Nurse To Author: Intuition And Grit with Jenn Johnson

What happens when the job that defines you nearly breaks you—and then hands you the blueprint to rebuild? Jenn, a 17-year ER nurse, joins us to share how COVID burnout pushed her to write, research, and ultimately teach the skill that kept showing up in her toughest shifts: intuition. She didn’t stop at stories; she hunted the science, uncovering dozens of peer-reviewed studies that validate what seasoned clinicians feel at the bedside—your gut often knows before your brain can explain.

We walk through Jenn’s journey from the trauma bay to the page, and how that path led to practical journals that help nurses track growth, process grief, and protect their wellness at home. These are not pretty notebooks; they are tools that capture wins, map patterns, and counter the lie that you’re not learning fast enough. We also explore gratitude without the sugarcoat. Real gratitude anchors attention during hard seasons, lowers stress, and keeps you present for the next patient without erasing what hurt about the last one.

Along the way, Jenn shares hard-earned lessons about saying yes to wild opportunities, bombing a small pitch to win a bigger stage, and embracing boundaries even when they get you labeled a “villain.” We touch on thin slicing—the rapid judgments clinicians make from tiny cues—and how a two-second pause can surface the signal your body already noticed. If you’re a nurse, student, or anyone grinding through high-stakes work, this conversation delivers research-backed mindset shifts and everyday practices you can use on your very next shift.

Subscribe, share this with a nurse who needs it, and leave a review to help more listeners find tools that make their careers sustainable.

Transcript

Meet Jen, ER Nurse And Creator

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Hello there. Welcome back to the next episode of Overcome Yourself the Podcast. As you know, my name is Nicole, and I'm so excited to be here today with Jen. Now, Jen has an incredible story. She is a nurse during the day, but she took her knowledge, she what she knows about her nursing career, and she was able to create journals to help others who are in that career path as well. And so I'm so excited to be talking to you today. You mentioned hitting rock bottom. Like there's lots of amazing, juicy points in your story. So please take it away, Jen, and um introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about who you are and who you help.

Hitting Rock Bottom During COVID

SPEAKER_01 0:55

Oh my gosh. Well, thank you so much, first and foremost, for having me. So, so excited to be on. Um, so I'm Jen. I'm an ER nurse of 17 years, um, have worked emergency departments big and small, um, as big as you know, trauma centers and as small as it's just me in the department um calling in my physician when I need them. Um, and yeah, just mother of two, wife, the whole kit and caboodle. Um, and you know, just have kind of found myself that when um I did hit rock bottom with COVID um and completely burned out hardcore, it ended up kind of being the very first starting point to where I decide to put me first. And that whole saga of, you know, trying to figure it out and the mom guilt and the guilt guilt and dealing with all of that, and in the end, writing a book and then writing some journals to try and really help nurses who are also struggling.

SPEAKER_00 1:56

That is amazing. Um, what I mean, you were a nurse, it was COVID, and so I can only imagine how busy you were, right? Like we were seeing the reports of just hospitals being overwhelmed and an essential worker. So you didn't stop. I can imagine. Um, I live with someone who also works in the medical field. So it was it was, I remember it was a time. Um, and it's scary, right? Because nobody else is allowed to go out except you. Yeah. Um, so I I love the fact that because I did the same thing, I reached a point and I was like, it's time to write my book. Um, tell me about writing journals for nurses because I love talking to people who take what they know. Like you didn't have to go look for something else. You took your experience and then you use that to help others on that path. So, can you talk to me a little bit about that and how simple it is for regular nine to five working people to do that too?

