Michele Ong

Nurses don't get enough credit for what they do. Despite being considered an essential role in healthcare, it is still an often misunderstood and underrated field, but one that has immense scope for professional development and medical specialisation Ellen Yeo is a clinical nurse consultant specialising in renal medicine and kidney transplantation clinical trials. She's also a nursing education and career pathway advocate. Join us as we speak with Ellen about her journey to clinical trial nursing, professional and career development of nurses, and the STEMM of nursing. I'm Michele Ong, and this is STEAM Powered.

Good morning, Ellen. Thank you so much for joining me on STEAM Powered. I'm really looking forward to speaking with you about your journey.

Ellen Yeo

Thanks, Michele. Really been looking forward to being here for some time, so it's really nice to be finally here.

Michele Ong

Yeah, absolutely. It was such a wonderful chat that we had when I met you and your husband at SXSW last year at the Games Expo. And that was very cool.

Ellen Yeo

Yeah. That was, that was amazing just to see like how many creative talents are out there as well. It's just really exciting. I can't believe that's almost a year now.

Michele Ong

I know. And it's going to be rolling around again in a few months.

Ellen Yeo

That's true. It's pretty scary to think about it like that.

Michele Ong

I know, it's gone very, very quickly.

Ellen's path to nursing.

Michele Ong

Yeah, so getting right into the conversation. What prompted you to pursue nursing?

Ellen Yeo

I think it's something that was slightly in the family. Mom isn't a nurse, but I think for as long as she told us, she always wanted to become a nurse. And, uh, before coming to Sydney, actually Australia is our second immigration. Our first immigration was back in Botswana. We lived in the capital city, Gaborone, and as part of our primary school and middle school curriculum, they would take us to a public hospital to go and interact with children who has HIV and othermedical conditions.

The school was really strict regarding vaccines and things, but in hindsight, that is pretty big project for a school to take on. But I was really lucky to have that opportunity because I was able to see how a public system could serve a population and certainly I think things sort of stemmed from those days of seeing the nurses caring for the kids and the population. And then, yeah, I applied for a Bachelor of Nursing in Sydney and it's been 12 years almost since.

Michele Ong

Oh, wow. Amazing. So when you started nursing, where did you see yourself in that career?

Ellen Yeo

Oh gosh. I-- um, when I first applied, I wanted to be, I was so adamant, Michele. I wanted to be an aged care and palliation nurse, like specialist. And that's all I wanted to do. 'Cause I love caring for my grandparents. Not that we lived very close to them. I just really love being around old people and caring for them.

And I thought their stories were fascinating. it's almost like speaking to a whole, you know, decades and decades of stories, a library almost. So I really felt quite a bit of that passion towards, I guess, aged care nursing. So that's what I initially wanted to do. And then I did that for about two years and I realised that the world of nursing is vast and broad and very interesting.

So I got curious about other specialties and I also wanted to upskill in more of a busy critical care setting. Aged care is also very critical, in saying that. But you sometimes don't always get that education and opportunity and support that you would find in a bigger institution.

Taking a career 'leap year' to travel around her field.

Ellen Yeo

Somy first job was in aged care and I loved it for about, just under two years. And then I sort of started taking off to other specialties and I almost took that as an opportunity to explore, like, you know how one would take a leap year and go traveling to Europe and to America and to, all of these other places in the world. I was like, well, I can't do that. So I'm going to take my career as a traveling opportunity and whatever opportunity comes my way, and if I'm curious about it, I will give it a shot.

And one thing led to another, I went to a medical and surgical unit in a private sector for some time. And then I would then move to another university institution and did some surgical stuff there. And then I was like, hey, I really want to, I'm curious about the public sectors because I've been around private sector for some time.

So then I switched over to the public sector and so forth. So, yeah, really, for the first five years of nursing, I was uh, really driven by curiosity.

Michele Ong

That is an amazing way of doing it. And the fact that the industry is flexible enough to allow you to be able to explore in these ways in such diverse specialisations, is it difficult to be able to do that? Or is it just a matter of finding job openings? Like, is there other limitations?

Exploring beyond specialty knowledge and job criteria.

