[00:00:00] Many of us are so stuck in what we are currently living in our careers that we forget that where we're headed we might not need those skills in the way that they help us right now. And that's fine. Let's normalize that. Let's acknowledge how many amazing skills we've got, and then look forward and go, Oh my god, I'm gonna add another ten to my token.

I'm gonna skill stack on top of these. These skills are gonna evolve, and I'm gonna use them, cause every skill is transferable, and I'm gonna put my brain to work to figure it all out, and I'm gonna see how I can apply them moving forward. Hey High Performance Nurses, welcome back to the podcast. Today we're talking about will I lose my nursing skills, my clinical [00:01:00] skills, my knowledge, if I leave and choose a different career, pathway, or even industry. And listen, I've been there my friend. I have effectively left clinical nursing. Some might say retired from clinical nursing.

I feel a little old when I say that. But I am somebody that has definitely stepped away from the bedside and do not intend on going back in the previous capacity that I was there in. And As I made that transition, the fear and the worry of will I lose my clinical skills is real. And, and here's why.

Because like many of you, I've invested so much in my nursing career. Spent years at uni, I then did, you know, 10 plus years clinical practice, I've built my career up, I've invested in postgraduate qualifications, certifications, masters, I've spent a lot of time and money and effort. And there's a part of my brain that's like, are you really just gonna, give all of that away and lose all of those skills?

And that's what I want to talk about today, because I feel like there's a lot of [00:02:00] scarcity mindsets and thinking around this topic. And hopefully by the end of this episode, you will feel a little bit better, a little bit more informed. and maybe able to cognitively come from a cleaner place so that you can make the right decisions for you moving forward.

I think when we ask this question or we make a statement such as I'm so worried to lose my clinical skills, we're stuck in the gap. Okay, we're really focusing on what we don't have moving forward, the things that we might lose moving forward. And we're not really looking at what we actually have ahead of us that we can gain, that's exciting, that's exhilarating, that's growth focused.

And that makes complete sense, because our brains want us to stay safe and they want to keep us in a little comfortable cave even if it's not that comfortable, okay? So we've got to acknowledge that. Our brain has one, one job and one job only. It's to keep you safe at all times. And when you start thinking about a new job and you start thinking about [00:03:00] moving to a role that where maybe all of the skills that you've accumulated over the past few years are no longer a core foundation of that job.

And there are new skills that you need to develop that you're lacking in, or you don't have yet, yet being the key word there makes complete sense, right? That your brain's like, Oh, I don't think I can do that. But what I want to acknowledge for you is that. As humans, we have like this incredible superpower, which is our brain and its ability to be neuroplastic in in nature.

And what I mean by that is that when we learn something, our brain is so smart that it's always going to be there. That memory, that imprint is there. Every experience, everything we learn, everything we do with our hands, all of the practical applications of nursing, we have that stored in our brain. And neuroplasticity is about being able to rewire and reconnect and revisit those neural pathways at any point in time.

In the present moment or in the future, we can't go back to the past because we don't, we're not time travellers yet. [00:04:00] But you can reconnect with your skills from the past through neuroplasticity. Okay, you're like, what is Liam drinking today? What is happening here? We need to give you a couple of examples of this so that you can kind of think about where in your nursing life and career have you leveraged the power of neuroplasticity without you even really knowing it and maybe using neuroplasticity as something that you can leverage or have confidence and trust in that moving forward into a new role, these skills that you previously had, that you think that you have, that you think you're not gonna use again, that they're still there and that instead of losing them.

You're evolving them. You're growing them. You're skill stacking. So last year, as many of you know, I was in Europe. I went on a holiday to Croatia, and we drove from Croatia into this cute little no, we drove from Italy into this cute little Croatian seaside village, and it was beautiful. But I have not I had not driven for about six months at this point, [00:05:00] and I had also not driven in Europe on the wrong side of the road.

ever. And if you're European, I'm sorry, but it is the wrong side of the road. So I was super stressed out. We needed to get from A to B and it was about a three and a half hour drive. And I thought to myself, what am I going to do? How am I going to do this? My partner couldn't drive because the Australian license wasn't recognized.

