#36 You’ve Been Deposed w/ Pam Hetrick, MBA MSN, APRN-CNM

We are walking down memory lane for our Bundle Birth Nurse Mentorship filming days because we are super excited and happy to have Pam Hetrick here. If you’re a part of Mentorship, you know exactly who she is. We have threaded her throughout Mentorship for various reasons, but specifically related to legal issues in nursing. She has an entire deposition and trial class on our site that we’re so excited about and we want you to know about and take advantage of because if you’re ever concerned about being deposed or going to trial, most of the time it doesn’t go to trial. She talks you through the entire process. And I know I walked away from that class being like, “I dare you to depose me. I got this.” And so that’s what we want you to feel when we’re talking about these legal issues. And so we’re excited today to have a conversation with her about her life as an expert witness, talk about what that looks like, and then talk about being deposed.

And particularly, if you walk out of a case and you are like, “Oh shoot,” we’ve all been there. “This one, I’m going to get a call back on.” And maybe you go home and you journal about it or you just will never forget that case or you’re just waiting for the phone call, we want to help down-regulate your nervous systems, give you some tips and tricks, and utilize her expertise. And so we are so excited to have you here. We’ll start with you, Pam, just giving us a little bit of an introduction, helping the audience know who you are. Mentees, she is back. So we are so excited to learn from you today.

It is crazy to think that two years ago, I was doing the filming with you guys and I am so excited to come back, and thanks for the invitation. So I am a certified nurse midwife. I started my journey in obstetrics 26 years ago, which is just nuts. No. Yeah, no. 26-ish years ago. And I will be a certified nurse midwife for 20 years next month. And so currently I serve as the System Chief of Midwifery at a large hospital here in Cleveland, a large health system. And I was crazy enough last May to graduate with my MBA, which was huge. Who still cannot do Excel spreadsheets? That would be me. But that’s okay. We’re going to pardon that.

But I have been an expert for 20 years. It was a pure fluke that I started this journey. It’s been super interesting. I always feel like I’m so well-educated after I review a case, even if it’s one that I can defend, one that I can’t defend, one that I am stating that there was cause with the family or the care. So I’ve seen lots of different cases. I’ve navigated through lots of different depositions and scary stuff. And yes, totally scary. But we are here today to alleviate some of that anxiety and talk you through the lovely world of expert witnessing that I’ve done.

There is so much I don’t know about expert witnessing, because even when you said right there, defend or not defend, because you’re trying to defend the nursing care or the care they received, right? And if you can’t defend it, something… there was…

Right. So typically, I’ll get a phone call from or email from an attorney, and it’s either from a plaintiff’s side or a defense side, and they will say… Sometimes they don’t want to tell me anything. They’ll say, “We have this case. We would like you to review it, and tell us what you think about the standard of care.” And so I’ll take the case, let’s say it’s for an attorney, a defense attorney, and I’ll review it. And sometimes you’re looking at the care that the nurse gave. It could be a bad outcome. But there might be things in that defense case that the nurse did oh, so right, but the system, the hospital system, didn’t comply with the standard of care.

So even with the poor outcome, there are many of times that I can say a nurse or a nurse midwife acted within the standard of care and bad things still happen. Sometimes nurses or midwives will get dropped from the case because I’ll say to them, “This was not their fault.” Right? So there’s a lot that goes into it. But you’re also looking at, what was the standard of care for the time that the care was delivered. And then the other thing is, were there other players involved? Anesthesia sometimes. Or, everything went right from the labor and birth, and the resuscitation got a little bit out of control, or not within the standard of care, and it actually falls more on the pediatric team than it does the obstetrical team.

Do you see a lot of times that it is you can defend more often than you cannot defend?

It depends. It’s like the social media status, with a relationship, “it’s complicated.” I can tell you that I have had plaintiff attorneys that have called me for cases that it’s all like, “Yeah, yeah, they did something wrong.” And then you look at it and you’re like, “Well, not exactly,” and you actually have them withdraw cases because it might have been, they didn’t see the whole picture on the medications that the patient took, or another hospital system that the patient presented to, and there’s no fault on the part of the hospital or the nursing staff.

