DoctorOz: Why Your Nurse Can Be Your Next Doctor

And they're all here, it's not just because I love them, I do, but because there's so much to learn from a nurse. They personify prevention, and that's why today, I'm asking what they do to get healthy. But I want to start out by talking about the role nurses have in my life and in yours, because I have some very special guests among all these wonderful nurses. I have the cardiac nurses of New York Presbyterian Hospital. Here they are. All these beautiful ladies. Just to show you how brutally honest nurses can be, I'm going to ask them what life is like working with me. Anyone can go, but you know, Flora, Flora was the boss. This is who hired me. What was I like, Flora? You? Me. Talk too fast, walk so fast, think too fast. It's hard for me to follow up, but I deal with you more than 25 years, so. I'll tell you a story. At our hospital, when we did heart surgery, it's sometimes bloody in there, and the big decision is when can you close the chest? When is it safe to be able to take the patient out of the OR to the recovery area? Until the nurses, especially Flora, looked over your shoulder and said, it's okay, and you would never, ever think of closing the chest. And Flora's saying it had to be as dry as the Sahara Desert before you could close. So what was I like? Was I a loser? Am I a good guy or a bad guy? You were always a good guy. She's just saying that. We enjoy working with you very much. She never told me that. And I tell the truth all the time. So what is it like to stay healthy as a nurse? Who feels like they've gotten their, there you go. You know, it's really hard to stay healthy, especially working the hours that we do. So you gotta find the small ways to do it, like taking the stairs at work or just going for a walk on your break, because it's really hard to find time to go to the gym on your days off. There you go. Staying healthy, we are all fit, and we're okay working in the operating room. It's just that with Dr. Oz, we do a lot of running, especially when he asks for the sutures that he needs, like the tap deck or chromic. And then when he drops an instrument on the floor, he wants another instrument, and then he will ask for the fine de Vecchi, iris scissor, and all at the same time, I have only two hands, four instruments at the same time. Now you see why I love him. Where else do you get honest feedback? It's like being married to all of you at once. Well, thank you very much. These days, a nurse's role in your healthcare is even more important than ever. Our crew actually went behind the scenes, where cameras rarely go, for a better understanding of what it means to be a nurse in America. And as a patient, you're gonna see why a nurse might just be your next doctor. Meet the new face of primary care in America. Catherine is a nurse practitioner in New York City. I'm a family nurse practitioner. I've been practicing for five years, and I'm a primary care provider. Nurse practitioners are nurses with advanced education that make it possible for them to do most of what doctors do. I do physicals, I order blood tests, and diagnose, and write prescriptions, and I work to keep patients healthy and out of the hospital. As the nation faces a shortage of doctors and a number of patients go up, more and more nurse practitioners act as primary caregivers. Nurse practitioners have really stepped up to improve access so that patients can get the healthcare and the education and the help that they need. Healthcare's changing, patients need doctors, doctors need nurses. These days, nurses are able to do a lot more than they used to do in the past, and because of that, they're able to help our patients much more efficiently. We can get treatments started. If a patient needs medication, the nurse can start it right now, or if I need to make a diagnosis, I'm trusted to make a safe diagnosis as needed. It's a great time to be a nurse right now. People really value the role of nursing. I'm so excited to be a nurse practitioner. Alice Benjamin. So Angie, we just saw how nurses are becoming the face of primary care in America. When you're going into a doctor's office, it's often a nurse who's there for good reason. How is it actually changing the system? How does it help the patient? You know, I think the most amazing part for me as a nurse practitioner is that, first of all, I started out as a nurse, and then I went back to school and I added some of the tools of medicine, but I never lost my nursing. I brought that caring, that ability to listen carefully, and I think that's what nursing brings to primary care. Fantastic. So here's the thing. Nurses are all about prevention. We're hearing it in every different way today, and that's why we're about to review a plan created for you by nurses, so everyone can benefit from their knowledge and expertise. Now, I've asked Alice to help us with this, because you've come up with a plan. Why is it so important, do you believe, for nurses to lead by example? It's so important, because we know the recipe to healthy living, because we're ripping, we're running, we're pushing, pulling, lifting, responding, and, you know, life or death situations, we need to be prepared, physically and mentally, so it's very important for us to be healthy as well. Let's do this. You guys ready for this? All right. Alice has a 28-day plan to be slim and strong by living like a nurse. Anybody can follow this. Why 28 days, by the way? Well, there's a lot of research out there that shows that in 28 days, you can break a habit or change your mindset, so if you make one small change over 28 days, it will become a part of your permanent, healthy lifestyle. All right, here it is. This is a plan that's designed to help you in many ways. It's gonna help you eat like a nurse, gonna help you sleep like a nurse, move like a nurse, and get support like a nurse, because that's what really makes nursing so special, literally supporting at every level. First, we're gonna start off with eating like a nurse. So what can America learn from nurses when it comes to healthy eating? Well, when it comes to healthy eating, nurses, we do a lot of documentation, right? A lot of tracking and trending. And so we document, but what we want patients to do is to also keep track. You can have a diary, you can download an app on your phone, but we want you to keep track of it, because