27. EXPERT TIP #2: How be a better 🙏 patient advocate 🙏in nursing school! With Expert Guest Nurse Janine Kelbach, Owner of SavvyNurseWriter.com

Discover the important mindset shift that will help you feel more confident AND make it easier to advocate for your patients while you’re still a nursing student. On today’s episode, expert nurse, Janine Kelbach of Savvy Nurse Writer, will be sharing the biggest secret that helped her succeed, even with the additional challenge of having a baby during nursing school.

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Links from Episode 27:

Janine’s Website:www.SavvyNurseWriter.com

Janine’s Book: Entreprenurse: https://amzn.to/2WhV4xz

Janine on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/writernjanine/

Janine’s Podcast: The SavvyScribe on Apple Podcast

LIVE Tutoring Membership: www.YourNursingTutor.com/VIP

Transcript for Episode 27

Welcome to Episode 27 of Navigating Nursing School with Your Nursing Tutor. Today you’ll be hearing from Nurse Janine Kelbach, a veteran Labor & Delivery nurse and the owner of www.SavvyNurseWriter.com. 

She’s joining me on the show to share the important mindset shift that will help you feel more confident AND make it easier to advocate for your patients while you’re still a nursing student. She’ll also be sharing the biggest secret that helped her succeed, even with the additional challenge of having a baby during nursing school.

Before Janine shares her tip, I wanted to let you know that this is the second in a series of expert tips for new nursing students. Although honestly, these tips are sooo good that they’re really useful for any nursing student! I wish I had known a lot of these things back when I was going through nursing school. 

So make sure that you subscribe to the podcast to get notified as each new tip becomes available, and go back to listen to the beginning of the series so that you don’t miss a thing.

And by the way, if you don’t know MY story already, I’m Nicole Whitworth, the founder of Your Nursing Tutor. I started college thinking I was going to get a PhD in Clinical Psychology, but life had other plans. I stopped with my Masters in Clinical Psychology after meeting and marrying my husband, and later returned to school to earn my BSN and become a Registered Nurse. Now I’m also a professional nursing tutor with over 12+ years of experience helping nursing students learn to study in a way that teaches you to think like a nurse WHILE you’re still in nursing school, so that you can spend less time studying, get better grades, and feel confident when it’s time to take NCLEX and start your first nursing job.

Now let me introduce you to my expert guest today, Nurse Janine Kelbach.

Janine is a registered nurse who started her nursing career in Labor & Delivery. After moving up the ladder and becoming an assistant manager responsible for educating new nurses and managing other aspects of the Labor & Delivery unit, she obtained her high-risk OB certification and BSN. 

In 2012, Janine started writing for healthcare blogs and websites. Today her business, Savvy Nurse Writer, has transformed into a writing agency and membership where she helps nurses learn how to start their very own Health Writing Business. In addition, she authored the book “Entreprenurse”, where she interviewed 30 successful nurse entrepreneurs about the nursing-related businesses they created. She is also the creator AND host of The Savvy Scribe Podcast. 

Now let’s hear Janine’s tip:

“Hi, this is Janine from www.SavvyNurseWriter.com. I’m a Registered Nurse. I’ve been a registered nurse for almost 20 years in Labor and Delivery. And Nicole asked me to share my tip with you, for nurses that are starting in nursing school. 

First off, you need to take your mindset from a student nurse to a nurse. You are a nurse, you are going to pass your boards and become a Registered Nurse. So act like it now. Be professional, and be an advocate for your patients along the way. 

I guess I have another tip for you. And this is one tip that helped me succeed in nursing school, honestly. And it was to have a group of like-minded people. As we feel in any community that we’re in, people need people. We found it through the pandemic, right, we had to go into a secluded mode for a while and people missed just being around people. 

So if you can find a group of nurse students that like the same things you like, maybe, there has to be the same age as you, but maybe they like to study the way you like to study. Someone that will push you along the way and be there for your failures, for your successes, and be able to celebrate with you, because these are going to be hard times. 

I remember nursing school was not easy. I had a baby during nursing school. And without my colleagues of nursing students I would not have made it through. So please try to seek out people that are like you that want to succeed at nursing school and that you feel like you can help them and they can help you! 

Good luck in all your endeavors and just know that us old nurses are rooting for you and know that you can do it. Thank you so much.” 

Thank you, Janine, for taking the time to contribute those great tips. 

I have a few additional thoughts to add to Janine Kelbach’s fantastic advice, but first I want to make sure that everybody listening knows where you can go to find Janine after this episode. You can connect with her on her website at www.SavvyNurseWriter.com, and you can also find her on LinkedIn. If you’re curious about what types of entrepreneurial endeavours are available for nurses, then I highly encourage you to read her book, Entreprenurse, which is available on Amazon. And of course, she has a great podcast called “The Savvy Scribe”, which you can find on all the major podcast platforms. 

Now let’s talk about Janine’s tips that she shared today. 

