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The Sim Cafe~
The Sim Cafe~
From Theater to Nursing: Dr. Patrick Robinson's Journey of Leadership and Innovation in Healthcare
Discover how Dr. Patrick Robinson's unexpected journey from theater enthusiast to trailblazing nurse offers vital lessons on dedication and resilience in healthcare. Raised in a family where medicine was the norm, Patrick's career took a pivotal turn during the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, a time marked by fear and prejudice. Join us as he recounts the challenges faced by healthcare professionals in the pre-antiretroviral era and the courage required to provide compassionate care amidst widespread stigma. Patrick's personal stories serve as a testament to the power of commitment and the impact of early influences on his life and career.
Our conversation doesn't stop at personal anecdotes. We explore the evolution of nursing leadership and education, with Patrick sharing insights from his rise to influential academic roles, supported by mentors like Dr. Joan Shaver. He highlights how professional associations, such as the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care, are key to career development and fostering a sense of community. As we look to the future, Patrick's optimism is contagious, especially as he discusses the role of online education and simulation in revolutionizing nursing practice. Celebrate with us the innovations in nursing education and the bright future awaiting the next generation of dedicated nurses.
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The views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or positions of anyone at Innovative Sim Solutions or our sponsors. This week's podcast is sponsored by Innovative Sim Solutions. Are you interested in the journey of simulation accreditation? Do you plan to design a new simulation center or expand your existing center? What about taking your program to the next level? Give Deb Tauber from Innovative Sim Solutions a call to support you in all your simulation needs. With years of experience, Deb can coach your team to make your simulation dreams become reality. Learn more at www. innovativesimsolutions. com or just reach out to Deb Contact today. Welcome to The Sim Cafe, a podcast produced by the team at Innovative Sim Solutions, edited by Shelly Houser. Join our host, deb Tauber, and co-host Jerrod Jeffries, as they sit down with subject matter experts from across the globe to reimagine clinical education and the use of simulation. So pour yourself a cup of relaxation, sit back, tune in and learn something new from The Sim Cafe.
Deb Tauber:Welcome to another episode of The Sim Cafe. Thank you for joining us. We have Jerrod Jeffries, and today we are very fortunate to have Dr Patrick Robinson. Dr Robinson, why don't you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself? We talked earlier. You said we could call you Patrick, so thank you.
Dr. Patrick Robinson:Absolutely Well. Hello Deb, hello Jerrod, it's such an honor to be with you today. So I'll just give a little bit of background on myself.
Dr. Patrick Robinson:I've been a nurse for 35 years and I started off as an HIV AIDS nurse, clinician, clinical specialist in HIV case management and then eventually made my way into some critical leadership roles in the HIV AIDS community in the city of Chicago. Always wanted to be a professor from my early days in my own nursing education, so I transitioned to a fairly traditional type of faculty role and taught and maintained a program of active research for about 10 years and then realized that I did have the will to lead and hopefully the will to lead well. So I started in my academic leadership career and over the past decade or so I've been a dean a couple of times. I was the provost for a large school. I actually did serve as the president of a small school in Kansas City small college in Kansas City for a period, and most recently I took on the challenge of being the vice president of nursing for Pacific College of Health and Science, and we're located in New York City.
Deb Tauber:Thank you. Now, what inspired you to pursue a career in nursing and then later specialize in HIV AIDS care?
Dr. Patrick Robinson:Well, I always wish there was sort of a greater epiphany story. There isn't. I raised in a medical family. I was raised by a physician father and a nurse mother, so it was kind of the family business. I was always drawn to theater so I am a recovering actor but I decided I needed a backup plan and nursing was that backup plan. I remember from the time I was a very young child my dad would take me on rounds with him to the hospital and he'd sit me at the nursing station and the nurses were so kind to me. So from very early on I sort of got the idea that being part of a nursing unit, a nursing group, was very special. Think about, you really probably couldn't do that today and it probably wasn't a very wise thing to leave a child at the nurse's station when nurses who were very busy.
