More 20-Year-Olds Are Showing Up With Chest Pain Than 70-Year-Olds

Anxiety in young adults has exploded — and ER nurses are carrying the fallout.
After working nearly 100 hours in 10 days, Jodi breaks down the epidemic of 20-year-olds with chest pain and panic attacks showing up at the ER with zero coping skills, zero emotional regulation, and total dependence on staff for reassurance.

She shares a real case, explains why this generation is struggling, and calls out the culture that teaches kids to identify with labels instead of building resilience.

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— CE courses in nursing ethics, advocacy & whistleblower courage. Restoring integrity, grit, and faith to healthcare.

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— Faith-based nutrition & lifestyle coaching that brings clarity, confidence, and lasting wellness for women.

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DC is quietly rewriting federal student loans—and nursing grad programs were left off the “professional degree” list that gets higher loan caps.

On paper it looks like a tweak. In real life, it’s a direct hit on the nursing profession: NP, CRNA, CNS, nurse midwifery, and nurse educator tracks all get pushed into the “lower cap” bucket in a country that’s been screaming nursing shortage for 30 years.

Some influencers are saying, “Relax, this is good. It’ll force schools to lower tuition.” Let’s be real: programs with waitlists around the block don’t suddenly cut tuition in half because DC lowered federal loan caps. They just:

• Keep prices high,
• Fill seats with students who have family money, private loans, or employer sponsorship,
• And shut out the bedside nurses who can’t bridge the gap.

Loan caps don’t “discipline” schools.

In this 11-minute breakdown, I walk through:

• What changed in the draft loan rules
• How this chokes the pipeline for NPs, CRNAs, CNSs, midwives, and nurse educators
• Why “manufactured scarcity” is profitable for staffing agencies and big systems
• And why we must treat this as a war on the nursing profession, not a harmless policy tweak

👉 Take Action:
• Share this with 3 nurses thinking about grad school
• Call or email your reps: “Add nursing to the professional degree loan list with higher caps”
• Tell your hospital and school leadership you support that change—loudly and proudly

If you’re a nurse who feels that knot in your stomach when something doesn’t add up, you’re not crazy—you’re awake.

🩺 Ethics training for nurses who refuse to be silent: RighteousRN.com

Support the show

🎧 Follow @NursesOutLoud (no spaces) on all podcasts & social media
📬Subscribe: NursesOutLoud.Substack.com

🎙️ Sponsors

💉 Christian Functional Medicine Academy (CFMA) — For healthcare professionals licensed and unlicensed as well as certified health and wellness coaches.
💉 Functional Nurse Academy (FNA)
— Functional medicine training by nurses, for nurses. Advance your skills in holistic, evidence-based, root-cause healing.

⚖️ Righteous RN
— CE courses in nursing ethics, advocacy & whistleblower courage. Restoring integrity, grit, and faith to healthcare.

🌿 Remnant Healthcare
— Compassionate, patient-centered care through holistic modalities and a root-cause approach to total wellness.

💫 Describe Health
— Personalized, integrative health programs to live your healthiest self.

✨ Tori Jensen Wellness
— Faith-based nutrition & lifestyle coaching that brings clarity, confidence, and lasting wellness for women.

🩺 Wellness Through Awareness (WTA)
— ...

In this episode of Nurses Out Loud, Jodi O’Malley, MSN, RN, connects three threads that most people never see as related: the quiet war on the nursing profession, the decades-long neglect of women’s health and menopause, and a surprising invitation to Israel that became a spiritual reset.

First, Jodi breaks down how federal student loan rules are being rewritten so that nursing graduate programs were left off the “professional degree” list—the tier that gets higher loan caps. She explains, in plain language, how this move chokes the pipeline for NPs, CRNAs, CNSs, nurse midwives, and nurse educators, and how manufactured scarcity in nursing translates into longer waits, fewer access points, and never-ending burnout at the bedside.

Then she zooms out to the bigger picture: the faulty hormone replacement study that left a generation of women suffering through menopause, the way we medicate people without giving them coping skills, and why she sees all of this as part of a deeper good vs. evil battle over health, truth, and human dignity. Finally, Jodi shares a deeply personal update—how, in the middle of a spiritual valley, she was invited to Israel as a delegate with Trinity Broadcasting Network and the Israeli Ministry of Tourism, and what it means for a whistleblower nurse whose name traces back to “woman from Judea.”

👉 In this episode:

• DC’s loan-cap “reform” and the war on the nursing profession
• How starving nursing grad programs locks in the shortage for years
• Menopause, bad science, and women paying the price
• Why Jodi believes this is a spiritual battle, not just a policy fight
• The story behind her upcoming trip to Israel and Judea

🔹 Nurses: Want to protect your license and your conscience?
Visit RighteousRN.com for ethics CEU training built from real whistleblower case studies and post-2020 nursing reality.

🔹 Stay connected:
Follow our new podcast feed NursesOutLoud (no spaces) on your favorite podcast platform for more short-form Nurse News Analysis and frontline perspective.

Support the show

🎧 Follow @NursesOutLoud (no spaces) on all podcasts & social media
📬Subscribe: NursesOutLoud.Substack.com

🎙️ Sponsors

💉 Christian Functional Medicine Academy (CFMA) — For healthcare professionals licensed and unlicensed as well as certified health and wellness coaches.
💉 Functional Nurse Academy (FNA)
— Functional medicine training by nurses, for nurses. Advance your skills in holistic, evidence-based, root-cause healing.

⚖️ Righteous RN
— CE courses in nursing ethics, advocacy & whistleblower courage. Restoring integrity, grit, and faith to healthcare.

🌿 Remnant Healthcare
— Compassionate, patient-centered care through holistic modalities and a root-cause approach to total wellness.

💫 Describe Health
— Personalized, integrative health programs to live your healthiest self.

✨ Tori Jensen Wellness
— Faith-based nutrition & lifestyle coaching that brings clarity, confidence, and lasting wellness for women.

🩺 Wellness Through Awareness (WTA)
— ...