Ellen Yeo

So you, one would think like when they apply for a role, sometimes there's like a really small phrase that says 'prior specialty knowledge required'. And often nurses come to me and be like, that's very discouraging because I don't have that specialty knowledge and I don't think I can apply for this although I'm really curious about this role and I could see myself growing in it.

From my experience, I have to tell this in advice of nurses. Just ignore that. Just ignore that phrase. Just apply and see what happens. Because at least you're giving yourself that opportunity, that doorway, just to see.

You know, you never know. You never know. And for, for me, that was certainly the case. I was perhaps a little lucky as well. Maybe there weren't that many people who applied to those roles. And maybe my CV, there was something that they liked. I have no idea. But I certainly didn't have a vast experience prior to applying to each of those roles.

But I got the interview and I really liked the panel and I hoped I'd get it. And once I got in, it was really exciting. But essentially, yes, nursing is very broad and there's different pathways you can choose, different specialties you can choose. And as long as you have that patient-centred care in mind it really does apply not just within nursing to nursing within Australia, but really globally.

Michele Ong

Yeah, absolutely. And that's such good advice just in general for applying for jobs. If you have that curiosity and that drive to want to learn, what is necessarily on the criteria shouldn't limit you. Because, yeah, so often they are ideal, but you never know what other factors are in a candidate's application that would make them more suited to the role than someone who has all the boxes ticked.

Ellen Yeo

Yeah, absolutely. And also now being in-- very recently being invited to interview panels and things, I often find that senior panelists, I'm quite surprised to see that they're interested in CVs and pursuing CVs who don't necessarily have the whole criteria of the job posting.

So really you never know until you take that leap of faith, you know.

Michele Ong

Absolutely. It's just a great way of being able to approach your own career development, just taking it into your own hands, because, it is what you care about.

Ellen Yeo

Precisely. Yeah.

Ellen's road to renal medicine and a chance appointment.

Michele Ong

So how did you find your way to renal medicine?

Ellen Yeo

Oh, yeah, that's a really great question, Michele. So in my five years of exploration within the realm of nursing, I stumbled across a professor, Alice Lee, who was a director of gastroenterology and hepatology. At Macquarie University Hospital and I had worked with her under the endoscopy suite for some time.

She one day gave me a call and sort of asked if I would be interested in taking a clinical trials nursing role, which was something I had, at that time point, never, ever had heard of. I didn't even realise that nurses could do such a role. And that's embarrassing to say that a little bit after graduating Bachelor of Nursing and doing nursing for five years full time.

And I was like, Oh, nurses can do that? What is this role? I had no idea. But once I got that call, it actually got into a dilemma because clinical trials nursing role that she was offering was a contracted role, which was very, very different to ward-based nursing, bedside nursing, that are permanent and very secure in our, in ourpositions. So I would really have to make a choice whether I was going to go for this really interesting sounding role but also to give up my job security a little bit because it was a 10 month contract.

Michele Ong

And in hindsight, I think that was even very generous because in clinical trial roles, contract roles can actually be three to six months only as well, so.

Ellen Yeo

But, you know, after some serious sit down conversations with my husband, you know, what's going to happen if this falls through and things like that, all the scary conversations, I was again, driven by curiosity and just took that leap of faith. And I am so glad I did, because ever since then, it's just all history.

Since I've taken that role, it has opened a huge world that I've never known it existed. And I worked under her department in Concord Hospital for the first 10 months of my research clinical trials career. And then a permanent full time role at Royal Prince Alfred, which is my current renal and kidney transplantation department at RPA.

So that's how I got into this current role.

The difference between ward nursing and clinical trials nursing.

Michele Ong

Amazing. So what are the differences between what you were doing, as a regular, in quotes, ward nurse and clinical trials nursing.

Ellen Yeo

Yes. So clinical trials nursing is we care for patients who altruistically volunteer to take part in these new research protocols that are studying new medicine that are potentially trying to cure incurable diseases, trying to explore or expand or improve current care pathways to lessen side effects, to lessen pain, to lessen costs, to essentially advance patient care and the quality of that.