So my British license was used and I got into the car and I remember sitting there and I said to my partner, Oh my God, I'm so scared. I'm so terrified. I feel like I've never been able to drive before. And bearing in mind, I've been driving for about 15 years at this point. So I'm thinking, oh my god, what the hell is happening?

And I'm a pretty good driver, I think. So I get into the car, and we're in this cute little Italian village, and, did I say Italy? Where were we going? It doesn't matter. Semantics. It doesn't matter. We were going from one location to the other. And it was beautiful and quaint, but it was very safe, in the sense that there wasn't a lot of traffic.

So the first problem was I couldn't even turn the car on, because it was like this fancy automatic thing, and like fancy modern car, but it was [00:06:00] a manual gear stick. Anyway. I'm sitting on the wrong side of the car, the gear stick's on the wrong side, I don't know where everything is, my brain is freaking the heck out, and I don't feel safe, and I think, oh my god, I better tell my partner that I love him because it could all end today.

Very dramatic, but I don't know if you resonate with me as clinicians, we always go straight to worst. Can a scenario thinking and that is me 100 percent of the time so I'm in the car and we are taking off and I stole a car of course and then I struggled to get it turned on again because I didn't know how to turn it on but throughout this my brain is digging deep in the archives of Liam's little brain and it's trying to find these neural pathways oh how do you drive again How do you use the gearstick in multitask and looking in your mirrors, and what are the safety cues that you need to be aware of here?

Like, let's increase our ability to neurocept and to see everything around us. Let's, like, open the windows so that we can hear as well as see, just in case somebody comes from the wrong side. Like, [00:07:00] let me utilize my partner. So that I can make sure that we're not gonna die today as we pull out of this driveway.

And that's a great example of neuroplasticity in action. I hadn't used that skill for about six months or so and all of a sudden there it was back. Another thing that I did recently which is super cool is I reconnected with playing the piano. I've been doing this nervous system training course, and I can't wait to share it all with you.

And it's going to change so many people's way that they operate as humans who nurse. But one of the things was, I was tasked with getting back in touch with play, and being playful and creative in my life. And I am quite a creative person. One of the reasons I set up this brand, and this podcast, and the work that I do now is because I was lacking creativity as a nurse.

in the system. You, you can't put in a catheter creatively. You just can't do it. So you can, but it's, you're gonna get in trouble. So I do not advise. So I was encouraged to go and reconnect with the things that I love to [00:08:00] do that are playful. And for me, it's playing the piano. So, I haven't played the piano for about nine months or so.

That's a lie. I did have a lesson with a French piano teacher, and that's a totally different story for a different day, because it was hell. It was so horrible. However, I played once in the last nine months, and it wasn't very good, and I didn't really get to play. So, I got the piano delivered. It's an electric piano, it's awesome, and I can move it back to Australia.

And then I'm sitting there at the piano and I'm thinking to myself, oh my god, I forgot how to play. How do I do this? And I started playing, and it was a hot mess express. It was like, yeah, I was hitting all the wrong keys, the chords were not right, my brain was like, that's not right, my speed wasn't where it used to be.

And I'm sitting there thinking to myself, Oh my god, like, I've lost my skill. But over the last few weeks, I've just been committing to sitting down and I walk past, I'm like, I'm gonna play for five minutes. And I just jump on, and within like a couple of weeks, I'm [00:09:00] back to where I was. I don't have all of my knowledge back, but I didn't go and do another course.

I didn't go and look at how to play the piano again. I didn't watch YouTube videos. It was just buried deep within my brain. So I hope this helps you see that. Our brains are so friggin intelligent and smart that when we say I'm so worried that I'm gonna lose my skills, one, we're lying to ourselves because it's like actually impossible unless we have a cognitive impairment, and two, it undervalues and underestimates how incredible That thing in your head is, like that brain is so friggin smart.

So I want you to think about a time where you have maybe parked a skill or parked something in your life in your career and then needed it later on and come and picked it back up. Now the next part of this that I want to talk to you about is how if you are thinking of taking a new pathway in your career, changing, changing specialties, changing industries.

building something online, we've got to get into this mindset of I'll [00:10:00] figure it out. I will work this out. And this is why this is so important, and I've learned this to be true over the last three years in running this business and helping 400 nurses navigate their careers with this information, is that with an I'll figure it out mindset, we are allowing ourselves to see what is possible for us.