Writing Stories And Finding Intuition

Science Behind Intuition

From Book To Teaching Nurses

SPEAKER_01 2:57

Yeah, I mean, our stories are by far the most powerful things that we have. And we've all got stories, we've all got various viewpoints and experiences. Everybody's got stories. That's that's what makes us who we are. And so, with burning out hard with COVID and kind of getting to a point of like, am I gonna survive this? Like, how do I explain to my kids that I chose to continue to go to work day in and day out? Um, you know, how you got to the point of mentally, if I die, what how would you explain this to my kids? And so I started writing my stories, you know, the the times where I was right where I needed to be and the people that I helped, and you know, the good stories. And a few came out that, you know, have kicked around my head the the past couple years, and you know, got those out and without even realizing it, the really traumatic stuff then very quickly came out because I was at a point where I had no reserve to kind of put it down anymore. So just started writing and writing all my stories, and I kind of sat back after about six weeks going, like, okay, that was something. So what do I do with this now? And was listening to um, so Llewellyn, who's a metaphysical publisher in the States, was having online book fairs, and I kept trying to catch them, but of course they're happening during the day when I'm at work. I'm like, oh, I just want to catch one of these. And the one that I happened to catch was somebody who'd written the book and the title was Intuition at Work. And so she was going on and I'm like, intuition at work. I'm like, I use my intuition all the time at work, and it was just this like light bulb moment of holy crap, that's it. That's what strings all of this together. And so I kind of went, okay, like let me look into it. And sure enough, every single story had some sort of element of trusting your gut and intuition and all this. And I'm like, all right, so now that that's I know where that's coming from, do I publish it without any science behind it? And you know, this is August of 2020, so like the misinformation, disinformation is really starting to ramp up. And I I kind of sat there going, like, I don't think I can publish this without science behind it. I think I might actually be risking my license if I do. So I thought, okay, well, what what are the chances of like one or two studies being published, you know, within the last five years and and peer-reviewed evidence? And sure enough, like there was like 25 to 30 plus um peer-reviewed studies within the last five years, and like, oh, okay, this is a hundred percent a thing. It's not just me kind of going out on a limb here. This is it. So, okay, let's write all here's all this whole intuition piece and all the science behind it. And and so, okay, now what? So here's this book. Now what do I do with it? I said, well, we're taught in nursing school. If it's evidence-based science, it doesn't matter how you feel about it. If it's evidence-based, we teach it. And so now the fact is, okay, let's move forward, let's teach this. And that led me to then speaking at um a local university to some of our first-year students. And all of the questions that they had were all about, you know, how do I prevent burnout? How do I manage work-life balance? How do I grieve a patient? All these things. And I'm going, oh my God, I don't think I've ever once asked myself these questions. So how do I, how do I support you guys in this? I said, okay, well, let me take this back. And that's where the journals came from. It was all, okay, you guys need something to be able to track your wins and losses, to see how you're growing, to have those moments where you're hit like a ton of bricks and you think that you're not doing it right, you're not doing it right, you're not learning fast enough. Let's have you have a way to keep track of everything and then be able to be look back on those rough days and go, no, no, no, like I am learning, I am doing it. Like it's okay. It's it's a process to get through nursing. So let's let's give them more support. So the um there's a grief journal, there's a way to track your kind of shift-by-shift um growth. There's a wellness journal that's kind of more home-based wellness versus like work-focused. And that's kind of put me on this trajectory of, okay, Lowell, now that I have the journals, let's bring them out to nursing schools, let's bring them out to um orientation programs and start supporting nurses um before they even think about leaving.

Designing Journals To Combat Burnout

SPEAKER_00 7:21

That is incredible. Um something that that is is so helpful to the people that you're already working with, right? And I love, I love how you you saw a need and then you brought a solution and you're like, hey, let's fill this need. Um, which is, you know, that's what we teach, right? That's what we're always teaching. Um, so I love bringing examples like that um to show you that it doesn't matter where you are, what you do can be helpful to someone else. And sometimes we just have to think about it in a new way. Like you said, you have all this expertise that you had never even acknowledged because you you didn't even notice. It was just so simple to you, like grieving a patient. I'm sure you've had to do that over and over and over again. Um, you know, and and and then you learn from that experience. You have to, you you that happens, and then you have to go to work the next day, and you have to come and face a new patient, and you're like, but you know, so-and-so is in this room. How do you deal with that? Because you're like, I don't even want to be here anymore. Um, and so those are those are those are the the things that are really not in textbooks, but those are the things that we need help with. And so I think that's amazing. And so what advice do you have for someone who wants to um, you know, create this process of their own? Um, and maybe they don't know where to start. Do you have any advice for them?