So you mentioned that sometimes you’ll take a case and you’ll realize that this is more of a systems issue. Can you give us some examples of what that would look like for us to be able to know? I think a lot of times, and I say this because I think a lot of times nurses carry a lot of weight on bad outcomes, or, “Oh my gosh, I failed them.” And there’s a lot of guilt that comes in and we need to realize that we are not alone in these cases and that rarely is it just one person’s fault. Correct?

Absolutely.

So could you speak to that? And what would would be more systems stuff you’ve seen?

So okay. Let’s go to that time where we have maybe had meconium and a category two tracing, and you call for the help of peds. And obviously the tracing is… It’s one that we’re watching, but it’s not necessarily that the physician or the provider decides that they need to do a vacuum or a C-section, right? And the baby comes out and we all have seen those little eyes that are wide open looking up at the sky, and here’s peds that is there to manage resuscitation, whatever. And the baby goes over to the warmer, and maybe respiratory isn’t as skilled or they’re having problems visualizing the cords, if it’s meconium, and we’re on that algorithm. And let’s just say that the resuscitation doesn’t go so great. Right? And we know that this baby’s [inaudible 00:08:32] maybe aren’t the best, but the core gas is. And everything was done perfectly for the management of the mom and baby, but the resuscitation might not have gone as smoothly.

Well, of course they’re going to bring… A plaintiff is probably going to bring it in and say, “Well, if you would’ve done a cesarean section two hours ago, you wouldn’t have…” But we know that the nurse and we know that the provider was practicing within the standard of care, but things happen afterwards.

Another example, you’ve got a baby that comes out and might have had a cord gas, maybe, let’s say, of 702 and had a little bit of respiratory difficulty and went over to the NICU, and maybe the baby had some apnea bradycardia or had a neuro exam that was questionable and wasn’t cooled in the appropriate amount of time. Of course, they’re going to look to see if the care that you delivered was within the standard of care, and then again, it might fall on peds, or was there something during anesthesia that happened? So there’s other things. I mean, even though your care is being questioned and under a microscope, there’s still always room for an expert to come in and say, “Wait a minute here. This has nothing to do with the nursing care. This actually was the issue of the peds team or the issue of anesthesia. Or the nurse tried super hard and couldn’t get the physician.” There are many of times that nursing actually will get dropped out of the case.

So speaking of that, it reminded me of a case that I had that this patient was counseled to have a C-section from starting at 36 weeks, because I think around 36 weeks, baby was estimated to be 10 pounds. And then she had a history of shoulder dystocia, et cetera. So it was a count on her prenatals. It was like, “Please get a C-section. Please get a C-section. Please get a C-section.” It was her third or fourth baby. Fast-forward to an 18-minute shoulder.

But everything was in place. This is a hospital that doesn’t have anyone there. We had the neonatologist in the delivery room, the anesthesiologist in the delivery room, the OB in the delivery room, everything was there to try to do it well and safe. So that makes me feel better because I’m like, “Yeah, the nursing care… We tried our best.” So my question to you then is, now it just is kind of fascinating and I have no idea… We don’t really learn about this. We hear about to fear lawsuits, especially being in labor and delivery. But what’s the process? So say a family wants to press charges or see if they have a case, what do they do? How do they find you? Who finds you? What does that look like?

So the family actually will call an attorney. They will call a plaintiff’s attorney. And I’m sure that all of us listening, we cringe when we see on the side of the bus the, “Hey, you got in a car accident? Call us.” So there’s certain people who are very public with wanting to take care of your injured baby. So somebody calls and those bigger firms might only want the big lawsuits that they know it’s going to be a slam dunk win. And then there’s smaller attorney’s office that will go through the chart, they talk to the family, and then if they think that the patient’s care was below the standard of care, that’s where a plaintiff’s attorney is going to find an expert. So they’re looking for somebody who can support that there were gaps in the care of the patient that caused harm. And so if it is a plaintiff’s case, that’s how I would get involved. Right?