And we are building trust and confidence. And in validating that we are actually able to do what we want to do. Like we have the skills and the tools to be able to make it happen. Many of you will say to me, Halium, okay, we've got over the whole, like, I won't lose my skills now, but now the next hurdle, the next thing that I'm telling myself is that I need to have a degree in leadership before I take a leadership position.

And I don't want you to go and get a degree. I don't think you need to get that cosmetic certificate. I don't think you need to get that ED, postgraduate certification, before you've ever stepped foot in an ED. Because, listen my friends, you need to have an I'll figure it [00:11:00] out mindset. And not in a dangerous, you know, out of scope of practice way, in a evidence based, I'll figure it out, I'm super smart, my brain is super smart, I can draw upon my past skill base, and I will work this out.

More of us need to have that kind of attitude, and we do it subconsciously every day, but maybe we don't consciously think about it, we don't really think about it. I am capable of figuring this out and I will make it happen. This has been a savior for me in my business because when you start a nursing business, an online business selling any kind of service or coaching or package, you need to understand that you are going to fail and that your brain is going to want you to quit because it's unsafe.

Because everything is new. You're drawing upon your previous skills, but there are so many skill gaps. So your brain's not only drawing upon its neuroplastic capabilities, but it's also needing to use its ability to learn something new and to grow a new skill base. So that oil figure it [00:12:00] out mindset is a non negotiable when we are navigating a career change or pivot like this.

Now, one of the reasons why I wanted to talk about that is because In pivoting from this mindset of, like, lack and scarcity and, like, I'm gonna lose my skills, we need to move our mindset and really consciously think about this, development or this pathway, in our careers, like with a future focused perspective.

Many of you will come to me and say, Liam, I work in ED and I really don't want to work in ED anymore. It's so stressful. I'm so worried. All the time I'm overwhelmed. I'm burnt out. And I hear you, my friend. And then I'll say, okay, so what's the goal? Where are you headed? And they'll say, well, you know, I was thinking about becoming a cosmetic nurse.

And I'm like, that's incredible. I love that goal. Okay, so what's stopping you? Well, you know... I don't have this, I don't have this, I don't have that. And then they tell me, Oh, and I'm so worried about losing my AD skills. And I'll say to them, [00:13:00] Hey, I totally understand. This is really valid. However, Yet. How often do you think you're going to use your arterial blood gas analysis skills as a cosmetic nurse injector?

Crickets. Crickets, you're not going to use them. Those skills are no longer there. You don't need those skills as such. How many times in a cosmetic practice are you going to see a full blown cardiac arrest trauma? Hopefully never, right? Hopefully never. Now those skills are amazing because they're going to help you in so many other ways, but those particular skills are not of great benefit to you anymore unless you want to go back to ED.

Many of us are so stuck in what we are currently living in our careers that we forget that where we're headed we might not need those skills in the way that they help us right now. And that's fine. Let's normalize that. Let's acknowledge how many amazing skills we've got, and then look forward and go, Oh my god, I'm gonna add another ten to my token.[00:14:00]

Okay, because whilst we're stuck in thinking that we cannot possibly ever lose these skills, we're going to be stuck in a job that we really detest and that we don't like for prolonged periods of times. So, I'm sure you have lessons or experiences in your nursing career where you have been able to do this, where you have looked at your skill set and you've looked at a goal and then you've thought, okay, well, I'll figure it out.

I can make this happen. Let me navigate this and move towards it and let me start to identify and uncover what the gaps are and I'll start plugging the holes and I'll start making it happen. Now, the third thing that I wanted to talk to you about, was confidence in our nervous system. Okay. [00:15:00] Again, I want us to not underestimate the power, these imprints that have been on your nervous system throughout your life and your career.

Everything you do, everything you see, everything you hear, smell. touch. All the practical skills, all the cognitive theoretical skills are imprinted in our brain and our nervous system. And the one thing that I know to be true is that as nurses, our nervous system, for most of us, I'm going to say 99. 9 percent of us, is highly stressed.