Practical Support: Grief, Growth, Wellness

SPEAKER_01 8:49

Yeah, figure out where where, you know, in the best case scenario, what do you want to do with it? You know, who are you looking to help? What problem are you looking to solve? Um, you know, is it before you're coming up with products and and pitches and all these kind of like other things, narrow it down to the problem. And really, whatever expertise you have and whatever areas you excel in, um, I like to call them your superpowers, like whatever you, no matter what, you always seem to be right place, right time for this instance, for helping this person, for choosing that color, for designing that room kind of thing. Like, you always seem to be in the right place, right time for those instances. So take that because again, we've all got expertise. You know, maybe you're really good at explaining things to people. Like, it doesn't matter what it is, as soon as you have an idea about it, you can explain it to people in a way that they understand. Maybe you're really great at design, or maybe you're really good at uh marketing, but you don't have a marketing degree. So you feel like you you shouldn't be talking about marketing because you don't have a marketing degree. Well, guess what? If all of a sudden like your TikToks or Instagrams are doing really well and you're kind of reaching a level where people are reaching out to you to be like, hey, maybe brand sponsorships or let's work together, do that. Like there's so many things, and especially with AI, oh my gosh, like the AI, everything is running at such a fever pitch that even the experts on AI like probably only have like a year more experience than you do. Like it's really so start goofing around with things. And honestly, the best advice is just start saying yes to the most random opportunities that come your way. Somebody's asking you to be like, hey, I just need your opinion on this, or what do you think about that? Like, just go with it. Because really, even if you fall flat on your face, which I have many, many times, you know, you there is something for you. So as soon as you can find your problem and your niche, and like there's a lot of talk about niche, um, like lean into it, lean into it hard and and see where it takes you. Because, like, really, some of the most fun places that I found myself in, I still to this day think that I had no right being in those rooms or at that table or at that conference. Like, um, like I'm teaching with Nurse Blake this summer, who, if you're into nursing or um kind of medical humor, like he's huge in in medical humor. And I get to teach with him. Like, what are you talking about? Like it makes no sense to me. But again, I I applied. People are like, oh my God, how'd you get that? I just applied. That's it. Something came my way. I happened to subscribe to a newsletter, which then, you know, months later, they put out a call for abstracts for, you know, what would you teach if you could teach your expertise in nursing? And so I said, Well, nursing intuition, obviously, and how to grieve your patient and how to write your story, and then how to enter your villain era, because there's nothing like a woman who finally finds the strength to say, I'm putting me first, and then the rest of the world go, Oh, you're such a villain. It's like, well, if I'm gonna be the villain, I'm gonna take full responsibility for it and just go with it.

SPEAKER_00 12:11

If if having boundaries makes me a villain, then I'm the villain. Oh my god, I'm a villain.

Advice: Find The Problem And Niche

SPEAKER_01 12:19

I do something for myself that makes me happy and potentially helps others. Oh my gosh, what what a horrible person. I must, I'm so selfish, like it's ridiculous.

SPEAKER_00 12:31

Yeah, and not to even mention the double standard of it all, but anyway, um we could go gang marks on that for forever and a day. Yes. Um, no, I was thinking about what you said about how you kind of stumbled into something. Um, and then you were like, well, where's the research? And then you went looking for it and you're like, oh my gosh, I really stumbled into something. And that's what happened to me with my book, actually. So I love how our stories are parallel like that. Because I I was writing my book and I'm like, okay, so what is what is the thing? What is my thing? Like, what do I have those 10,000 hours of experience in? And what it boiled down to, I thought I was gonna write a book about business and social media, you know, and all the things that I do, but I was like, what is the common denominator? Like, what is the thing that no matter what area of life you're in, like you could be in a hospital bed dying? And how would what how would this advice apply to you? Um, you know, you could be at the top of a company, you could be giving seminars. How, you know, what is that common theme? And I stumbled into gratitude. Yeah, and that changed everything for me. And then I did the same thing you did. I was like, well, is this woo-woo? Like, am I just stumbling into something woo and we're just doing something? But no, there is so much research, like you said, peer-reviewed research. And I'm sure as a nurse, you know, like literally in levels of pain, you feel less of it, you feel faster, like you have better, better numbers, like literally, like your heart rate, your your blood pressure, like they physically change. These are measurable things. Um, and it's with gratitude, right? So um, as a nurse, I mean, I want your input on this. Tell me about what you know about gratitude and how it fits into all we're everything we're talking about.

