up at, you know, who knows, like four o'clock in the morning left at 4.30 and drove three hours to the test center. My test took 40 minutes and then I drove three hours back home. Obviously, I passed. But kind of a funny story that I spent all this time for this one exam and it took 40 minutes. That is what determined my career. So, I got my license and my first nursing job was up in Washington at a very rural hospital. I worked on a medical surgical floor, also called Med Search for short. It's just a very general adult health floor. So, people that are sick, that need to be in the hospital, but they're not, you know, like actively, actively dying. That's super, super sick. So, you know, people with pneumonia, maybe they've just got diagnosed with diabetes or they have an infection, that'd be IV antibiotics, appendicitis, things like that. And I managed fortified patients and got really good at time management because you obviously have a lot of patients you have to keep in line, kind of, you know, the different patients. You don't want to be confusing. Their medications are confusing, you know, what they're there for. And so, got really good at time management. But I knew when I started that job that that was not going to be my forever career. I am an adrenaline seeker, so I knew I wanted something a little more intense. I was just up in Washington for the year and then I moved back to Arizona. Before I moved back, I started applying to emergency room jobs and ICU or intensive care unit jobs. I got a job, I interviewed and got a job offer for an ICU position at Banner Desert, which is, like, really close to here, for their medical surgical for. And, obviously, got a job and I've been working there for the past six months. So, I love what I'm doing right now. Critical care, it's fast paced. You really have to know your stuff and be, you know, quick to think and react to the situation. I have two patients, usually, for a typical day. And that's because they're sicker than, obviously, my previous job. They have to be available to monitor them super closely. These are patients that are on life support, you know, breathing machines. They can be, like, on a dozen medications all at once, all IV medications going in. They've got central lines and IVs and catheters and, you know, dialysis lines and a bunch of things involved in this patient's care. We also can do one-to-ones if the patient's really sick. One nurse-to-one patient. So, your sole attention is dedicated to them. Or, sometimes, there's two-to-ones where there's two nurses-to-one patient if they're really, really, really, really sick. And so, yeah, I love what I'm doing now and that's kind of my little background experience. Some pros and cons of nursing. There's definitely lots of pros. One of the pros is I work three days a week, 12-hour shifts. So, I work 7 a.m. to 7.30 p.m. on the day shift. And so, I have more days off during the week than I actually work. But, on the days I work, I've literally gone, like, basically 14 hours because I work the whole day. So, that's nice. My job allows us to schedule ourselves. So, it's pretty flexible if you needed to be off for an appointment or just wanted to schedule yourself to have, you know, six days off on a trip. You can do that as well. There's not that you guys probably are into this right now, but you will be benefits for being nurses. You know, health insurance, dental vision, 401K plans for retirement, things like that which are all very important in the adult world. So, they offer that. Nurses make decent money for having either two- or four-year degree. It's higher paying than a lot of degrees are right outside of college. New grad nurses at Banner, so the Banner Health System, I can't speak for all hospital systems here, but they're pretty much similar. So, new grad nurses meaning you have zero experience. You just graduated. You're starting as a nurse. Make, like, 27, 50 an hour. And then, if you work night shift, you get 18% differential. If you are certified in certain areas, you can make more money every year. You get an evaluation. If you do well, you make more money. So, there is, it's a great career to grow in, not just, like, personally with learning, but financially as well. And then, obviously, any overtime that you bring in, if you pick up an extra 12-hour shift, that's time and a half. And so, you're making a lot more than your normal hour rate. Another pro is just the amount of jobs in nursing, not just in the hospital setting. You know, even in the hospital, you've got ER, ICU, you have general floors, you have radiology, all these different areas. But outside of the hospital, if you wanted to, maybe you'd work at a pediatric doctor's office, or if you wanted to work at a night doctor's office, or if you wanted to be a flight nurse, or a nurse on an ambulance, or if you wanted to travel nursing, where you are going to different states every couple months, or out of the country, or third world nursing, if you wanted to be a teacher, a nurse teacher, or educator, or if you wanted to be more on the management research side of nursing. So, even if bedside nursing isn't your thing, there's so many other ways that you can work with people and be in the nursing role without, you know, doing what I do, so to speak. So those are some pros. I would say the biggest con of nursing is that it is physically and emotionally draining. It is a lot, especially in the ICU. I see people that are literally like this close to dying, and or do die. I see a lot of people die. I see a lot of people who are just very sick, things that no one should have to see. I've seen people bleed out. I've seen people die that shouldn't die. I've seen people that live, that shouldn't have lived, and just, you know, it's emotionally draining. Those shifts I go home and I cry because it's just so sad, some of the things I see. But at the same time, it's so rewarding and so fulfilling to know that I am that person that is dealing with, not dealing with, that sounds bad, but working with this patient and the family on the worst, potentially worst day of their lives. No one comes to the hospital for fun. Well, there's a select small percentage of people that do. And some people come, you know, they're giving birth. That's an exciting time. But most of the people are coming because they're really