If it’s defense, sometimes that takes a little bit longer because the plaintiff will sometimes call me on the earlier side to say, “Hey, do you think that this is something worth their while?” Okay? Sounds terrible. But they’re paying for everything basically out of pocket to get an expert. And so if I came back and said, “Yeah, this is a gold mine. There’s a lot of different issues with this case,” they then will file it in the courts, which then, that’s when you, the healthcare provider would get notified from your hospital attorney that a case has been filed.

Hypothetically, say this baby is six months old, they decide to do it. Do you have a timeframe? Would it be two years after it’s filed, or does it matter? It could be-

After it’s filed, usually you’re going to hear something… If the baby’s six months old. It’s rare that we’re going to get something at six months old, because remember they’re looking for-

[inaudible 00:13:41].

Right. If it’s a shoulder dystocia and there’s a brachial plexus injury, they want to see if it resolves. They want to see if it gets better. Because for a plaintiff’s attorney, the less use of the arm is going to equal greater money. And remember, not all shoulder dystocias are because somebody did something wrong. The same with if there’s any hypoxic ischemic event. They want to see how that child develops, because thank God, babies are so resilient, and they usually recover quite well from cooling. So they really want to see that there’s some deficits before they go forward. So sometimes it’s a conversation that the plaintiff has, and they’ll say, “Okay, keep this file. We’re going to call you probably in a year or two,” and they file the case then. But they’ve already contacted somebody to say, “What do you think? Is this something worth filing a suit for?”

I have a question, just a little question. What’s the oldest child you’ve ever had?

I have had a lawsuit that was filed when the child was 15. And I was working with a defense attorney and it was a shoulder dystocia case with a mom that was super non-compliant with her diet and her sugars. And it came down to, okay, I need everybody to take a big deep breath because this was interesting. The daughter did not make the cheerleading squad because she could not lift her arms above her head. And so that’s when the mother said, “I’m going to sue because her shoulder got stuck.” And I mean, it went to trial, which is super, super rare.

What?

And she lost. The judgment was for the defense. So basically the midwife was cleared throughout this whole process. Even though it is probably the most stressful thing that you will go through as a nurse, you didn’t go to work that day to intentionally do something wrong. And so you need to remember that when you’re dealing with this, is that professionalism, holding your head up high, being confident. Those are all things that we go over in the deposition class, because of course, what’s the first thing that we do when we’re nervous? We blather. Right? We get nervous, we talk too much. And so it’s being a good listener, and it’s also thinking about how you’re going to respond to questions before you open up your mouth.

Interesting. So let’s say this case, whatever this bad case is, they file… I remember in the class, I don’t know, I think it was you. This is so long ago now, but I remember asking that same question because I’ve been away from the hospital for a bit and I was like, Am I still going to get called for these things?” And I think, did you tell us that in general, if they haven’t called you in five years, you can assume?

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay.

I’d say five years is pretty generous. I mean, the 15-year-old, that was a total zebra. I mean, I don’t think that you’re ever going to see that again. Or I’m going to ever see that again. But usually there’s some rumblings by five years, five to seven years maybe. Maybe it’s a parent that has struggled and then the child goes to school and there’s some obvious behavioral issues or intellectual deficits, and then people get in the family’s ears, right? About, “Hey, you should call. You should sue.”

Yeah, interesting. So let’s say you get a letter. I got a letter. The one time I was deposed, I got a letter that it was from my original… I was at my new hospital. They somehow found me in my new hospital, gave me the letter about the previous hospital that I was no longer working at.

Wait, did they [inaudible 00:18:07]? How did you get the letter?

No, it wasn’t handed to me, but it showed up in my office.

Interesting.

Somehow. Yeah, the mail to the hospital… I don’t know. They know us. They know where we are.

They usually… it goes through… I mean, knock on wood, I have not been called to a personal deposition in probably… I mean, none of the times that I’ve been a midwife. [inaudible 00:18:37] babies.