So the clinical trials nursing is essentially about caring for a patient in that person-centred way. So that is the absolute principles of nursing, wherever you go.

But clinical trials also comes with an additional knowledge and skill sets which involve budgeting, and project management, and contracting, and ethics is also a huge part of what we do.

We, we need to be accustomed to all the principles around new technologies, because often the new projects, the new drugs, they all come with things that we've never really heard of. So you're really at that forefront of medicine and patient care. So things that doctors are just hearing about and learning about, we are also learning about and hearing about at the same time.

So I think it's basically a marriage of those two worlds together. And you will never be bored in this role because every protocol is different to the next. And everything is about looking into that hope of potentially giving and providing better care for our patients. So it's just such a fascinating role.

And I think this is what has captivated me for almost the last sort of six years. And I'm currently on leave at the moment, but I'm also, in a weird sense, sort of also excited to get back to that routine and to get back into projects and see our patients because it's always that engaging in every day is quite a different day.

It's never the same. So yeah, I love it.

The pathway from ward nursing to clinical trials nursing.

Michele Ong

That's amazing. So, how does one transition from ward nursing to clinical trials nursing?

Ellen Yeo

Wow. So this is a, it's a-- I feel like this is a loaded question. Look, transitioning from bedside nursing to clinical trials nursing is at this point in time there isn't an official or structured way of going about it generally speaking.

Often nurses voice that they feel like they've been thrown into the deep end and are sort of expected to float or drown and um, there are still those elements of nursing and patient care that they are familiar with, however, essentially what we're doing is we're taking a nurse who are very used to and familiar with team-based nursing in a ward setting, bringing her or him out of that setting into a quite an autonomous area where you're often leading projects in a group of two or three, if you're lucky, um, and you're quite autonomous and you're quite on your own implementing these protocols and caring for these patients.

So, that transition can be rough in multiple layers. It could be your skills, knowledge, you might feel like you're always learning something new every day and that's exciting but also quite daunting depending on how often that happens and the intensity of that. And then you start missing your team nurses, like, you know, your team, your comrades, because you're often on your own.

So that transition can be a little rough, which is probably the reason why my current project is looking at transitioning nurses who are interested in this career pathway from bedside nursing, ward nursing, to a research environment, 'cause that transition is very, very important, especially the first 12 months. So yes, that transition is really a huge systematic gap, I would say.

The clinical trial nursing environment.

Michele Ong

Yeah, so, how many nurses are usually involved in a clinical trial in the way that you're describing? 'Cause it sounds like it's one.

Ellen Yeo

It can be and it can be one for a very long time, depending on how your department is wired and what your current financial budgetings are embedded in that sort of protocol in the study in the system.

You know, I've worked with a very incredibly bright senior nurse who sort of single handedly managed her whole department's clinical trials, managing, you know, over 30 clinical trials by herself over like 15 years and had maybe a support clinical trial nurse come and go, but it was really her who's been sort of running the show.

And I also know of other clinical trial units that have nursing staff as well as data managers, scientists, project management, project contract, you know, a bigger team.

Michele Ong

Yeah. But that sounds less common.

Ellen Yeo

However, I would agree. That is um, something that you would find in perhaps in oncology, like cancer clinical trials, they are perceived very large in terms of workforce, in terms of the project that they receive, the quantity of them.

So, you know, hematology is also one of the bigger units in the hospital, but the rest of us, we sort of function on a day-to-day basis with maybe one to two nurses, if you're lucky. I just consider my team quite lucky because we have one research assistant and three clinical trial nurses, and one of our nurses currently on long term leave.

So technically, if we count out, we have four in a team, so.

Michele Ong

Yeah. Pretty lucky.

Ellen Yeo

Yeah, I would say, I think, yeah, pretty lucky.

The misconceptions around the role of nurses in clinical trials.

Michele Ong

So, you know, based on what you've described, it makes sense why it is such a massive transition going from a team to an almost solo environment, and it's treated almost just like a lateral position shift, when really it's, you know, it's not, I wouldn't call it a promotion, but it is an entirely different role to have to undertake without prior experience, and in the case of most trials only having one or maybe two, if you're lucky, nurses involved, not very many opportunities to train people into that kind of position. So yeah, can understand how intimidating that would be.