sick and or they're suicidal or something traumatic has happened in their life. They got in a car accident or things like that. And so that obviously brings a lot of emotions and I feel honored as a person to be trusted with communicating and listening and being involved in that patient's care to hopefully make their stay better. Whether it's a positive outcome like the patient gets better and goes home or maybe a patient passes away and I can be that person to be emotionally available for patients and their families. So that is probably the main con. It's just some days are very hard but also super rewarding at the same time. So those are pros and cons. So my YouTube channel, this is the really reason why I came. I just wanted to get more subscribers. Just kidding. So I have a YouTube channel that I started in nursing school. It was like my third semester in. I had like two semesters left and just decided to start it. Actually like two years from this exact time because it was my spring break and I was bored on my spring break and I'm like, why not start a YouTube channel? So I was doing makeup videos and recipe videos like a military advice video all types of things. And I had one nursing video I did called House of My Nursing School that gained a little more popularity than my other videos. And so over time I had one of my buddies I met through YouTube who also did nursing videos. He's like, Ashley, you should stop doing those other videos and just do nursing videos. And I was so like upset and offended at first. I was like, how dare you tell me what I should do in my YouTube channel? I can do whatever I want. And for a while I was like, I'm going to do whatever I want because I like all these things so why not do videos for these things? And after a while I was like, I'm just going to do nursing videos. That seems to be why people are subscribing to my channel. And so now there's close to like 19,000 people on there that follow my channel. I do advice videos and talk about my experience or journey educational videos and really have to form this community of people who are just like you guys who maybe are interested in nursing or people who are in nursing school and can just go there to talk about their experience or ask for advice and things like that. So it's been kind of like my, it's like my hobby but it's also kind of like my part-time job outside of nursing and I love it. So anyways, go subscribe first. You can if you want. But yeah. So third quarter we're probably going to do those points again where you do like millions of points. So if you take out your phone right now, can you call? I don't know. Ashley, why do they want to follow you? Why do you want to follow me? Because look at me. I'm awesome. I have people that follow me on there that are high school students. I have people that follow me that have been nurses for 27 years. I have doctors that follow me. Anyone who's, maybe your mom's a nurse and they're just interested in nursing. And people follow me just because they like to hear what I have to say even though they don't care about nursing. So it just really depends but I have lots of haters that follow me too so you can go be on the anti-hater crew. It evases me when people stay on the internet. Anyways, so. I want a million points. I know. So anyone have any questions or specific things that you want to ask that you've got me personally or nursing or college or anything. Another million points for a good question. Here's a game like 10 million subscribers. Will you like to ship more to YouTube than your nursing job? That's a great question. Actually I have a lot of people that have asked me like, you know, if this became financially enough to support you like would you do that? And at this point I don't think so. Who knows in the future? I mean, I feel like being a nurse is like such who I am as a person is such a big part of me and to totally get that up and just focus on YouTube. One, I feel like how could I offer advice on a nursing channel if I'm like not even a nurse anymore? I feel like people wouldn't really respect that as much. But, you know, maybe in the future I would maybe work less shifts or something and just focus on this. But for now I'm happy with what I'm doing. How do you manage your time as a being a nurse and doing YouTube channels? So I, like I said, I would just work three days a week. So I have four days off. My husband's gone so I don't have, you know, that sounds bad. But that person occupying my time and I don't mean that in a negative way you know, I'm pretty much by myself and I do this partly to keep busy. I also do, I have other hobbies I like. You know, I like hiking and cooking and things like that. But I guess I don't have a specific way I manage my time. I just feel like you make priority for things that are important in your life in all aspects of your life whether it's school or your job or your family and this is obviously something that's important to me. It's not the most important thing but you just make, you sacrifice and make time for things that are important. Absolutely. About college about what it's like to be in there. Is it really stressful? Is it stressful? Yeah, I literally, the job I do I literally have people's lives in my hands. I can literally go and turn off my medication and they would die. So it's stressful in that aspect that you really have to know what you're doing and you have to be careful to check yourself to make sure that you're doing things appropriately and correctly because you have a large amount of responsibility. So yes, it's stressful but I kind of like live off of that you know thrill and that stress of knowing that I have such power such control. I mean that sounds bad but like I like I've always been a very like independent leadership type of person and so in ICU we have a lot of autonomy. We work very close with doctors they respect our opinions because we're so in tune with our two patients and so involved that if I come to a doctor and say hey this business is going on they'll be like alright do this or I'll go to them and be like hey this is going on I already did this and they'll be like okay whatever like that's fine so we have a little bit more leeway so to speak in the ICU just because I know if a patient has chest pain I know I'm going to go to the doctor and do this