Oh. Knock on wood.

Okay. Everyone knock on wood now. But it used to come through the security department. The sheriff would come with the certified letter right from the courthouse, and it would go to security. And so the first time I’m like, “Oh, I must have dropped my keys. Right? Why is security… Why do they have a registered letter for me here?” Right? But I know that in the past, it’s gone through security and then they find you.

Yes.

Recently there was a student who I precepted and she was involved. They were looking for her. I got the phone call. But she resides in China. So there was no way for us, post COVID, to find her. So there sometimes is going to be… People have medical issues. I have seen nurses that have passed away and have a lawsuit. So sometimes you’re not going to find the person, but usually now with social media and Google, you can find anybody.

Yeah, yeah. Yikes. So let’s say I get my letter. And I’m going to be deposed, and I know that I’m going to do that. The hospital, in theory, prepares me for that deposition. But we want you to prepare us for that deposition, which we do in the class. But when you look at the depositions that you’ve reviewed of nurses, could you give us some examples of what a good depo looks like, versus one where you’re like, “Oh my God, that was awful?” What would that look like and what are some of those tangible things that we can take away?

So let’s start from the beginning. So you get your letter that you’re going to be deposed. Remember there’s two people that are going to be super important. The hospital attorney, they just work for the hospital. They’re not going to actually represent you in this case. The hospital will actually involve a defense, a medical malpractice defense firm, and you will work with that attorney to go through the medical records, to talk to them about… It might be somebody that you honestly don’t remember. But there are many of times, I will say, that you are going to have a bad outcome or a case that is going to go… It’s going to go to the grave with you. Right? This attorney is going to go through the medical records, going to ask you any questions, is going to paraphrase what they think that the plaintiff’s M.O.’s going to be, right? So they should prep you.

I would say that the biggest thing is, make sure that you are well rested. Make sure that you are well hydrated. And make sure that you do the easy things like making sure that they’re finished talking, making sure that you hear the whole question. If it doesn’t seem right to you, ask them to review it. Ask them to basically restate the question. The other thing that I will say that I see all the time, and it makes me insane, is when you don’t know what you’re talking about. And I am talking here in 2023, I am in the process of reviewing a case and the nurses don’t know the categories of tracings. Now, this is something that’s been around, as we all remember, from 2011. And so let’s say that you have stepped away and you’re doing…

Sarah, you for example. You’ve stepped away from the bedside, but you get called from a case from 2014. I would expect that your attorney preps you correctly with, “Hey, let’s re-review this. Let’s talk about the category of tracings.” Because you want to appear to the attorney, also the experts that are reviewing stuff, and ultimately the jury, if that’s where it’s going to, that you know that your care was right, you know that the care that you gave was within the standard of care, and that you did nothing to cause any harm that day. That you took care of the patient.

The other thing I would say is super frightening is when there is a real, real bad case. We’re talking bad. And the attorney says, “Do you remember Jane Doe?” “Nope.” And this is a hospital that’s doing 400 births a year. It makes me, as the expert, go, “Wow, is this just so normal here, that these cases blend into each other?”

Interesting.

And remember, we are there to tell the story of the care that we gave. The attorney has never labored a patient. The attorney probably has only seen a birth with their family member. You’re there to tell the factual story on what you did to best care for that patient.

If I’m hearing you right, you’re saying it would be bad if I didn’t know their name? But what if I don’t remember their name, but I remember the case?

That’s fine.

Okay.

It’s the people that just say… let’s say that there was a really category two to category three tracing and meconium… I mean, think of those icky things where you’re like, “Oh my gosh, this baby just needs to come out.” And the baby does poorly, or the baby passes, and the nurse is saying, “Yeah. I know I took care of this patient for eight hours, but none of this sounds familiar to me. I don’t remember.” That worries me, because in my head it raises flags that, is this normal in this hospital and nobody has done anything? We talked about systems before. There’s been no process improvement. There’s been nothing to basically prevent this from happening. Right?

