PATT Leave and a BIG Decision.

It has already been six weeks since my Post-Academic Trauma Therapy (PATT) leave began and it feels like no time has passed at all. I suppose that is due to the busy schedule I have kept since arriving in France, first and foremost taking five weeks of French language classes that kept me occupied. But also interspersing that time with exploration of Montpellier and the surrounding areas, immersing myself in some of the culture and history around me. However, a lot of my time has also been taken trying to wrap up projects from either my academic past or current professional associations - much of it spent chasing adult professionals to follow through on agreed to tasks and to get things done. It is this latter aspect that has made me appreciate the importance of time, or the complete waste of it (particularly in academia), and why making the most of my remaining time needs to take priority. No, I am not in immediate mortal peril. It is just that after >35+ in my nursing career (and the schooling and work that preceded that) while witnessing the decline of the nursing profession and then having my career dead-ended by players at the University of Manitoba I have come to the conclusion that there are better things to do with my time from here on forward.

Before I get into the details, I need to acknowledge the inspiration of my current PATT leave and the reason I am even here in southeastern France. That would be the encouragement and support of my spouse who had done his own 3-month “sabbatical” after full retirement. In his case, it was more of an escape to a tropical environment and lots of reading on the beach to make a transition from career to the next phase of life…which ended up being full-time employment in an unexpected plumb position. For me, the idea of such a break was completely foreign - as a self-confessed workaholic, I have consistently been in work-life imbalance my entire career believing that a Protestant work ethic and productivity was the only key to success. Quite literally, that was beaten into me as a kid and teenager. And, when I started in academia, I took very few full vacation breaks where I did not take my laptop and work with me. Ironically, here I am on my PATT leave with a laptop, and work, and still not achieving a proper balance. But, as they say, things come to a head…and I am now at the point to make a stand - the remainder of my time here will now shift to focus on me and what lies ahead. Part of which involves making a pretty significant decision.

When I first started planning my PATT leave I had three main goals in mind. First, I needed to get some respite and actual downtime to rest and reflect and just be. Second, I needed to heal from the trauma of my catastrophic career move to the University of Manitoba and dealing with the toxicity of the College of Nursing and university “leadership” (really, there is no actual leadership involved…just very poor micromanagement). And, third, I wanted to consider the next phase of my life and decide what path to reorient my passions and interests to - I know I need to keep busy, it is my nature. And I am too young to retire…early 60s is, I feel, the prime of my amassed knowledge and abilities to contribute. Especially while I enjoy relatively great health, although that has taken a couple hits over the past few years. But I need to do something that is fulfilling and rewarding, not something where toxicity sucks out one’s energy and sanity.

While I have not yet fulfilled all my main goals, my PATT leave is still a work in progress and I have until January 10 to figure things out. But I also realize that meeting the goals is a process that requires time just to figure out what needs to be addressed and strategies to unpack the issues and feelings - and it is not, at all, linear. Completion of my French classes has freed up some of the necessary time, although I do need to dedicate space each day to consolidate what I have gained. Right now I have a French word salad occupying parts of my brain space and I need to find a way to make the synapses connect the words into coherent dialogue for conversational speaking. They say that will come in time. One project, a manuscript that I am lead author on, was revised and submitted but came back for another revision - this project was also supposed to have been done before I left for France, but… Anyway, I sent that out the door this week and, fingers crossed, it will finally be accepted. Unfortunately, one other project that was meant to have been more or less completed by end of September, has been limping along; by default, I have become the primary lead…something I had not counted on when starting my PATT leave. However, it is a job that has to get done…and that is a maladaptive nursing trait - to pick up the slack when others drop the ball. But, as that project is dragging on I will now attend to it on here on my timelines and as my personal schedule commits. I did not invest resources into this escape to be working abroad.

So what have I achieved of my goals? In spite of the learning and the working, I have spent a lot of time in reflection and that is because I few social contacts here to distract me. In fact, the only three sources of social interactions since arriving have been with classmates during my five weeks of the course, an overlap week of that with a visit from a dear friend from Canada, and then last week when I visited another friend with a place in Argenton-sur-Creuse. I have found that the people I have encountered in Montpellier are not particularly interested in socially interacting unless they are providing a service, such as servers in a restaurant. But a general observation is that, unlike at home, no one makes eye contact or gives an acknowledgment as is often the case back home. And it certainly does not help that I have no command of the French language to facilitate a lengthy engagement. So, I have had a lot of time on my own to reflect while out on long walks, riding the train, exploring local sites, doing housework, and writing my blogs.

One such opportunity I had to reflect was setting out one morning at 5:30 a.m. on a 19.5 km walk to go see the beaches on the Mediterranean - there was just me, Mother Nature, a few cyclists, and some wildlife. Surprisingly, being in a different environment amongst different people (and fauna) and the culture is allowing me to compare my way of being with others and to examine my own perspectives - a change of scenery seems to be a good thing. I had a similar sense of introspection when I was in Brazil as a visiting scholar in 2024 and, again, on my brief trip to China. Just seeing how people work to live, rather than live to work, in different milieus has given me more insight to my own life journey and current situation.