Say Yes And Apply For Opportunities

Boundaries And The “Villain Era”

Parallel Paths: Research And Gratitude

SPEAKER_01 14:34

Yeah, I mean, gratitude, it's it's the number one thing that it's an it's not an easy mindset switch, but it's a very easy gateway to switching your mindset because you know, you can get overwhelmed and burnt out, and everybody the world's against me and nothing's for me, and and all this. And the second you take a step back and go, if I had to be grateful for the smallest possible thing, what would it be? And it's honestly like I can take a deep breath without pain. You know, I can walk a hundred meters or a mile without being short of breath. I mean, a little I'm a little winded, but because I don't really get off the couch, but like I'm not gasping for air. I I don't live every day with chronic pain. Like that's huge for me because that that's a lot of what I see is a lot of chronic pain. I I don't have an addiction that that cripples me. Um, I have a phone addiction and I have a gaming addiction um that theoretically, you know, doesn't help me day to day, but I can rationalize it as, oh, this is just my way to kind of come down after a shift. Um, you know, I can be grateful that I've had kids, that I was able to have my own kids, that I had a birth that wasn't horrifically traumatic, that I was able to get access to care when I needed it. Um, you know, I as and again, with gratitude, like doesn't mean that you're the toxic positivity where it's it's only positive and we're only positive vibes and all this kind of stuff. That's not real life. Real life is ups and downs and good and bad. Like there's balance to everything. But if you can put a positive or just a little bit of a spin on something negative that happens. So recently I was in a pitch competition. I was pitching my business, I had three minutes. Um, I thought I could wing it. I thought, oh, I've got this great idea. Like, oh, they're gonna love this. And I put the slide deck together late. That was on me. I didn't practice as much as I should have. That was on me. Um, and when I went to pitch, I kind of muddled it all up and I got off track and I didn't even finish my my pitch in the three minutes. That's negative. That sucks. That I missed out on potentially a thousand bucks for of prize money because I didn't get organized and I didn't practice and do the things. However, has it given me a ton of lessons on okay, I can't just wing it all the time. I do have to get, you know, I do have to put in effort, I do have to focus, I do have to do all these things. Yeah, because now I'm still in the running for a$50,000 pitch competition. So I much would have rather bombed a$1,000 competition than the$50,000 one. So it's another way that yes, I failed. That's okay. You know, life, life is failing and learning. And, you know, I couldn't imagine how, you know, ungrateful I would be if everything just worked out for me. You know, we have those people that we hear about that everything always seems to go their way and and everything's perfect. And like, you're not getting the full story. Instagram is not the full story. Oh my god, Pinterest is not the full story. Like, there is more going on. So the more that I hear from people who are willing to put themselves out there and willing to admit that they've failed, it's just huge kudos for me because I mean, as an ER nurse, I can smell BS a mile away. And it's so refreshing to like look at somebody on Instagram who um, you know, they had there was um so nurse daddies love them so much. They're a couple of ER nurses out of Boston, and they were doing goofy tech talks, and all of a sudden they've got this following of like 150,000 people, you know. So they've been doing this for a couple of years and it's gotten to the point where they're kind of parting ways. And it's just so refreshing to say, like, okay, like we all grow, we all change, like we're doing different things just because one thing was working doesn't mean that's gonna work forever. And so watching them kind of separate a little bit and and kind of do their own thing and uh and all that, it's been so refreshing because it's just a hundred percent honesty and um transparency, which is very rare in this day and age.

SPEAKER_00 19:02

Yes, absolutely. Um, and you know, my book I talk about like don't compare yourself, like you said, to people on social media because they are curating every we we curate the feed. Like if we worked at the Louvre is my example, right? 100% you put the art that you want people to see. Um, and so yeah, it can be very easy to be distracted by all the things um and the sets that they might be on, right? Because we've seen like, you know, like the airplane pictures, and it's literally a set on the ground, like or it's a toilet seat.

