Hosts Marion Leary, PhD, MPH, RN and Rebecca Love, RN, MSN, FIEL kick off the first Nurse Spotlight episode of the Love n' Leary Nursing Podcast with someone who has quietly reshaped how nursing sees itself: Paul Coyne.

Jump Ahead

• 00:58 — Welcome and introducing Paul Coyne, Love n' Leary's first Nurse Spotlight guest
• 01:55 — Paul's early years: heart disease, hospitalization, and paralysis at 15
• 03:00 — Suffering a stroke a week after college graduation
• 04:31 — The moment at Goldman Sachs that changed everything
• 05:50 — What his Wall Street colleagues said about him switching to nursing
• 06:49 — The challenges of being one of the only men in the room
• 08:27 — Six degrees in three and a half years
• 10:00 — Why the pace was less about ambition and more about proving his brain was back
• 12:18 — Choosing to pair the nursing degrees with an MBA and Master's in Finance
• 13:00 — What "manifesting" looked like before he knew the word for it
• 15:19 — Becoming one of the youngest chief nurse executives at HSS at 35
• 16:07 — Leading 2,000 people through the pandemic
• 17:30 — The 30-minute-a-day leadership practice
• 19:00 — Why nurses can spot fake care from a mile away
• 21:25 — Starting Augie and the philosophy of augmenting instead of replacing
• 25:00 — Random LinkedIn outreach and Rebecca's original 2017 message to Paul
• 26:18 — The text message and the story of the mother whose son has leukemia
• 29:25 — Why every nurse leader wants to help more people
• 29:45 — Paul's two books of poetry and how it started with a dream
• 32:00 — Writing 100 lessons for his son in case he wasn't there to teach them
• 34:00 — How his poems have connected with readers across every experience
• 36:23 — Final thoughts: possibility, framing your own story, and telling the world
• 38:32 — Closing thanks

Paul is a nurse, nurse practitioner, entrepreneur, healthcare executive, and poet. He was born with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, suffered a stroke at 22, moved to New York to work as an interest rate derivatives analyst at Goldman Sachs while relearning how to speak, and then walked away from Wall Street after seeing himself in scrubs during a corporate physical. What came next included six degrees in three and a half years, the co-founding of a computer vision company called Augie, and one of the youngest chief nurse executive appointments in U.S. hospital history at 35.

In this episode, Paul shares the moments that shaped his path, why he thinks empathy is a strategic asset in healthcare, how he built a leadership practice around one 30-minute conversation a day, why he writes poetry, and the text message that arrived one hour after he told his psychologist how much he missed being a chief nurse. Marion and Rebecca dig into what nurses can learn from Paul's story about possibility, purpose, and the power of showing up as themselves.

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Hosts Marion Leary, PhD, MPH, RN and Rebecca Love, RN, MSN, FIEL welcome Shannon Vieira, RN and Kara Wilson, OT of MGB Home Care for an urgent conversation about one of the largest healthcare strikes in Massachusetts history.

On July 8th, home care nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists, social workers, dietitians, and speech-language pathologists will walk off the job for seven days. On the same day, inpatient nurses at Brigham and Women's Hospital will also strike — and the hospital has announced it will lock them out for an additional four days.

In this episode, Shannon and Kara walk through the changes to their working conditions that led up to the strike, the caseloads pushing home care clinicians past safe practice limits (up to 50 patients per clinician), the growing wage gap between frontline workers and executives at the seventh-wealthiest hospital system in the U.S., and what they're actually asking for. Marion and Rebecca connect the dots between staffing, cost of living, hospital economics, and the future of the healthcare workforce.

Whether you work in home care, hospital nursing, or any patient-facing role, this conversation explains exactly why nurses and their colleagues across Massachusetts are drawing a line — and why the rest of the country is watching.

Jump Ahead

• 00:58 — Welcome and introducing Shannon Vieira and Kara Wilson
• 02:10 — What led up to the strike: the point system, salaried pay, and lost overtime
• 03:22 — A new CNO, efficiency mandates, and a 20-25% productivity jump
• 04:13 — The UKG clock-in revelation
• 05:21 — Is this the first home care strike of its kind?
• 06:08 — The parallel Brigham and Women's inpatient nurse strike
• 07:04 — Same-day strike, plus a four-day hospital lockout
• 08:09 — Why the lockout feels like a strong-arm tactic
• 09:30 — Why nurses across the country are watching this strike so closely
• 10:29 — Caseload realities on the OT side: 34 patients in 32 hours
• 11:49 — Why home care is more than face time with the patient
• 13:39 — What Shannon and Kara are asking for
• 14:18 — The safe caseload research: 25 max, 18 ideal
• 15:59 — Sicker patients, faster discharges, and 30-day readmission risk
• 17:19 — The executive pay disparity and MGB's $35.8B in assets
• 18:10 — MGB reported $2 billion in net gains last year
• 19:12 — Why Boston's 53% higher cost of living matters
• 21:58 — Retention, hourly rate math, and clinician burnout
• 23:30 — Who sits on the MGB board of directors
• 26:07 — Shannon's final thought: the unionization wave was created by MGB
• 26:35 — Kara's final thought: self-care as patient care
• 27:55 — Marion's closing: "The people united will never be defeated"

Listen now at nurse.org/news/love-n-leary-nursing-podcast.

🎙️ About The Love & Leary Podcast

Thank you for tuning in to The Love n' Leary Podcast! If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and share it with a colleague.

🌐 Connect With Us

• Official Website: Visit nurse.org/lovenleary for episodes, articles, and exclusive nursing resources.
• Watch on YouTube: Subscribe to Love n' Leary Podcast YouTube to watch full video episodes and highlights.

👥 Follow the Hosts on LinkedIn

Stay connected, network, and join the conversation with us professionally:

• Connect with Rebecca: Rebecca Love on LinkedIn
• Connect with Marion: Marion Leary on LinkedIn