I mean, there are times that you’re going to say, “I don’t remember.” When I did triage at the hospital that I’m at now, and we triaged 20,000 patients a year, my name was on a lot of charts. And there was stuff that I would get deposed for for 24 hours beforehand, and I mean literally, I would say, “I don’t know. But remember, I took care of the patient for 30 minutes in the beginning of the patient’s hospital experience.” So I would say, if you feel like you’re being a pain to your attorney, that’s a good thing, because that means that you have a lot of insight, and you want to do well for this deposition, because the deposition really can make or break the whole entire case.

Do you see a lot of nurses get counseled by their hospital to just say, “I don’t recall?”

Sometimes I wonder. The times that I did get deposed as a caretaker, I don’t think that anybody ever just said, “Just say you don’t remember.” They want you… I mean, you’re under oath, so you need to tell the whole entire truth. If you don’t remember, that’s fine. But if somebody is coaching you to say, “I don’t remember,” that’s not somebody who in the end, is going to be your friend.

You actually want to remember the case, if you can.

Absolutely.

And I think I hear… I don’t know where I’ve gotten this impression, but I do, Justine, agree that, just say, “I don’t recall. I don’t recall.” Are you [inaudible 00:26:46] the movies maybe? Of, “I don’t recall. I don’t recall.” It’s sort of this cop out like, “I don’t want to answer any of your questions and I’m going to be annoying about it.” But I think about the time when I was… it was a silly… They should never have deposed me. I was the secondary nurse during pushing and came in and caught the baby and left. And we didn’t even do that at my hospital, so the fact that I came in and helped was just bonus for the nurse. And I had no idea what was going on. And she had a foot drop and that was why she was suing.

So anyway, I remember talking about it and being like, “I don’t remember.” And I’m looking at this chart and saying, “Why am I even being called this?” Because I went down to the courthouse and they didn’t call me in, but I dressed up and everything and still thinking, “I don’t recall.” And that was all I was going to say. I don’t know if it’s the movies or whatnot, that that is being passed around somewhere. But you are saying that, work really hard to recall and it’s okay to not know every detail, but it may not go well for you to just say, “I don’t recall,” when you actually do. And again, you’re under oath.

Yeah, yeah. And I think you’re right, Sarah, is that we’ve all walked into rooms where we’re the baby nurse or they need all hands on deck in the OR. And your participation in that care is so minuscule. And I think for those situations, a jury is going to say, or an expert that’s listening to that, “Yeah, she probably doesn’t remember, because she was there for 20 minutes.” But the ones who have been there for 12 hours, for eight hours, and the charting is as long as your arm and they get in front of the deposition, either it’s recorded, or you’ve got the stenographer taking down the testimony and it’s like, “Yeah, I don’t remember.” I’m like, “Your fingers had to have hurt after this.” You know what I mean? “You’ve typed so much stuff. How do you not remember?” That kind of stuff, to me, as an expert, raises red flags that it’s almost like you’re stating… I mean, it’s a cop out to me when I see it, that you really probably did do something wrong and you know that you did something wrong.

And again, remember, it’s always easier to be the Monday morning quarterback looking back, and at the time, this is why you did something and this is why you made sense. And that’s the super, super important part of a deposition is, it is your time to tell your side of the story, and why you did stuff, and why you waited to call a physician or a midwife or anesthesia because of X, Y, and Z. “This is what I was doing. I remember, I was at the bedside and I was taking care of this mom, and I was repositioning her.” And I mean, many of times, we know that we can’t document every single thing that we do in patient care. But when we remember stuff and the case comes to life, it’s your time to literally tell your story.

I want to go back, because you said something that reminded me of something else you said. You’re looking for, if the nurse or whoever, acted below the standard of care.” And so I hear that as a nurse and I’m like, “What is the standard of care?” And I think we know. We know, in theory. But how do you know?