SPEAKER_01 19:40

Yeah, and just because of the angle, it looks like it could be a um a plane seat, but it's not like taking everything um with a grain of salt and always wondering about the background story is I think a way that um we're starting to learn to get to keep grounded and and take take everything just not at face value.

unknown 20:05

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 20:06

Yeah, yeah. Um and it's the authenticity, right? Especially in this day of An age of AI. It's having the authenticity to to mess up, to tell those stories, the human stories, right? The things that connect us, the things that we go through, the things that we learn and we understand differently because of what's happened to us, or you know, what how we've reacted to it. Um, you know, because we've all we all have a story, like you said in the beginning. Um, now I don't think I asked you about this before our cop, but I did see that you had sent me some of your links. Was there a gift for the audience inside of those links?

Gratitude Without Toxic Positivity

SPEAKER_01 20:48

I would be more than happy to send somebody a signed copy of my book if uh if they would like. Um, so yeah, by all means. Um and again, it's it is nursing intuition, it is a little bit uh niche. Um, but we all know a nurse. And so if it's not for you, um, then please pass it on. Um, or even if you've been to uh the hospital recently or and you've had a nurse take care of you and you've just kind of thought like, you know what, maybe they just need something to lighten their day a little bit, by all means pass it on. Um yeah, send it, send, put the love out there and and support it. Cause like really there's no there's no bounds to just how much a thank you can do for um somebody who again maybe putting on a brave face, but you don't know what's going on underneath.

SPEAKER_00 21:43

Another way of expressing gratitude. Like we are absolutely absolutely I love that, that is amazing. And so we'll make sure that there's a link down there that you guys um can get in touch with Jen for that. And please let us know how we can follow you on social.

SPEAKER_01 21:58

Yeah, so I'm pretty much most active on LinkedIn actually. Um, so it's Jennifer Johnson B-S-C-N-R-N. Um, and then Instagram and TikTok are at ernurse.jenj-e-n. And then my website is nursejenj-en-n.ca. Amazing. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 22:19

Um, and as always, all of those links are going to be available down below in the show notes, comments. I don't know where you're watching. Um, but yeah, you'll find them somewhere down there. Um, and so before we sign off, Jen, what is one of your biggest tips, like the best tip that you give your clients that they're like, oh my God, you this was worth it all?

Failing Forward: Lessons From A Pitch

SPEAKER_01 22:39

Just trust your gut. Give it, give it two extra seconds. And instead of just dismissing it immediately, just stop and say, What is my brain trying to tell me right now? What is around me? What is going on that it's catching up on, but I'm not because I'm too stuck in my phone or I'm too busy doing something. Just give yourself two extra seconds to see what's going on around you. And again, us as women, we've been doing this since we were like 12 plus. You see somebody in a bar, you uh creep factor, you trust it immediately. So it's time we start doing that without in situations where our lives aren't potentially in danger.

SPEAKER_00 23:22

Um, okay, I'm I'm just gonna have to add this. Yeah. Have you read Blink from Malcolm Gladwell? I have not, but I will add it to the list. Okay, and this is exactly what he is talking about. As soon as he said that, I was like, oh my god, I can't believe I haven't mentioned this. One of my favorite books, it's called fin slicing. And so what happens is your brain knows the information, but sometimes it's there's a delay in getting it to the conscious aspect of it. Yeah, and so it's in there, and we have to learn how to listen to that voice, and so we have to train on paying attention to those details. Because he gives the example of an art critic, like this was a person who is very educated in art, they've seen all the art, and they were shown this painting or this statue, and they were like, What's your gut reaction? They're like, it's fake, and they had it authenticated and they had all this, and they're like, I can't explain why. But by the end, they were able to verify it was fake and almost nobody would have found it. And it's because there's this area inside of you that already knows, but it it it's not conscious, and so you have, I don't know, it's it's really interesting. So um, to the audience, I definitely recommend that book. And Jen, like if you want to check it out, I think it's exactly what you're talking about here. Um, and Malcolm Gladwell's books are amazing, they're so fun. Um, so yeah, all right. So awesome. Thank you so much, Jen. This has been incredible. Anytime. Thank you so much for having me again. Thank you, and we will catch you guys next time on the next episode of Overcome Yourself a podcast. Bye.