Ellen Yeo

Yes, that's absolutely right. And if you are single handedly managing a whole unit by yourself, the quality, the time, the resources to train someone properly and effectively, it gets very, very challenging.

However, I think there's also a slight misconception in some ways where a nurse in clinical trials is only involved in providing a new drug to the patient. So administering and injecting the patient and they collect a survey or two and that's it. But it couldn't be further from the truth because what we essentially do, we wear many, many hats in clinical trials.

We wear the educators hat, we wear the project management hat, we wear the ethics application administrator hat, and governance, and all of these multi-knowledge, multi-skills hats and some of the things that people sort of have an idea when you say I'm a clinical trials nurse, they think, you know, you wear these white lab coats and draw up this new, you know, medications and give it to people.

And I mean, it's not too far from the truth. We never wear the white coats, I think. Never really in the lab setting for too long at all. But we basically alternate all of those different hats and, you know, one of my favourite part being a clinical trial nurse is educating our patients who are interested in participating in these new projects that they're interested in and talking to them about the processes and really holding their hands every step of the way, and involving their family members as well and getting them all involved and helping them understand to get through the processes. So there's so much layers in this role. So yeah.

Michele Ong

And as you're talking, it's, it's not going to be a one to one match, but it sounds like similar to the academic setting of running a lab where you are doing all that research. You are having to do all the project management, you're having to do resourcing, budgeting, and you know, all this stuff with human resource management and doing the science as well.

And in your case, human resource management is the patients. So yeah, it's a very different sort of role to ward nursing. Andprops to all of them who leap straight in, completely unaware of how it's going to be.

Developing a program to smooth the transition.

Ellen Yeo

Yes. I mean I think it's great to have that curiosity and be driven. And I think that's really, really important. I certainly did the same thing, I was very curious and I jumped in. But it could be also quite challenging in the beginning. And I always say it comes in waves. The learning curves are quite fast.

I mean, the program that we're currently running in the department and now sort of across the health district, it is essentially targeting that exact challenge. We want to see if there are ways around transitioning our nurses a bit more smoothly and more engaged trying to understand their needs and education in this sort of area.

So what we have done in sort of the last four years, I guess this is coming now, is essentially develop a manual and identify a very essential clinical trial skill sets into seven to eight different modules. And put them all together in a orientation package where the nurses could go through them in their own sort of self paced manner in the first three months of starting the new role.We try to include things like checkboxes and lists that they can sort of work their own way through it.

And also have a classroom setting where they could come together, these new nurses, and debrief about their experiences, what they've liked about it, what they think could have worked better, and also establishing an online sort of forum where they can post questions and interact with each other whenever they choose to or need to.

And also as part of the orientation program, we started working and collaborating with our districts key clinical trial players like pharmacy, ethics, governance trying to see if we can send other novice nurses to these key areas and send them for like a day excursion to see how it's like, what's going on in a pharmacy when we submit our scripts, how are the new drugs being packaged or how are they being made?

And also ethics and governance when we send certain applications about clinical trials and when there is a safety issue, we need to report our ethics and governance, but why do we do that, and how does that end up there and what happens once it gets there?

Sort of humanising the process has been also a very important part, I think, of that transitioning for us.

Michele Ong

It seems so common sense. Like what you've just, what you've described is what's needed to help people transition into these roles and to encourage professional development even though it is self-driven.

It all seems like, why wasn't this done before? Kind of thing. Because otherwise so many of you have been like you said, you're dropped into the deep end.

Research and nursing go hand in hand.

Ellen Yeo

Yeah, exactly. And Michele, it mind boggles me in a way that this role actually has been within nursing for over a hundred years. And research has always been something that nurses have been involved in starting from Florence Nightingale, you know, she was a huge researcher at heart, collecting wound infection rates in a ward and pretty much pioneering in that nursing research all those years ago.

So I think in nursing, you know, some people say Research? Nurses? Really? Can they co-exist? And I just like to tell those people, well, if you look into your history books, you would see those two words do co-exist together from a very, very long time ago.