Dr. Patrick Robinson:But once I started I really knew that the impact of this career could be great. When I graduated from my BSN program it was at a very dark time in the HIV epidemic in this country and many of the people I loved and that I knew were sick were dying and I decided that it was going to respond with my whole self instead of with fear, and the way I did that was to dedicate my professional life to HIV, aids nursing care, and it was an extraordinary time. You know I look back on my clinical career as really some of the most. I witnessed some of the most exquisite nursing that I think there is just because nursing was at the center of AIDS care. You know this was the years before antiretrovirals and so forth, so I really got to be quite the full nurse and use the whole comprehensive set of my skills Very, very big privilege in my career.
Deb Tauber:Thank you for your contributions and all the things that you've done.
Dr. Patrick Robinson:You're welcome, thank you.
Jerrod Jeffries:And Patrick, was that also around the same time as the Ryan White area as well? Well, I grew up in Indiana.
Dr. Patrick Robinson:So I sort of witnessed the Ryan White saga. Now, not the, I mean, there's the federal why and write money, and then there's the boy himself, Ryan White. So I was in nursing school when Ryan White was being thrown out of school in Kokomo, indiana. So it was at the time of the height of the fear of the HIV. And actually it was interesting, I was actually Ryan White died in Riley Hospital for Children and I was actually working at Riley at that time.
Dr. Patrick Robinson:I certainly wasn't his nurse, but I was in the hospital the day he died. So yeah, that was at the time of the great hysteria, the great fear.
Jerrod Jeffries:Tragic time, for sure. But let's also look at, you know, the individuals who kind of contribute into the space to you know, don't let fear, put them down, but do the opposite of help drive the change and, you know, create something bigger and better out of it as a young man coming out at that time it certainly would have been easy to give in to fear.
Dr. Patrick Robinson:You know so many of us thought we weren't going to live into our middle age or even old age. You know we didn't know a lot about it back then. So it was really quite brave of so many people and my colleagues to go into the fight and many people we were stigmatized in very much the same way as some of the patients like why do you want to do this? And I know I worked with many people, especially women, whose husbands and families really couldn't understand it and were very apprehensive about them working with patients with HIV.
Dr. Patrick Robinson:It was a very different time, especially when you think about what we've come to now, where HIV is very much a chronic disease. I can't keep up on the pharmacology. The first pharmacology lecture I gave on HIV we had one drug with one in clinical trials and now we have injectables that you take once every other month and you're living a normal lifespan and with good quality of life. It was amazing to see the entire history of this epidemic and the medical care. Not many people get to see that and something that they're so passionate about.
Deb Tauber:Well, and I think, how has your role evolved from being a nurse to becoming an academic leader in nursing education?
Jerrod Jeffries:And an actor and an actor.
Dr. Patrick Robinson:I do spend, like I told you. So right now I'm in New York City. So one of the best parts about that in addition to the job, now I live half the week in Chicago and half the week in New York, so I spend those time in great theater cities, so I gorge myself on every type of theater. You can imagine and you know so. I, very early in my nursing education, was really drawn towards my nursing instructors. I went to Indiana University. Indiana University was an extraordinary school. It still is an extraordinary school.
Dr. Patrick Robinson:I'm very passionate about my alma mater school. I'm very passionate about my alma mater. In the days I was there, I was really supported and nurtured by this incredible group of women. You know you hear a lot of bad stories about how students are treated, bullied and civility. Iu was the antithesis of that. I was surrounded by such loving, caring women who were constantly lifting, you know, their students up. So you know I really got the bug, for this is something I can do and this is something that I think is going to make me happy. And as much as I loved patient care, I loved being in the clinical setting with students. I loved being in the classroom but really being in the hospital with students just kind of was my jam. In fact it was the most fun I ever had in my career and if I was still clinically competent it would be my retirement plan. But I don't think that's going to happen. Going to happen, so you know.
Dr. Patrick Robinson:And then, from that love of students and the love of my colleagues, I witnessed some poor leadership in academic administration. I thought you know what. I think you can do this. I think you might be able to do it better. I think you got a good head on your shoulder and I was just very privileged to have great mentors early in my academic career who gave me opportunities, opened doors, gave me the permission to do things differently, did not want to fit me into their boxes.