Our nervous system is kind of operating in fight or flight all the time and we are a little frazzled as a community, just because of what's happened over the last couple of years. Because of the traumatic imprints that we've experienced through our careers up until this point, some of us have had more exposure to traumatic incidents.

And by traumatic incidents, I do not mean a fully fledged RTA, road traffic accident, you know, with multiple casualties. [00:16:00] I'm talking about the COVID pandemic. I'm talking about working short staffed when you know it's really unsafe. I'm talking about being bullied in the workplace. I'm talking about anything that you've experienced.

Being called sister when you're a guy and you don't want to be because your whole career you've been misgendered and you've been Hiding the fact you're LGBTQIA It's trauma. It's all trauma. So our body and our brain remembers. It is like this supercomputer that just collects and stores all of this information.

So whilst that might seem a little Debbie Diner, it is the reality, and we're going to be talking more about that on the podcast, of A human life, especially a nursing human life. And what we want to do is we want to come from that high state of fight or flight, that stress response, that chronic stress response, that we're conditioned into as clinicians.

And we want to bring ourselves back to homeostasis, to safety. I liken it to like between the flax, right? Your patient's observations. When somebody's tachycardic, [00:17:00] what are all the signs and symptoms that they're out of kilter? And then how do we, where do we want them to be? We want them to be back in homeostasis.

The same is true for us when we're considering a career change. Our brain's going to go straight into fight or flight, into this hyper arousal state. I'm so worried about this. I can't do this. I don't have enough. And our job is to bring it back. or nervous system back to homeostasis and to safety so that we can move forward and make really informed decisions.

Because what I'm learning through the literature, the research and through this training that I'm doing is that a stressed mind and body does not make sound. Decisions in any way shape or form and when I learned that I was like, oh my goodness We as clinicians collectively are chronically stressed and we're pretty much nine times out of ten operating from fight or flight So what does that mean for our patients?

What's that mean for our registration? What does that mean for? Our level of care, and we can't tackle that [00:18:00] today, but I'm going to be diving into this a little bit more. I think it's such an important thing, a missing piece that we're not talking about enough. Whilst all of that is true, and our nervous system has all of these imprints, it also has all of the imprints of all the good things, and all the things that have happened, and the trainings that we've received, and the knowledge that we've gained, and the skills, and the practicality of the skills that we've been able to practically apply in our nursing practice.

So, we really... then have to ask ourselves, okay, well, how do we build our confidence in the fact that I will be able to figure it out? And that comes down to the stories that we tell ourselves. That comes down to really tuning into self confidence versus that external confidence. Many of us are looking for the external confidence, the certificate to give us the tick, the competency tick.

Now I'm confident. It's fascinating to watch. I was an educator for a year and a half. And people would get a tick on their competency, and suddenly, the next time we did the skill, they were like, so, so confident. And nothing had changed, they just [00:19:00] practiced it once with me, and then they got a tick on the page, and I said, well done, pat on the back.

And then, all of a sudden, they were super confident. Now, that's lovely, that's great. But we want to derive that confidence, that confidence from internal, like, our internal world. We want to create self confidence. And self confidence... A big part of that is having an alpha, alpha grid attitude. It's like, you know what?

I trust my brain. I trust the neuroplasticity of my brain. I trust that I'll be able to pull this skill out when I need it. And I trust that I'm willing to give it a go and to work this out as we move forward. I think many of us think that we need evidence to prove that we should be confident, but we can just decide to be self confident and that's a really big part of.

Navigating a change like this, especially when you're so worried about losing your clinical skills. Because if we have the confidence that we will lose clinical skills, because like, duh, of course it's going to happen, but actually I'm also on a [00:20:00] trajectory where I'm going to gain even more clinical skills and be able to use the things from my past as and when required, you're winning, my friend.

It's kind of like skills available PRN, right? Your skills are on the PRN side of the med chart, and if and when you need them, they're there. But as you move forward, like you're getting like a little start dose of a new skill here, a little start dose of a new skill there, and then they become like regular prescription skills that you just use every day that are part of your regular daily occurrences.