So essentially,I think research, like I said, I completed Bachelor of Nursing, I also did some Masters in Public Health and Masters in Health Management, but research when it comes to nursing, I feel as though it's not really integrated--

Michele Ong

It's almost assumed that it's just going to happen, but people forget that it does.

Ellen Yeo

Yes, it's almost as if like, Oh yeah, it's there, but it's not like-- there is an interesting division between research and clinical practice in terms of when it comes to nursing, it's--

Michele Ong

It's like theory and application, and people have created this odd delineation between the two when it comes to nursing, when you guys pretty much bridge the two together.

Ellen Yeo

Oh, absolutely. Yeah like,in thinking about it from my position at this time point, I'm like, well, I think those two things are very close together. I think they do, they do work together.

So when I look at education, I think when it comes to Bachelor of Nursing, having a component about this pathway of clinical trials nursing, I thinkwould have been really helpful for me to just know that there are such roles that exist and that in clinical trials there is a very pivotal role that nurses are required to take those roles forward, and it would have been really great to have a prior knowledge of all of this before coming through.

The opportunity to see how education in healthcare works in other countries.

Ellen Yeo

And, I was really, really lucky. I was visiting the UK maybe about a year ago now. And I was visiting clinical trial facilities and meeting the clinical trial nurses in London and in Nottingham.

And what I was fascinated to see was that in their clinical trials wards, they have designated medical units that are just running clinical trials and just seeing clinical trial participants. So you know, within that ward, there are also nursing students, like year one to year three nursing students coming in for a placement for four weeks to see what that's actually like, what clinical trial nursing is like, and I was like, wow, you know, as a nurse, I mean Australia has a lot to learn in this sense.

I wonder, you know, I don't know if there's any changes because I have not been to Bachelor of Nursing any like recently, but at least from the recent conversations that I've had with the students and my experience, we've not had that sort of component in our Bachelor of Nursing.

So it sort of feels a bit like, colleagues around the world are doing it. And I wonder if that is something that we could bring home and try it out because research is forever expanding and research workforce, you know, there are a lot of demands in this area.

So I just wonder all of these things anyway. So yeah, these are the thoughts that keeps me up at night.

Michele Ong

Yeah.

Educational placement opportunities in nursing.

Michele Ong

And it makes perfect sense, because doctors get placements and they can get internships in other facilities that they want to apply to, or even biomedical sciences or other types of science and medical type degrees, they have the opportunity for industry placement to be able to practice what they're learning, see it in action.

But for nursing, what sort of placements are available at the moment from what your personal experience is.

Ellen Yeo

There's quite a few, like critical care nursing you can pretty much apply to any of the wards in the hospital. So that could be oncology, that could be aged care that could be pediatrics. You know, there's a lot of placements provided to the nursing students, which is great.

The roles in clinical research nursing.

Ellen Yeo

But when it comes to research, it was more about how to become a researcher, which is a little bit different to my role as a clinical trials nurse, because, I think I should have probably explained this in the beginning, but I guess in the clinical research nursing world, there are two very distinctive roles, which one is clinical nurse researcher who pretty much designs their own protocol has a scientific problem statement, and they sort of pursue their own research.

Whereas clinical trial nurses, they are the ones who implement a already made protocol and deliver the care to our patients and educate our patients along the way to get them through the protocols and the research. So the implementation part and then the research protocol design part, they're quite different.

But in university settings, I feel like the focus is about being a researcher in some senses and the evidence-based practice is very important and that is something that we learn in Bachelor of Nursing. But I find that there are more to clinical research nursing and I think there's this whole other element that we're missing.

Michele Ong

Yeah. And it seems like they're still focused on working in a team-based environment and not what to do if you have to work autonomously for your own-- it's basically your own ward.

Ellen Yeo

Essentially, yes, it's sort of one-person shows some days andyou gotta do the application for the ethics, and you gotta go and do the finance part, like contracts and review them. And then suddenly a patient comes in and they say they're really, really having bad side-effects to the drug that you've given, then it's the triage process of it.

So you, yeah, it can certainly feel that way some days.