One main point of reflection has been in relation to my physical and mental health, both of which have been significantly impacted since going to Winnipeg. For those unfamiliar with the tenure track process of academia, there is essentially a lengthy probation period where a person is expected to teach, land grants, conduct research, and produce manuscripts and conference presentations while also participating on committees internal and external to one's department. In the case of the University of Manitoba, a new hire must achieve this in six years when it is expected they submit for tenure. Despite this being a long standing process, for all the infinite wisdom of academics who make the decisions on tenure there is no precise quota of numbers of publications or conference presentations, no estimation of the amount of research dollars one must land, or amount of committee work one must do in order to make the threshold. And, when one is not granted the same amount of time to get grounded or provided mentorship, as was the case with me, it becomes a pretty stressful commitment in making the move. I gave up 4 years of tenure time moving from one university to the UM that was not counted…so I effectively started at 0. I also came in during the start of COVID, so aside from knowing two other people at the time, I was pretty much isolated. And there was absolutely no support from the College of Nursing or the university for my transition during this time - no one on faculty in nursing, aside from the two people I knew, made any effort to ease the isolation. Yup - that is the "care" in nursing there. And while one other faculty member had cut a sweet deal to work remotely from another province, gaining the benefit of family support, I was emphatically told that when the university went back to full operation I would be expected to be in the classroom. Since the university did not make decisions on closures until close to the next semester start, I had little choice but to remain in Winnipeg and isolated from spouse and social networks for two years. A very lonely and expensive outcome.

All this to say, the isolation and lack of support really did a number on both my psyche and confidence…and job satisfaction. But also, the restrictions, seven cycles of quarantine, and then the blown disc and surgery had a cascading effect on my physical health. Weight gain and an undiagnosed genetic cholesterol issue had some cardiovascular implications that, combined with the stress of the workplace (bring on the cortisol!), resulted in a very high blood pressure…this added to the mental health spiral that would carry through to my decision to resign my position at UM. And, then, once I carried through with the resignation and experienced a profound period of grief (giving up 35+ years of career building to be sabotaged is a huge loss), my blood pressure has suddenly dropped - almost to the point of not needing any meds. While the weight of uncertainty has also been lifted, there is still much to process from my experience at UM…and this will come with more time of reflection. On some of my long walks, I have compared the healthy and unhealthy workplaces I have been in that includes both healthcare and academic settings. Ironically, most of the toxicity and horizontal/vertical violence has been in nursing perpetrated by nurses on each other of which nursing academics, many of whom have never substantially practiced nursing in their career or are now so far removed from practice, are amongst the worst offenders. As I have written in previous blogs, “registered nurses” as a profession has deteriorated and, for many reasons that are largely of the profession’s own making, seems headed to irrelevance and ultimate demise.

As I continue to work on my three goals a few things have become very clear to me. First, I need to prioritize the things that are important to me and part of that is re-directing my time and energy to contributions that are rewarding. I have never needed gold stars of approval or accolades, which sets me apart from the narcissism so prevalent in academia and which the tenure system nurtures, but occasionally it would be nice to know my efforts are valued and appreciated. Linked to this will be the necessity for me to shed the socialized nursing habit of picking up the pieces and filling the breach - I have learned that caring is a two-way street and always giving is counter productive. Caring also means letting others learn from the consequences of dropping the ball. Second, life is just too short not to be enjoying it more often than not - for me, that does not mean having to stop working altogether but, rather, doing work that is more fulfilling. I know I like being productive and I have engaged in continuous lifelong learning, so I just have to find that “happy space” where the two can come together. And, finally, neither nursing nor academia are a fit with me - I will write more about my perspectives on these points over the next few weeks as I continue my reflections. However, I have shared some of my experiences in the nursing world in previous blogs here and, in the end, it was an all female “leadership” team that railroaded out the only male RN in a tenure-track position at UM.

I have come to a fork in the road of my career journey and a big decision. As email reminders roll in for me to renew my nursing licenses (both active and non-practicing) and there is a substantial cost for renewal (about $800 per year), it does not square with the antipathy I now feel towards the nursing profession. So, I have decided to give up my registrations as they expire. Arriving at this decision has not been easy as I had invested a significant amount of time to my career and had initially enjoyed my clinical practice (19+ years) and, then, education work. But I no longer have the nostalgic feelings of what it means to be a “registered nurse” as the profession decays from its own designs and is being replaced by other classifications of healthcare workers. Nor can I continue to buy in to the idealized notions of nursing practice being touted by nursing academics who have little or no actual clinical practice - medicine has it right by ensuring that physicians maintain actual clinical practice hours for licensure. The argument was that university education of nurses would lead to better critical thinkers - as a diploma graduate, I see the curriculum in baccalaureate nursing being as task focused now as it was when I did my education. My observations have lead me to believe that nursing has become little more than that of a healthcare technician - still dominated by the medical profession (that is so evident in Manitoba and at the UM) and at the whim of the healthcare system while nursing fails to advance its own scope of practice. At the graduate level of education in nursing there is little emphasis on theory and philosophy, so even research in nursing has been reduced to a more technical and superficial level…and most nursing research is not primarily focused on nursing practice anymore.

The one thing through my journey that I do appreciate is how individual nurses have risen to the occasion to become the best they can be in spite of the current system. I have been privileged to know and work alongside many fabulous nursing colleagues, particularly those with at least one foot in the clinical practice world - this includes some wonderful nurse academics who are out in the field and manage to keep grounded in the real world. Until I went to the UM, I had always worked in community at the grass roots level with my service and research, but also with students in their community placements. But the catastrophic career move to UM and my experience with the College of Nursing has brought me to this juncture after 35+ years - it is time to hang up my stethoscope.