Maggie is a nurse, educator, and writer.
She began her nursing career in 2009 and has since practiced in hospitals and communities nationwide, primarily in labor and birth environments. Maggie maintains a bedside practice at a community hospital in Pennsylvania, in addition to her non-profit work as Founding Executive Director of Your BIRTH Partners.
Maggie is currently pursuing her PhD in Nursing and loves educating, mentoring, and learning alongside other nurses. Her research interests are trauma-informed care, secondary traumatic stress, trauma-responsive work environments, and nurse identity. She has always enjoyed writing, both through blogs and in scholarly environments. Much of her recent pursuits have focused on authoring a transformational memoir and contributing to academic journals.
Her advocacy focuses on improving perinatal care in hospital environments through trauma-informed care and community collaboration. When she's not dreaming up good trouble with other changemakers, she's doing yoga, reading a book, traveling, indulging in delicious food, soaking in fresh air outside, or hanging with her awesome partner and kids.
The role of nurses has often been dictated by those outside the profession. First, we were seen as doctors' handmaidens, which informed a collective consciousness that we were only valuable in support of paternalistic healthcare. As the role of nurses expanded, the public came to recognize our unique skills, identified us as the most trustworthy profession over two decades, and labeled us heroes. In response, we have positioned ourselves as a neutral identity that is "just there to help." However, this helper or savior identity has several negative ramifications including a preoccupation with how our care might be judged in the event of an unexpected outcome, which ultimately creates a divide between us & those in our care.
Nurses benefit from identification of and reflection on their motivation for pursuing nursing, their current care practices, and how they can shift their mindset to release the rigidity, guilt, and fear that is associated with saviorism.
We cannot allow patterns of saviorism to continue to dominate our profession. The health of our patients & ourselves depends on us stepping away from "helping" and into a standard of trauma-informed advocacy.
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