Specialis ations, remuneration, and industry recognition in nursing.

Michele Ong

So at the moment, because like there's no formal training involved in transitioning from becoming a ward nurse to clinical trials nurse, with the specialisations, if you say you wanted to specialise in a specific area as a clinical trials nurse, is that any different from wanting to specialise as a regular ward nurse or are the studies that you'd have to undertake going to be more applicable to the trial side?

Ellen Yeo

The recognition and the qualification would be very important to have.In nursing, you can specialise into certain specialties like age care, oncology, medical, surgical, but within those specialties you could also specialise into-- have pathways, so essentially you can become a nursing unit manager, you can be a nurse specialist, a nurse educator, or a nurse consultant.

And those are the positions that are actually recognised by our nursing awards at a national, at a state level. So there are set amount of remuneration to those roles. There are career pathway and progression and education centred around those roles. Whereas clinical trials nursing is definitely from my perspective, a specialty but it's not recognised in those awards yet.

And so the nurses are often paid based on their contract, or sometimes depending on the budget, or essentially based on their award, I guess, yearly experience. So in the nursing award, there's also year one to year eight nursing remunerations, and so depending on where they lie in that scale, there'll be paid depending on that.

Which sounds fair, but when you really nitpick clinical trials nursing, when you really understand what the clinical trial nurses do, certainly that nursing component of it, and it's a very important part of it, but there are all these other additional elements to the role that we're governed by and we need to perform on day-to-day basis.

So it's those recognition that we are really needing at this point in time. And clinical trials nursing, because there isn't any formal qualifications to it, the training program that we're trying to set up is not only just providing education on site, so within the hospital setting, but really trying to see if there are opportunities to extend that further into a tertiary education.

So we're currently liaising with big institutions such as University of Sydney to see if there could be an opportunity to formalise the education.

Michele Ong

Yeah. it's a fascinating way of being able to evolve that aspect because the recognition gives you more opportunity. It gives the nurses better options and choices for career progression as well.

And that sounds like a thing, as you said, with specialisations that you could specialise in a specific field of medicine, but you're specialising in the clinical trial side of that as well. So it just sits on top of augmenting what they're already teaching at a base nursing degree. And that feels like it would be the ideal.

Formalising the pathway to clinical trials nursing benefits nurses and patients.

Ellen Yeo

I, I would love to, 'cause, you know, we need to start somewhere. I mean, this is certainly a career pathway nurses are trying to pursue, nurses are interested in. So, I think, it's important that we start somewhere and we start looking at some structured pathways to guide our nurses in essentially whatever form and structure.

Tertiary is our goal because this is where we get our formal recognition in our qualifications and how we advance our career pathway. But just even on site in a hospital level, having something structured, having something that is formalised and standardised across different departments, so we are evenly spreading out the skill sets so that one patient is receiving the same quality of care wherever they go in the system, I think is essentially one of the goals of the program that we're currently spearheading in Sydney local health district.

Michele Ong

And yeah, being able to provide that community support, that peer mentorship to be able to iron out those very common things that happen, like you said, that it's different every day and every protocol is different. But the operational side of things is still going to be very common across all different units.

And being able to share that knowledge and being able to pull that together and formalise it and document and give people checklists, it takes so much load off,so much cognitive load off starting this new role when you do have all these other critical aspects of it to have to manage.

And so being able to know, yes, this is how we do things. This is why we do things and giving people the opportunity to take day trips or excursions to the facilities and the other groups involved in clinical trials so that they understand what's happening outside of the clinical environment, it's so informative, and it gives people more perspective in what they're doing in their roles as well..

Ellen Yeo

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that perspective is essentially what engages our nurses and also feels like they have a community around them. In clinical trials, we often say that we have these silos between the departments and between the different clinical trials team within our own, you know, hospitals. We don't really have a opportunity to interact with different departments, different nurses, but there are clinical trial nurses across the system who've come through different avenues and pathways and started their role.

But we do exist and it's about bringing together a community, having that perspective, seeing that there is a, you know, you often feel alone in your group, you often feel alone in your department, sometimes running the show. But there are nurses very much like yourself, running very similar protocols, coming across similar challenges where you can talk and mentor each other and grow together.