So the standard of care is defined as what a reasonable and prudent person would do. So I’ll take you to a case where the nurse pushed with a patient with the provider at home. And if I could draw it mentally, a fetal heart rate tracing that was probably a baseline of the 150s to 160s. And with every push, the heart rate went down to the 80s and stayed there for 60 seconds. And this nurse pushed with this patient for over two hours. The provider actually was called in to do another birth and looked at the tracing and went running in the room to expedite the birth. But again, you had somebody that was pushing for two hours with a persistent category two, could be a category three, and you’ve got no communication with the provider.

And so that’s below the standard of care, because a reasonable provider, nurse, should have said, “Hey, number one, my backup… The doc’s at home. So I got call him to let him know that this patient is complete,” because what if she would’ve pushed great, and two minutes later, had a baby? So this person’s at home, snoozing away at two in the morning, while this tracing has been going on. So that would be somebody that I would say the nurse is going to stand alone in this case. The physician might actually get dropped. I can’t say, because they have a higher degree than I do what the standard of care is for him. But I can say, “Hey, if he was in bed and nobody called him, and he didn’t know, he can’t be held accountable.”

I am sure… I’m thinking about the way that I was first trained at my very first hospital. The physicians were so intimidating and so mean that we wouldn’t call them. You’re telling this case, and I’m like, “Oh my God.” I’m lucky I’m years out from that. But I think that, to me, brings up a glaring systems issue of the intimidation, the bullying, the interpersonal, interprofessional dynamic of, you didn’t call them, while the cultural environment was such that I would get yelled at, where I would… And truly, it’s abuse for calling and doing my job. And so what do you have to say for those nurses who maybe are like, “Oh, shoot, wait. You’re right.” And we know we’re supposed to call, but the system in there or the unit culture is that, “No, no, no. They don’t wake them. They’ll scream at you.”

I always say, they’re getting paid to be on call. Right? And of course, yes, they are being paid to be on call. It’s a specialty that they chose to do. Therefore, we have to do what’s right for the patient. And if it’s being called a bleep and a blap, and you chart that you contacted the physician, remember to activate your chain of command. You go to your charge nurse and say, “Listen, I called him, this is what he said. I’m still not getting anywhere.” And then she calls the next person.

I can say I’ve seen a shift definitely in my career, and I do work with very, very respectful individuals. But I have been around too when the culture has been exactly what you said. And hospital systems are waking up. And there’s so many more policies about belonging. We have a belonging officer. Right? We want a good work culture. We know communication is the key. And so they get sent to those people enough, they’re going to be under discipline and the behaviors stop. And I can say that the institution that I was in that was a smaller hospital, many of naughty behaviors with the way that nurses were treated and the way that teamwork was, drastically changed. And really, they can put their ego to the side. The reason that we’re doing it is because we want what is best for the patient.

Yeah.

It’s so sad. Nobody should be intimidated at work, if you’re really trying to do your job.

My God, this is so ridiculous this is still going on. Everybody listening to this needs to decide that they are going to be the one that doesn’t care and continuously… Imagine if every single nurse just didn’t allow for that behavior. The problem is, we allow it.

Absolutely.

And maybe again, I like to oversimplify problems a lot. But really truly, if every single nurse on your unit, Justine, I’m talking to you just because you’re sitting in front of me, would say, “We’re not going to let them get away with it. We will always call in these circumstances,” and come up with a script for when they give pushback on, “Oh, well, why did you call me?” “I called you because it’s my job and it’s yours to respond.” And they keep hearing that over and over again, eventually, it’s exhausting for them to keep it up. At what point does this… This is about the patients. And this is you trying to do your job and it is preventing us from doing our job. I know this isn’t the point of the episode, but also, give me a break.

So, as we wrap up though, because I know that you give a lot of great information in the deposition class that we have, deposition and trial in our store, but are there… I didn’t tell you to do this specifically, so we can cut this if you don’t have it. But are there two or three tips that you have for nurses that are worried about being deposed?

