I’ve done almost everything you can do as a nurse — bedside, homecare, managed care, education, front-line management, even executive leadership. No matter where I worked or what title I held, one thing was constant: there was always someone who made it their mission to make my life harder. And I realized — I wasn’t alone.

During focus groups I led with students, new nurses, and frontline staff, I expected to hear about clinical concerns. Instead, I kept hearing the same painful stories — nurses talking about how terribly they were treated by their colleagues.

It struck a nerve. One day, standing in front of a group of wide-eyed nursing students, I finally said the words that had been growing inside me for years: Enough is enough. We’ve studied bullying and incivility in healthcare for decades. We’ve documented it, published shocking statistics, and shared tragic stories. But knowledge alone isn’t enough. What are we actually doing about it?

That moment changed everything. I left a job I loved to start a movement. That movement became the Healthy Workforce Institute.