So there is absolutely that space. If we really targeted and find how to bring all that together, I think it'll be a much more vibrant and healthier community.

Commonality in clinical trials nursing practice.

Ellen Yeo

I briefly mentioned about the UK visit, but I was also fascinated to see that there was a unit that was running a global research project, exactly the same one as ours.

So essentially this nurse knew every single thing that I knew about this project and was caring for the patients exactly the same way as we have been back in Australia and although we are a world apart, likewe're so far away, I could almost feel like I could bring this nurse to Australia and we could work together on the same protocol without giving her any training or background information.

It's really interesting to see how connected we are in the world of clinical trials nursing. And we are also governed by a global standard called the GCP, Good Clinical Practice. And it's a certificate-- it's a training that everyone has to do every three years, and that's global. And wherever you go, that sort of serves like a passport.

And if you have a GCP certificate, within three years, that's valid, you could essentially start working in clinical trials.

Michele Ong

It makes you more portable, and it allows you to grow your profession outside of Australia and in various industries. And yeah, that's the kind of recognition that you need to be able to provide the additional support to your peers.

Ellen Yeo

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I just wish that more people knew about the role and how amazing that it could be. I mean, it certainly comes with its challenges, but there are so many opportunities for nurses to grow and learn.

The wish to be able to provide the best care for clinical trial patients who are helping to advance treatments for others like them.

Ellen Yeo

And for me, it's always, you know, so exciting to hear about a nurse who wants to try out this role and ask, how did you get into the role, what kind of education and certificates should I be looking at and, you know, they're really driven.

They want to learn, they want to do well and provide the best possible care for clinical trial patients who are these amazing altruistic people and often very sadly in sort of the later stages of their conditions and have limited options. So you know, this is an area where nurses are absolutely essential and pivotal in delivering this care.

Nursing is STEM.

Michele Ong

People do underestimate just how much nursing and nurses provide in the entire healthcare process. And, you know, we've spoken about all of the stuff that you guys do, and something else that you also shared with me was the movement, Nursing is STEM, which horrified me because the fact that it exists, given the fact that nursing is medicine, and medicine is a science as much as it is about the people.

So I also out of curiosity googled 'Is medicine STEM' and was slightly horrified by the results that I saw. So given that, I'm not entirely surprised that Nursing is STEM as a movement exists. But can you tell me more about that?

Ellen Yeo

You know, it's so interesting because nursing, on a day-to-day basis, we use the science, we use physiology, biology, the principles in chemistry and mathematics, and engineering. You know, you see it on our day-to-day basis when we are administering IV fluids, using these, you know, very highly technical devices, troubleshooting, collecting information, evaluating, understanding our patient information in order to administer a drug, and problem solving andmaking decisions.

There is so much that nurses do that incorporate the STEM principles.

And for nursing as a specialty not to be recognised as STEM, it mind boggles me as someone who's been in this field for about 12 years.

I think it's-- as the world changes, we're advancing very quickly with these AIs and new devices to sustain patients lives and to help people and care for people.

I think it's more critical than ever that we recognise nursing as STEM. And that's really important because it's not just about having nursing recognised as STEM, as a STEM field, but it's also what that represents and what opportunity that provides to our nurses.

Nursing being recognised as STEM, it really opens a lot of opportunities, a lot of funding to the field. And nursing at the moment, and not just Australia, globally, there's huge nursing shortages. It's a very important time, I think, that we start looking at nursing and taking this discipline seriously.

Yes, so

[00:40:24] [00:40:27] [00:40:30] [00:40:33] [00:40:36]

Michele Ong

Not a problem. Yeah. It blows my mind because medicine in all of its capacity is applied science and there's no way that you can not perceive it as an applied science. So, I don't understand. I don't know how.

Ellen Yeo

I mean, a lot of the Bachelor of Nursing schools are under the Faculty of Science in Tertiary Education. So, you know, it's interesting.

Michele Ong

It's painfully interesting.

Ellen the artist and composer.