Dr. Patrick Robinson:One of my greatest mentors I'm going to talk about her a lot is Dr Joan Shaver, dean Emeritus at Chicago and Dean Emeritus at the University of Arizona, and I went to UIC as her postdoctoral fellow. I was a biobehavioral nurse researcher. I did some cool stuff. I looked at stress attenuation and immune reaction to meditation and yoga very hot at the time and Joan was a physiologist. But she really saw in me that I was very creative and I wanted to do things beyond my science. So, as where some people were telling me, don't spend time with your students, forget about this, focus on your career, she said basically, you know, you do you, and gave me my first leadership position as an untenured assistant professor and I thank her to this day because that led to all kinds of great things.
Deb Tauber:Yeah, Someone who believes in you Absolutely Right. Can you share your most impactful moments or challenges that you faced during your career in nursing and in health care? Yeah, I think that certainly one of the.
Dr. Patrick Robinson:It's interesting, they're small moments, they're subtle moments, but I think really early in my career it was my presidency the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care. I'm a firm believer in the role of the professional associations and the professional societies in career development because that's where you meet the movers and the shakers, that's where you meet the people who can lift you up. So really from very early on I got the association bug on. I got the association bug and when I went into my first meeting and I saw the president at the time of Annex, someone who's actually quite well known his name is Cliff Morrison, if you ever saw the movie 5B, which is the documentary about the first inpatient AIDS unit at San Francisco. General Cliff was the founder of that unit. Cliff's still with us, but he was the president and I thought, wow, you know, someday I might be able to be a leader in this specialty.
Dr. Patrick Robinson:It was the early 90s, I was a fairly new nurse, so that honor was enormous and the weight of that in order to continue the legacy of people that I admired, who taught me the craft, who taught me what HIV, aids, nursing really was. And then I think that as I move into my sort of academic career. I think the moments I want to talk about were those moments with students and they're quiet and they're gentle and they don't come all that often, but like when a student really reaches out and says thank you, you made an impact. And now, years into this, I'm over 20 years into my academic career. Years into this I'm over 20 years into my academic career.
Dr. Patrick Robinson:I taught for my years at UIC. I taught the first course in the PhD program, philosophy of Science, a dreadful course for so many, but I loved it and I totally turned it upside down. You know they were reading the old dead white man and I brought in feminist critical theory and feminist theory and so forth. And those folks now are now chief nurse executives and deans and nurse scientists and they occasionally will find me and say you know, you made a big impact at that. You know very early stage in my development as a nurse scholar, nurse leader. So those are the things that stick out to me.
Jerrod Jeffries:Well, it's also. I mean, you had someone believe in you right early on and you just delivered straight back.
Jerrod Jeffries:It's cyclical and you know we all stand on the shoulders of someone else and I think that's the beautiful thing is when you, you, it's a give-take relationship and I think that, even back to these associations, right to some degree, where these are the places you meet people, because in certain disciplines it's so thin at your institution because they're not going to employ who knows how many within you know, whatever unit or faculty or whatever maybe simulation, for example, because the numbers aren't there, but the critical mass is is when you go nationally, potentially internationally, and you're able to feel that you're not alone, you're able to feel belongingness, you're able to feel that community and I think that's that's where those associations and different professional organizations really really add to it as well.
Dr. Patrick Robinson:You know, Jerrod, you are so right and you know I continue to experience that to this day. So, first of all, I'm still very active in the association.
Disclaimer/ Innovative Sim Solutions Ad. Intro:I shouldn't say I'm very active.
Dr. Patrick Robinson:I'm still a committed member. I go every year. I'll be going to my 30, I think, my 33rd conference in a few weeks, back to Indianapolis where I went to school, so that's kind of special. But I'm currently served as the chair of the board of trustees of the NLN Foundation for Nursing Education. So the NLN meeting, the Nursing Education Summit, is such a special week for me. I like to say it's the week with my tribe. So you know I'm with people who sort of understand me and what my needs are and are dedicated to nursing education, simulation and the advancement of the craft of teaching nursing. So it is incredibly special.