that's gonna help you be accountable, and when you know what you're eating, you're less likely to reach out for those donuts or those chips when you know what the goal is. So document, track, and trend is very important. So it turns out folks have actually studied this, and when you track and trend what you're doing, you eat better foods, you exercise the right way and in the right amount, you actually double your weight loss. It really does work. Back with the Nurses 28 Day Slim and Strong Plan, created for you by nurses, because they have the knowledge, the experience, the compassion to turn your health around. So Nurse Alice Benjamin's back, along with two nurses who have taken control of their health so they can be examples for all of us. I want you to welcome Nurse Jessica and Nurse Sheila. Sheila, let's start with you. Right in the middle of your efforts to help take care of patients, you had a personal health transformation. What happened? Yeah, I'm getting to be mid-40s, and I was getting home from work and my joints ached so bad getting out of the car and trying to get in the house, and I thought now's the time. Now's the time to make the change. So I had a medical mission trip that I was due to go on and worried that am I gonna hold the team back from my weight? So I've lost 100 pounds. 100 pounds. Here's a before and after photo. You really did, look at that. Yeah. Now, Jessica, you say patients actually motivated you to change your life. So what was your personal change? What did you do? Well, I joined the gym. I started tracking my meals with an application on my phone, and I got a personal trainer. I was able to do that. So those three things really motivated me, and I've lost a total of 34 pounds. I just weighed myself the other day. Good for you. Here's your before and after. Look how vibrant you look. Thank you. You must be proud of that. You should be proud of it. I am. What have you done with tracking your weight, your foods? I use an app also. I keep close measuring of what I eat, but when I eat, I only eat three meals a day. I concentrate on a protein and a fat at each meal, and then I load in the veggies. I figure that protein and that fat is what's gonna hold me over to the next meal is the way that I look at it, so. The other thing we have a problem with in the hospital is sleep. We don't sleep so well, and this is true for everybody, especially nurses. There's lots of things happening. It's a problem all over America, and you guys have to master getting to sleep, and one epidemic that I'm seeing is folks are always ruminating, all of us, at nighttime, and nurses worry about their patients. How do you sleep better as a nurse? How do you cope with that problem of always thinking about what happened during the day? Did you take care of the patient the right way? You know, I absolutely fixate especially I did 13 years in the emergency room. I would fixate on what I had or what I felt, even worrying about patients. I would sit at home and think, wow, I hope they're doing better, so I think there's a couple of important things that I do. I read. I find myself in another world. Get into a story. Focus on it. It kind of breaks up, and you're thinking about someone else's life. And power naps are a big part of this process for you. How effective are they? Power naps are so helpful. Nurses, we work so hard. We need our sleep, so sometimes we can't sleep solid, you know, seven, eight hours. We need to take a power nap, and nurses actually have a secret. We actually like to do coffee naps. So I know people associate coffee with staying awake and being alert, but it takes about 20, 30 minutes for the caffeine to kick in and have its full effect. So what you do is you have a cup of coffee, take about a 20 or 30 minute nap, and when you wake up, not only are you rested from your nap, but that caffeine is kicked in, and you are ready to go. So that's definitely a secret that some nurses, especially my night nurses, I think can appreciate that. Power naps, very helpful. The third step in your plan is to move like a nurse. And just to put this in context, nurses on a 12 hour shift, which, you know, again, is the common amount of shift, walk three and a half miles. Three and a half miles. I actually tracked it one day on my phone, and I actually calculated 6.5 miles. Oh, we have an update. Breaking news. I'm only 50% giving you credit for what you do. It depends how demanding the patients and doctors are, but whatever it takes. So a lot of miles are walked, but there are things that nurses need to do to stay slim and strong. Absolutely. We're moving, pushing, pulling, lifting patients, so we need to move and be strong. So I actually have resistance bands. My favorite. It's Instant Gym, on the go, very inexpensive. So we do this with our patients at the hospital, but I can't bring my patient home, so I have my resistance bands to keep me strong. You guys have bands. You're sitting on them, actually. Come on over here. Demonstrate. This is something everyone can do pretty readily. Yes. So resistance bands are really great because they're really inexpensive, and you can take them anywhere with you. So a simple one that I like to do is, if you kind of stand on your resistance band, about feet, shoulder width apart, and what you're gonna do is you're gonna bend at the knees and hips here, and then you're going to go more into a squat, and you're gonna actually lift up, and here you can work your muscles, and if you want to, you can even go even higher and do an overhead press. Right. Look how strong Sheila is over there. Jessica. And you have different levels of resistance bands, but this is an instant body workout. I'm working my quads, I'm working my glutes, my hamstrings, and with your upper body, you're working your triceps, your biceps, and your deltoids. So definitely a full body workout. I understand, Sheila, you've got a little trick you use at the hospital. I do. I work in a surgical center, so I have to take my own patients to the car. So when I get back in our staff elevator, by myself, I do squats in the elevator the whole time until I get back up to my floor. Nobody's in there, some of the other nurses know that I do it, I do squats the whole way. People aren't staring at you? Yeah. Thank you for watching. Don't forget to subscribe and turn on notifications so you never miss out on new videos to live the good life.