Michele Ong

All right. So I think we can kind of quickly cut into a segue about your creative pursuits outside of nursing, and this is very cool because you're also an artist and a composer. And I love that. So how long have you been doing that for?

Ellen Yeo

Aw look, you know, I'm a bit shy to say this because I feel very novice at it still. I've been doing illustrations on my own time for a very long time, maybe about 10 years or so now,

but essentially, in the last sort of four or five years, I started taking part in games and my husband, who is a software engineer and also develops game in his own time, I've started helping him with a lot of his like illustration parts for his games and music composition as well.

Music has been also a huge part of my life.

The way I think, I think incredibly visually and also music plays a big part in that. So started making music for games, and it was so fun that I ended up considering Oh, maybe I could leave nursing and then do this, or, no, I'm joking.

But, honestly, it's something that I love doing, and, some of my music is currently on YouTube, if you want to check it out, under Amberial. I recently set up my new website, still pretty much in progress, but it's just really nice to see all of your work together in one sort of website. So, started working on that.

And yeah, just really looking forward to pursuing the music course that I've recently enrolled into, and also attending some conferences later in October in Melbourne.

Michele Ong

Amazing and, you know, I love balance, so being able to balance your nursing and your research side with being able to create and it's so tangible, and it's so great to be able to see what you make.

Ellen Yeo

Yeah. It's just nice to kind of give your all on each side, but also switch off as you do that for either of the sides. So you're engaging with both sides of your brain, I guess. But it's also just really fun and lovely to mingle and meet with all the different people in both industries and just making the most out of it.

But yeah, learning a lot. It's always a huge learning curve, I think, in both ways. So extremely humbled.

Michele Ong

Absolutely. Okay. And one last question before I let you go.

What advice would you give someone who wants to do what you do, and what advice should they ignore?

Michele Ong

What advice would you give someone who'd like to do what you do and what advice should they ignore?

Ellen Yeo

I would say, look, first of all, just give it a crack. Just give it a crack. You just don't know how things are going to play out. If you're curious by it, make sure you listen to that curiosity and, once that curiosity becomes a bigger interest, identify those goals and seek mentorship.

I think that's a very huge part of how I go by things on day-to-day basis when I am curious or have a question about certain things. I tend to seek mentorship and have a structured and informal mentorship, whichever way you choose to, but just look into those curiosities, give it a shot, see where it takes you.

And what I wouldn't do,

I guess not especially not do, but I would probably like to just add that in nursing and in pretty much any music, art, industry fields, when you're encountered with certain change and challenges it's really easy to sometimes focus on the old, but maybe channel that energy into building something new, and really sort of be selective in your battles. Because there are so many things that you can look at, so many things that you could be going up against, but certainly when it's about change, when it's about driving change,it's about building the new and also building that community, those like minded people, bringing them together, and moving forward.

So when you have a question, yes, ask those questions and see where that takes you and make sure that you are selectively finding and choosing how to spend that energy and like putting it into a positive, like building something new and moving forward with that change.

Michele Ong

No, that's good advice because you do have to be selective. You only have so much energy to picking your battles. And choosing your own way forward is, yeah, always a good way of being able to approach things.

Ellen Yeo

Yeah, and you find your people along the way and, you know, keep building that village because it always takes a village.

Michele Ong

Yes. And you're building an excellent village with your community around building these pathways to nursing.

Ellen Yeo

They are incredible and I'm very lucky to be part of that village.

Michele Ong

Absolutely. All right. So thank you so much, Ellen, for speaking with me today. It has been so amazing talking to you about clinical trials nursing and all that you're passionate about in nursing education, as well as your creative pursuits. It's very cool.

Ellen Yeo

Thank you so much for having me. It was a lot of fun.

Michele Ong

Ah, yes. I enjoyed it too. Thank you. And yeah, have an amazing rest of your day.

Ellen Yeo

Thank you.

Michele Ong

If you enjoyed this conversation, please let me know. Subscribe to this show, leave us a rating, and share this with your geeky or geek-curious friends. You can also support STEAM Powered on Patreon under steampoweredshow, the link for which will also be in the show notes. Thanks for tuning in, and we'll see you next time.