January 13, 2022

by drplasticpicker

Last night was the first night I did not binge watch K-dramas for the first time. I had spent most of yesterday on and off prepping a climate talk with two of our other green-team MD friends. We had the opportunity to talk to nursing leadership, and since nurses are the most trusted profession in the country and these are decision makers with influence – we needed to show up in their space. We’ve given similar talks in the past but honestly it has to be geared to the right audience, and in the end it’s about recruiting more people into this space of helping with the climate and health work. Making healthcare more sustainable is a big part of what I can do.

It was a tough audience. It’s the middle of the pandemic and the end of a Wednesday, after these managers had already likely put in long days of work. Our country’s nurses and also their nursing leadership have bourne so much of the brunt of this COVID pandemic. The time slot was 4-5pm. I had talked to some of my nursing leadership friends and they had advised, try to inspire us and tell us the why and don’t give us another thing “to do.”

Also my colleagues who co-presented with me work in adult medicine mostly, and they are tired. Older adults are bearing the brunt of this pandemic. They worked on their presentations and the content was really good. We delivered it and each of us can talk all day on climate, but when it got to my part since I don’t have much substance to add and time was running short so I had to pivot. I play the part of @drplasticpicker and talking about my crazy trash art and plastic picking. This talk I tried to address for the first time sustainable procurement. So the written comments I had spent two hours writing and editing and practicing, went out the door. There is a reason speach and debate team are such great training grounds for public speaking. I had been an impromptu events speaker. So in those few minutes, I realized that my part needed to be shortened quite a bit to leave any time for questions. So I shortenend and we had just 5 minutes left for questions. There weren’t many questions, but good interest. And more importantly for these nursing leaders, we finished on time.

I wasn’t sure. I honestly wasn’t sure after the talk how it landed? I do know that Dr. L gave her first talk on climate and health in our HMO and I listened and I learned new things despite having been in this advocacy space for over two years now. There were key slides and learning points that I will definitely reuse and “borrow” for later. I touched base with friends yesterday who were in the audience and asked “how did it land?” And I was relieved to hear that they thought it’s tone and the delivery were good. They said we told them the why and the ask was to make it doable and that the impression we left was, even one small project can have a ripple effect.

Again, I do question myself. Am I wasting my time? Am I wasting your time? Are the three bags of trash I picked up at lunch yesterday futile? But I did pick them up and I recycled those pieces of paper and later on they will become toilet paper hopefully? Less virgin trees cut down to literally wipe the cr@p off our bodies. Apologies. It’s been a long climate day yesterday.

It’s 330am but I had a good sleep yesterday. I did other projects as well. An Equity, Inclusion and Diversity project on closing the racial disparity gaps in flu vaccination. I have to finish our “Rewild the Child to Counter ACES” catch grant application.

When I reflect back on yesterday. We were invited. We showed up. We were prepared and it was a good talk. It landed well. And I got to give shout outs to some really great nursing leaders who are showing up in a big way for the earth. The hours I spent preparing the written comments that I didn’t fully deliver, were completly worth it. Because in the end, it’s whether we inspired a few people yesterday and I honestly got inspired myself again.

Many thanks to the blog readership. It’s @drplasticpicker and we are going to reduce single use plastics in healthcare.