So I hope that resonates with you. I hope this episode has been able to help you understand that we are designed to be able to reconnect those neural pathways, to build new neural pathways through neuroplasticity, and to tap into the skills that we need. In any situation, to be able to deliver as a clinician, whether it's in the bedside or it's in an office, it doesn't matter.

All of the skills that you've gathered up until this point are not a sunk cost. It's not a waste of time. [00:21:00] They're the foundation that you're building an incredible career. off of. I want to tell you one last story just to kind of reiterate this and it's so funny, well it's not funny, it's a little scary actually, but the other day me and my partner were walking to the gym and it was dark, we're crossing the road and at this intersection there's a couple of different Routes for cars to take, and there was this golden Labrador, like, running towards me.

And it was pounding down the pavement, and it looked so excited. And my partner, I grew up in country New South Wales, so, he was like, don't touch, you know, stray dogs, like, nothing, don't, you know, don't do that, but I'm like, raised in Scotland, I see a cute dog, and I think, oh my god, a cute dog! And this dog's pounding down, but I was so close to the road that I thought, oh my god, and I went into this immediate state of, like, hyperarousal, clinician.

As if I was in the ICU with a patient that suddenly had pulled the tube out and was gonna, like, pull out the central venous line. I went into full action mode, hyperarousal, without me [00:22:00] even thinking about it. I was just walking along, talking to my partner about our day. I saw the dog and within about two seconds, my brain had dug into the depths of the ether of Liam's brain and had, like, the fight or flight response.

In full mode in action, I tried to stop the dog as best as I could, like, got out of my way to stop the dog, didn't stop the dog, the dog then ran onto the road, this car was coming, literally, it was like, the dog was, the dog nearly got hit, and I was like, I was like, Oh my God, screaming, like, please don't die dog.

And it's so funny to tell you that experience because my partner, his nervous system was totally different. He was stressed, worried, but he was just kind of like, okay. But it really highlighted to me that his brain and his experiences, he's not been trained to respond like that. But as clinicians, we are trained to respond to the slightest thing.

And that was a pretty big thing. But we're trained to respond to the slightest little thing to have these kind of hyper arousal [00:23:00] states where we go into full protection, full like, let's solve this problem, let's do this mode. And often that can be to our detriment, because in situations like this, where we are making an incredible change in our life and our career, we get fixated on the fear and the worry and the stress of losing a clinical skill, and we lose sight of what we're about to gain moving forward.

So I wanted to share that with you because I just thought, oh my god, that was my fight or flight. That's so deeply ingrained. And it was funny because I thought to myself, that's why my partner, when I throw something at him, and I don't mean nastily, I just mean like if I throw him something to catch he's like super slow, he never catches it, ever.

We have a joke about it. And I just think to myself, oh, that's actually why. Because I've been trained to, like, catch them. I remember in medical admissions and planning, as a grad nurse, catching a patient and it's falling. And I'm, like, catching them and, like, literally running over, nearly breaking my bloody own back.

But catching them. Do not do this. Please never catch a patient. Okay? Never catch [00:24:00] a patient. Just slowly guide them to the floor if you can, but do not catch them. Do not do what I did. But, you know, that's a fight or flight survival state response. And that is a neuroplastic. A memory that I have in my brain that I tap into as and when I need it and I learned that skill years ago and it could have saved that dog's life, like maybe it did save that dog's life.

Maybe that was a lesson that I needed to learn, was like the power of neuroplasticity. So I hope this resonates with you, I would really, really love... to hear from you. I want to reinforce what this whole episode has been about, which is skill evolution, not loss. You're not losing anything, you're gaining and it's all in your perspective.

We've got to trust in our brains, resilience and its superpower and the adaptability of that mindset of, I will figure this out. And I would love, love, love to hear from you. I'd love to hear from you if this has changed your mind about being fearful, about changing, losing skills, and maybe you're still at the point where you're still fearful, but If you've gone through this episode and you're still [00:25:00] fearful, this is not the real problem.

There's something else that you're telling yourself that you haven't uncovered yet. So maybe journal on that and do a little bit of thinking around it. And I'd love to hear, drop into my DMs at High Performance Nursing and we can chat about it there. But otherwise, I will see you next time. Remember, you will not lose your skills.

You have only got things to gain as you move forward, my friend. I'll see you next week.