Dr. Patrick Robinson:And I think the old adage that you know you have to always reach back and pull the next person up. If you don't, you're not worth very much, and I've always made sure that I do that and part of that's selfish because I got to tell you that feels really good. I think we're doing it for others. But you know, when we do good, especially when we do good in someone's career, that just makes me feel like a million dollars, and who doesn't want that on a regular basis? Exactly.
Jerrod Jeffries:So I want to dig more into your professional life, though, Patrick. So what fills your day? One, I guess, is the is the most large answer, but are there certain types of areas of education that you're spending a lot of time in, specifically?
Dr. Patrick Robinson:yeah, so I have the. You know I've been lucky in my career because I meet really cool people who present opportunities to me. So prior to last year I was the president of a small college in Kansas City. It's a great college. I had a sincere desire to get to a college presidency but you know what? It wasn't that exciting. In fact it was a little bit unfulfilling, I must say. There wasn't a lot of creativity, good board, good support, but yeah, I couldn't really do what I wanted to do. So at the same time I met really great guy, chicago kid, malcolm Youngren. He's the president and CEO of Pacific College of Health and Sciences. He's a Chicago kid. Dad was a noted architect, so we bonded over sort of architecture. I worked for Merrill Owings, the people who built the Sears Tower and many other.
Dr. Patrick Robinson:Skidmore Owings and I got it wrong, but anyway, at that point we're the largest conferred degrees in. They're the largest conferred degrees in traditional Chinese medicine and acupuncture. When I met Malcolm, he was very interested in expanding the mission of Pacific College to include nursing and was looking for some thought leadership to help on that. So he asked me to join the board of trustees of Pacific College, the board of trustees of Pacific College. So I did so I was on the board and helped the other board members, an extraordinary group of people, people who are into traditional Chinese medicine, expanding the worldview of health and illness are really cool people, I don't know how else to say it.
Dr. Patrick Robinson:So you know, we formed the strategy and I was thinking you know I'm not that happy in Kansas City. I really want to do something very creative. So they were looking for now someone to lead the vertical. So I said to Malcolm you know what I'd like to do this for you? And he was like, would you really? And I said yeah. So you know, made me an offer and I came on. So for the last year I've been immersed in this incredible community of Pacific College, creating integrative and holistic nursing programs and expanding our reach also in our medical cannabis program. So really, the majority of the time has been standing up an entirely new pre-licensure BSN program that is founded on these principles of holism, integrative health, which has been amazing and the response has been amazing and the students that we have attracted has been amazing, and, at the same time, looking at what the future can be for cannabis nursing and the future of medical cannabis. So it's very much startup, co-creating with these very creative kindred spirits and moving this agenda forward.
Deb Tauber:Yeah, I can't think of a better person to be leading something like that. With your experience from the whole thing with the HIV, it's a whole new beginning for you, but it's so important and very interesting.
Dr. Patrick Robinson:I believe you mentioned that you're the first school to be doing this with the cannabis, so we are so there's a master's in cannabis therapeutic cannabis in in Maryland it's in the pharmacy school, but we are really the first ones that are focusing on this, with nursing in particular. So it's been an incredible year for cannabis nursing and that may be a new term for you and certainly to a lot of the listeners, but the American Nurses Association recognized cannabis nursing as its own specialty earlier this year and approved so that came out just in 2024?
Dr. Patrick Robinson:Yeah, actually late fall, it was fall of 2023. And then earlier this year, ANA published the scope and standards cannabis nursing.
Dr. Patrick Robinson:So there's a very active American Cannabis Nurses Association. So there's a very active American Cannabis Nurses Association. They are quite the group of clinicians and scientists. You know you think I don't know what people think of cannabis. You know it's. They're not weed dealers. I mean this is serious, serious science. And amazing entrepreneurs also, most of them that are really developing the science of therapeutic cannabis and what underpins cannabis nursing, and they're in the process of now developing their certification exam. So the future really is quite bright when it comes to the use cannabis as medicine and I'm very proud that we, as pacific college, are on the forefront of that I mean talk about a moving or shaker.