test and this test and this test and then I'll go to the doctor with the results whereas most areas if a patient has chest pain you have to call the doctor get the orders for those tests and then you know do that but in ICU it's like I'm not wasting time if you've got this I'm going to order this and then I'll tell the doctor what I did but in most worlds doctors have to just order everything you can't just do something without knowing I was so set on being an OBGYN like before I decided to be a nurse and when I decided to become a nurse I wanted to be a labor delivery nurse and I did my labor delivery rotation in college and I loved it it was great but I realized that I just I'm such an adrenaline seeker and even though you do see those situations in labor delivery it's not as much as like what I see it's different from what I see and so I just realized that was more my 4k so to speak but I really I still like OB nursing I think it's wonderful and awesome and who knows maybe one day I'll do it but for right now I really like ICU ask them where if you want to like make use of this time yeah I'm like I'm already here you might as well just like do my work maybe and if you guys think of questions after class or maybe there's something you're like too scared to ask on my YouTube channel all my social media is there you can comment ask me questions email me and have a website all those things and you can reach out to me I get asked a ton of questions every day and I get a ton of emails and comments and I read them all but I don't respond to everyone but if you say like hey I saw you at Mesa Hi and I have this this question I will respond to you just cause obviously and yes how about what? I have a YouTube video at a school how about I don't want to school no and actually I'm recording right now so you guys will be on a YouTube video all my secret is that it? no I haven't I haven't done anything like this before it's that's be a good question I mean what the plug is for a lot of the aspect so do you mean like intentionally? yeah yeah so sometimes we'll have patients who they're just not going to get better there's like statistically medically everything is just family they're not going to get better they have a breathing tube in we don't like go up to the wall and just okay but patients or their families may decide you know there's no quality of life there's no potential for life let's withdraw care and make them comfortable and so we have certain orders and protocols everything gets basically discontinued and we just have pain meds, anxiety meds things like that for comfort things that make them comfortable and when the family is ready we will take the breathing tube out and most people don't just like stop breathing right when you take the tube out most people die like you know it could be a couple of minutes but most people still breathe the breathing tube out depending on the situation but so we do we do take the tubes out we do make people comfort care when they're ready when families are ready we don't just say oh you decided to withdraw care okay take the tube out it's a process you know and really it's all the family members and when they're ready yes is there any drug in the medical field you wouldn't like be willing to do would be willing or wouldn't be willing would wouldn't be willing would it I do not want to ever do psych and I did a psych rotation and I learned a lot from it but it's just not my forte and I respect nurses who do psych tremendously because one they do that job so I don't have to do it and two it's just it's just not something that personally interests me I do get a lot of psych still you're going to have people with anxiety or depression or suicidal or things like that so you do have to know how to work with patients who are maybe actively withdrawn with alcohol or have psychosis things like that but obviously in psych that's all you see and then when we get it in ICU we've got a whole lot more things like that to you know help with the situation and so I do get psych but in smaller doses I just couldn't do it all the time and I respect people who do it all the time a lot because it's not for me but other than that I mean there's really no other field in nursing that I absolutely hands down and be like nope I'm not doing new questions comments life stories you said you're at 6.8 did you have to do the hypocritical hope the like what doctors do yeah the nursing was just like more of the no we don't no we don't do the actual or anything but where they swear into whatever they say but I mean I mean technically by being a nurse you're as a nurse if something is doing harm to a patient if it's an ethical issue I've had situations where we're keeping someone alive that should not be kept alive and that sound maybe that sounds terrible to you guys but there comes a point where someone on their own they were artificially feeding them through a tube they can't move any of their arms or legs they can't speak they are not responding maybe neurologically and for most people and not everyone obviously at that point we would decide you know what it's their life not that their life is not worth it but they have lived their life in the quality of life that they would have afterwards is nothing the person that they were they're not anymore so to speak so what was I saying? what? but yeah I don't know I forgot where I was saying this oh okay so yeah so is there a situation like that where a family is like no let's keep them alive keep them alive keep them alive but now it's running into this gray area like okay we're keeping them alive but we're actually doing them harm by keeping them alive like this is basically tortures or doing a bunch of these tests and poking them and all these things when they have no quality of life so that becomes an ethical issue and as nurses we can bring that to the ethics committee we can call and be like hey this is an ethical issue but usually it's a doctor's decision whether they continue even doctors can be like I'm not getting involved in this person's care because I don't want to say there's no point but I don't ethically believe that so we can ask more questions or are we going to challenge her video you guys want to do that? I know yeah just to be sure I think those questions don't make it I think those questions don't make it