First of all, I LOVED her first tip about mindset because that is sooo important. It’s the nursing school version of “begin as you mean to go on”. Because the truth is that you NEVER get to a point where you suddenly feel like an expert nurse…it’s not just a magical switch that gets flipped one day and all of a sudden you feel confident. 

Instead, nursing is a profession where you will ALWAYS be learning new things. You never (quote) “arrive”. In fact, back when I worked in the Operating room at a pediatric hospital, one of my co-workers had almost 40-years of experience. And as I was training under her, she told me that she still learns something new all the time. And with pediatric surgery, we’re talking about a specialty within a specialty…yet there was so much to know that she was still finding new information after 40-years of learning. 

Which is why it’s so important to do as Janine suggested, and recognize that you ARE a nurse now, so be professional and act like it. And of course, doing this doesn’t mean that you pretend to know things that you don’t actually know. That would be dangerous…

But what it DOES mean is that you can have an attitude of learning no matter where you go, with a humble confidence that acknowledges BOTH truths that 1) you ARE a nurse, and 2) that you still have more to learn. So important, and such great advice.

And then on to her second tip, about finding a group of like-minded people. That’s actually one of the big reasons why I created my VIP Tutoring Membership, because I wanted to bring together a diverse group of nursing students who are like-minded where it counts…when it comes to your drive, your passion for nursing, and your willingness to do what it takes to be proactive and successful in nursing school. 

And not all nursing schools are the same size, so it can sometimes be hard to find other nursing students that will be that kind community for you if you’re only looking in your cohort. 

For example, my nursing cohort back when I was in school was only about 20 students. Luckily, I was able to find a few classmates who were a good fit for me. But a lot of times, even though I liked them personally, we didn’t always have the same study style. Which made it harder to balance sometimes, and is yet another reason why it’s so important to me to have a community of nursing students available in the VIP Tutoring Membership. 

Because it’s easier to find other students that are a good match for you when you have a wider pool of students beyond your own school…and sometimes it’s just nice to connect with other students who you don’t see every single day for 2 years. 

Or maybe your program has gone virtual, and it’s harder to connect with classmates at all! Whatever the case, if you want more information about how you can get community support with the VIP Tutoring Membership, among other helpful services in nursing school, then you can find more information and even sign-up to try it for free at www.YourNursingTutor.com/vip

Now, I know that Janine was talking about her nursing school experience in her tip, and how essential it was to have a like-minded community during that time, especially since she also had a baby during that time, too. 

But I wanted to tell you that, like me, she REALLY practices what she preaches about community. Because, also like me, she went on to create her own community after becoming a nurse as well. She created a membership to help nurses who are growing their own Health Writing Business, which I think is amazing, because I am all about nurse entrepreneurship since I am an entrepreneur myself. 

So she and I still recognize the importance of finding or CREATING a community of people who are going to continue to push us and celebrate with us, even beyond nursing school. Which I think is evidence that this really IS great advice, since we’re both still doing it ourselves many, many years after nursing school has ended for us!

Now as I mentioned earlier, Janine’s tip is only the second in a series of tips for new nursing students from over 2 dozen different experts…and in the next episode, Nurse Erica Rodriguez, a new-grad Labor & Delivery nurse and founder of the “Nursing Student Support Group” on Facebook, which has over 30 thousand members, will be joining me to offer her number 1 habit that you should be doing NOW, as a new student, to keep your overwhelm to a minimum, AND make it a lot easier to transition from nursing student to “real life nurse” later on after graduation. 

So if you’d like to hear her tip along with other essential advice from experienced nurses and nursing students who have been in your shoes (and lived to tell the tale), then make sure to subscribe to this podcast to be notified when the next episode in this series goes live. 

And while you’re subscribing, if you liked today’s tip and are looking forward to the upcoming tips as well, please leave a rating and review on iTunes or your favorite podcast app to let me know! A 5-Star review with 1-2 sentences of your honest opinion goes a looong way towards helping other nursing students find these tips, AS WELL AS motivating me to create even more useful resources like this for you in the future. 

One last thing…remember that if you’re finding it hard to create your personal community of supportive nursing students, then I invite you to sign-up for a free trial of the Your Nursing Tutor VIP Tutoring Membership. It’s an affordable way to not only connect with other like-minded nursing students, but also to get the best, curated resources to help with your personal nursing school challenges. It also includes live tutoring sessions, trainings, and a private Facebook group so that you always have a trusted resource for help and support. That means, no more getting sucked into the “google black hole” just to TRY to find a simple answer to all your nursing school questions. You can get more information, or try it for free, at www.YourNursingTutor.com/vip

Until next time, good luck on your nursing journey!

Nicole Whitworth

Nicole is a Professional Nursing Tutor with over 15 years experience, and the founder of Your Nursing Tutor. She has a BSN, and an MA in Clinical Psychology. Nicole specializes in providing easy-to-follow, proven study methods (like the Silver Bullet Study System) that transform frustrated nursing students into calm, confident nurses! When she’s not helping students through her Live Tutoring Membership, Nicole loves spending time with her husband, homeschooling their 6 kids, and staring at sunflowers.