Jerrod Jeffries:This is. This is all brand new to me, but I love that it's not only being explored, but you know you're, you're able to pave the initial nursing graduates or specialization from Pacific.
Dr. Patrick Robinson:So yeah, you know. So it's all based on. You know, like when we were in school we did not learn about a physiological system called the endocannabinoid system, wasn't really understood. But the endocannabinoid system is very prevalent throughout the central nervous system the CB receptors and it really is integral into the regulation of almost all the other neurotransmitters. And the full plant. Cannabis has a lot of the exogenous cannabinoids that our body makes, the endocannabinoids that regulate mood, health, sleep and everything. So really the science is behind regulating the endocannabinoid system with the full plant and only THC is the cannabinoid that most of us know about, because it's the one that makes you high, but there's, you know, many others also and the science is evolving quite quickly and the number of illnesses, the number of health and wellness issues that people are using the whole plant for, is quite amazing. And some of that's THC, but not all of it. It's a mixture of all the cannabinoids.
Jerrod Jeffries:Yeah, it is fascinating and it also reminds me. I mean just to draw a completely parallel. You have AI developers or something within computer science now and of course it's taking the world by storm in a way. But two, three years ago, you know, there was like people were very uh, you know it was of course a silicon valley group and people kind of tinkering, but it wasn't in higher ed, it wasn't. You couldn't go to any university and be like I'm going to be an ai scientist, like I. I don't. I highly doubt that would have existed, but now it's probably prominent.
Jerrod Jeffries:So you're not doing the same thing within?
Dr. Patrick Robinson:. We are trying, we are trying. I'm also big into AI, so there were good parallels. It's changed my life actually.
Deb Tauber:Now, how do you think the landscape of nursing education has changed over the past decade, especially with the rise of online learning and simulation?
Dr. Patrick Robinson:Quite a bit, you know one thing that I always get a little annoyed at and you hear this a lot at conferences and with people there's this rhetoric that people we're still teaching students the same way that we have for decades, and that's patently false. That is patently false and that's insulting to nurse educators, nurse innovators, nursing education scholars. We are evolving, I think, at the same pace as any other field, and certainly technology and simulation has been a huge part of that. You know, I was educated in the era of the static mannequins and I got a good education right. I mean, I think I did. I got good jobs, got hired at the Indiana University Medical Center right after I graduated. But if you look at what we're able to do today in terms of really driving competency development, maybe the one thing that hasn't changed enough and I don't know how it would change is so much of clinical education is still opportunistic. I mean, you're on the floor and you got to wait for things to happen in order to do right. I mean, and if it's a good day, guess what? Not a lot happens. People are stable, respond appropriately. You know you get to use your judgment. But this idea that you know simulation and all of its forms from high fidelity human patient simulators to screen based to now and the virtual world. What we can expose students to and get them thinking and doing and acting is amazing. So we've we've changed for the better.
Dr. Patrick Robinson:And then I've always been a huge proponent of online nursing. I for a period of my career, I was the dean of nursing for a very large online nursing program Probably had about 7,000, 8,000 students in bachelor's, master's and doctoral programs. Actually I did. I was over public health and healthcare administration, so that was all of those disciplines. So we know it works and at the same time, you create access and opportunity. You know their higher education and the way we used to do it was available only to a few and to the privileged. So online education has opened up education to the masses. I read yesterday a very aggravating article in Inside Higher Ed about the absurdity of asynchronous learning, and it was from a classics professor. So okay, consider the source. But I guess that people can sit with their privilege and want 18 and 19-year-olds at their feet, or you can not embrace what's now new and innovative, but actually embrace what is standard and realize that online education has been one of the greatest contributions to egalitarianism in terms of post-secondary education. So it's all very exciting and ai, like jared just mentioned, I am so excited about it.
