Nashia Williams, RN, BSN NY-SAFE, CCHP, realized early in her 20-year nursing career that she is drawn to emergencies. Her first positions as a nurse were primarily in med/surg and oncology units, but she really liked the times she floated in the ED.
“I would always lean toward or chase emergencies,” she said. “If something really crazy happened, I would want to be there.” She’s been an emergency nurse in New York hospitals for the past 13 years, currently as the assistant director of nursing, hospital operations at South Shore University Hospital. She is also a certified correctional health care provider and has also worked for about 18 years at Nassau County Correctional Center.
From chest pains to overdoses, attempted suicides to intentional injuries, she sees plenty of similarities between the hospital and in the correctional facility, and she cares for patients in both places the same way.
“You have to know that everyone has baggage, and in the correctional facility, I don’t look at the charges,” she said. “Someone’s backstory created the person. It humanizes and humbles you.”
The state of carceral care is one of the topics she and longtime friend Kate O’Connell—an emergency nurse with a background in writing and audio production—tackle during “National Emergency,” a podcast the two created that launched earlier this year.
The podcast, available on Audible, explores some of the toughest challenges in this country, challenges that impact the people rolling into emergency departments on stretchers each day. Williams, O’Connell and their guests tackle medical misinformation, sex education, gun violence, Black maternal health and more.
The two add stories from their own professional and personal experiences to the discussions, such as another time Williams was drawn to an emergency: Hurricane Maria. She volunteered with a disaster relief mission in Puerto Rico in 2017, when she saw first-hand how many infrastructure problems there existed before the storm hit.
“To go to Puerto Rico and see it was so underserved, it took away the whole paradise aspect of it,” she said. “The hurricane only exacerbated the ills of that area.”
The Puerto Rico mission left an impact on her, and upon her return to New York, Williams considered becoming a flight nurse—another chance to chase the emergencies. She moved to Albany and worked in an ED to get ready for her new role. But, Williams said, she missed her people, decided against the flight training, and returned to the city for another ED.
Her ”people,” her network of nurse friends, are Williams’ biggest source of support in her challenging jobs—followed by the comfort of her adorable “little fur monster, Holly Grace” and a stack of trashy romance novels.
Williams also recharges when she travels. She recently came back from an educational trip to Cuba, where she visited the national health ministry, a community care center and a hospital. She’s also taught in India.
Despite the challenges and emotional demands, Williams still doesn’t consider what she does to be “work.” It’s what she loves. But she hopes that more people, not just nurses, listen to the podcast and think about nurses as well as the issues being discussed.
“I want people listening to the podcast to know this is more than just a job we signed up for,” Williams said. “It’s important to treat your nurse like a person, like how you want to be treated and respected.”