Nursing the Nurse started with a question: why are nurses expected to just “get used to it”?

Within six months of starting my nursing career, I realised how underprepared I felt for the reality of the job. I remember raising it with one of my clinical educators. Her response was simple: “Get used to it. It’s not going to change.”

That conversation stuck with me.

Because I didn’t want to spend the next several decades simply surviving my career. So I started looking for answers.

I read, researched and experimented with practical tools that could help me manage the stress, emotional load, shift work and realities of nursing in a healthier way.

Over the next few years, I built what I started thinking of as my own toolbelt. Simple strategies I could actually use in real life.

And they worked.

I was coping well in situations that could easily have overwhelmed me, and when colleagues asked what I was doing differently, I started sharing those tools with them too.

Then, a few years into my career, I had another moment that changed everything.

I was working in ICU when a patient died. At the end of the shift, several of us asked if we could have a debrief.

The response from the coordinator was:

“We’re in ICU. They either leave in a body bag or they leave for a step-down unit. It’s going to happen again, and we don’t have time because we’re at the end of our shift.”

And I remember thinking:

What happens to the nurse who doesn’t already have the tools to process this?

Because if I hadn't spent those previous years deliberately building my own toolbelt, I don't know that I would have stayed in nursing.

I could have become bitter.

I could have become overwhelmed.

I could have decided I simply wasn't cut out for the profession.

But that wouldn't have been true.

I had completed the training. I cared deeply about the work. I was capable of being a nurse.

I had simply entered the profession underprepared, under-equipped and under-supported for some of the hardest parts of the job.

And I knew I wasn't the only one.

That became the reason for Nursing the Nurse.

I wanted to take the practical tools that had helped me build a more sustainable relationship with nursing and make them easier for other nurses to find, understand and actually use.

It started with a book.

Then came education and courses

And eventually, it grew into the Holistic Huddle app and community, bringing together practical resources, expert support and conversations around the different things that affect a nurse's wellbeing.

The format has changed.

The reason behind it hasn't.

Nurses shouldn't have to figure out how to survive their career by accident.

They deserve access to the tools that can help them build a long, healthy and sustainable one.