Dr. Patrick Robinson:The hand wringing just makes me sick. I mean I don't want to sit in any more faculty meetings or in conferences hanging uh wringing my hands about cheating I want to talk about. Well, they're doing it, I'm doing it, you know, we're all doing it. I write emails with ai. I mean stop, stop, just just that's. That's great.
Dr. Patrick Robinson:I don't know what that means for cognitive development in in the young mind, but what we do know is that there is an incredible power in this that is going to make us very efficient, perhaps more effective, and leave us open to so much more time to do so much more at a higher level, which, you know, artificial intelligence isn't going to, is probably not going to get to. So that's going to drive us into the future in an amazing way. It's like the internet, right, you know, think about you.
Dr. Patrick Robinson:I'm I'm not a digital native, so I firmly remember the world without the internet. I typed my master's thesis on a Smith and Corona typewriter. The first PC I ever had was when I was a started my PhD program. I still had to go up to the books and look in the index medicus and take my card around the library and put the journals in it. Now look at, I can't, you don't do anything without the internet. Ai is going to be that way too, and I'm just happy I'm going to still be working to see that revolution, because I got about 10 more years.
Deb Tauber:Yeah, now, patrick, do you have a favorite or most impactful simulation story? You know what?
Dr. Patrick Robinson:I think I do. It's with SPs, though, one of the things that the day. I like to be in the Sim Lab. Now, I haven't taught in a long, long, long time, but I like to go down to the Sim Lab on the psych days when we have the actors, and again, again. I love theater so.
Dr. Patrick Robinson:I take this for what it is, but the places I've been have employed some of the most incredible actors and who have done the you know delusional thinking.
Dr. Patrick Robinson:You know delusional thinking, schizophrenia, manic episodes, withdrawal, and just to see those students be able and they do it so perfectly and just to see those students be able to manage those cases or not manage those cases, and it just makes it so come alive for me.
Dr. Patrick Robinson:Because I remember I was in a locked unit, a locked VA unit in Indianapolis, for my, my psych rotation was the days when everyone smoked in the day room, including the nurses, including the nursing students. We had never been exposed to that, so really gives me confidence that they're going to be able to handle it. I think the other thing you know I've been an administrative leader for a long time, so I think some of those stories are also as I've grown in designing and working with people, as sim labs have evolved over the years and having to pull things out that you know didn't work and retrofit, and there's this theory about how control rooms should work and then there's a new theory about how control rooms so really being part of even though I don't teach in the sim labs of being part of the design and ensuring that the resources are there as students has been very fulfilling for me also.
Deb Tauber:Thank you Now. Do you have anything? You want to leave our listeners with Anything? Any last closing thoughts? Yeah, I think I will.
Dr. Patrick Robinson:A little bit off topic than what we've talked about, but there's so much sturm and drang about the future of nursing. Obviously we're facing a critical nursing shortage. That's not new, and our system of healthcare is certainly not the best in the world and we graduate students into a system that is suboptimal. All of that is true, but I don't like to focus on that. I like to focus on the joy that I'm seeing in the classroom and in the clinical setting and in the simulation labs right now.
Dr. Patrick Robinson:We have so many young people so interested in what we do and I've always felt about what we do is a sacred trust, and it is hard for me to believe that the future of nursing is anything but blindingly bright when I look at the wonderful people who are choosing to go into nursing. May not be enough of them, but I think we're going to figure that out also. So I guess you know. I just like to say when I wish that we would talk as much about what's very right in our profession and the wonder that goes on every day and the wonder about how we have closed the practice academic gap. You know again, conference after conference, you'd think that we're not doing anything in education to prepare them. And that's not true. And just to start focusing on some of that and telling the positive stories. I'm very proud of my profession, I'm very proud of what we do, I'm very proud of being a nurse educator and we're in good hands with the future nurses that I see right now.
Deb Tauber:Thank you, very optimistic closing thoughts. We very much appreciate you and thank you for being a guest.
Dr. Patrick Robinson:Well, thank you so much.
Jerrod Jeffries:We went from HIV and AIDS professional organizations through cannabis and THC and focusing on the positives over the negatives, which I also can relate to. So thank you so much, thank you All right, happy simulating.
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