I would say, take a step back. And deposition, as I’ve stated 9,000 times, it is the scariest. But I think that the biggest thing that I’m going to say is, to avoid getting in a deposition, is to make sure that your hospital policy or guidelines. Right? And that if you’re doing something or the provider is doing something outside of the guidelines, is that you’re documenting. You’re putting in your chart while you’re doing something. That will also help you down the road, should this case go and be filed, and you’ve got stuff swirling in your head from this bad outcome. And you’re like, “Oh God, what am I going to do when I go and I get depositioned?”

But it’s those little things that you put in the chart that you’re like, “Aha, I knew it.” You know what I mean? When you’re looking at this four years later and you’re looking at your documentation and you’re like, “This is why I did it. This is why I increased the Pitocin, or this is why I did X, Y, and Z,” and you’re basically talking about the guidelines and why you did something, is going to help you in the long run. And it’s going to make you stronger in deposition, because you’re going to remember why you did something. You basically have answers to the attorney’s questions.

I sort of envisioned myself through this lens if I was at the bedside or anybody at the bedside sort of. When you’re offering care, instead of, we always say, and we’re trying to move away from, “Well, I could get sued for that,” or talking about being sued all the time because the chance is slim compared to all the cases that you care for. But the idea would be that, I am functioning as if there was an attorney or a manager asking me why I’m doing what I’m doing at all times. And then if they weren’t there, let’s say they walk out the room, I’ve left them a note almost. But again, this goes back to the common theme that is so interestingly showing up in this entire season, is about how important your education is, how important it is that you take control over your own learning. This is why Bundle Birth exists, to supplement the education that your hospitals ideally are giving you.

But that you do a mentorship program, regardless your experience. That you’re taking the extra classes. That you’re learning the updates. That you’re doing your own research. Staying up to date. We have to get CEs for a reason, because our education is our biggest way to not only protect our license, but to also protect our patients. Because while it’s easy to talk about these trials or, “Oh, I don’t want to get deposed because it’s scary to be deposed,” there are human beings behind that that have been hurt, potentially because we haven’t done those things. And so, as many of you know, we have an entire library that continues to grow on our website of on-demand classes. You can get CEs at all times. You can take Pam’s class on deposition and trial.

It is such an easy learn. If you are sitting with a pit in your stomach like, “Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh,” just go take the class and then I promise you will walk away like, “Okay, cool.” And then if you were to get deposed, you have the information at your fingertips and you reference it to help prepare for your deposition. She gives you so many practical tools, even what to do the day before, to help you to feel more confident, feel more comfortable, but in the meantime, in protecting yourself and protecting your patients, that we are learning and growing constantly, which is also why you’re here. So thank you for being here for this episode.

And thank you guys for having me. And I absolutely agree with Sarah’s closing comments, that the way that we’re going to push forward in obstetrics is, the more we know, the more we teach each other. And really, it’s the nerdy reading. It’s the joining A1 to get those updates and really share your knowledge and do the best thing for moms and babies. I know that we have some Canadian listeners, but primarily in the US. So thank you guys so much. It’s always fun. And now as we were talking, I was like, “Oh crap, I have a deposition to give on June 27th. And I’m dreading it.” And it’s one that it’s an expert witness, but it is so stressful, because you just feel like, “Oh my gosh, what are they going to ask me?” Some of the stuff that you prep for, they go down a different rabbit hole. So always keeps you on your toes.

Yeah, yeah. Well, and remember that you’re the expert in the room, that no one else knows that patient like you. No one else knows the case, that you basically become an educator along the way.

Absolutely. You are the best storyteller and educator. And besides the patient, you were the only one in the room that was there, actually caring for that patient.

Thanks for spending your time with us during this episode of Happy Hour with Bundle Birth Nurses. If you like what you heard, it helps us both if you subscribe, rate, leave a raving review, and share this episode with a friend. If you want more from us, have to bundlebirthnurses.com or follow us on Instagram or TikTok.

Now it’s your turn to go and take everything you learned today and call those doctors in the middle of the night, regardless what you’re anticipating them saying in response. We’ll see you next time.